Retiring A Data Center. With an Axe.

Dean Nelson of eBay uses an axe to retire the final server as the company powers down its oldest data center.

The data center is built around the principle of perpetual uptime. The power must always be on. The data must always be available. Yet what becomes of these facilities when they reach the end of their usefulness? What procedures and rituals are required when a data center is turned off?

At eBay, it involves putting an an axe through the final server. That’s the fun part of a great blog post by Dean Nelson, senior director of the data center team at eBay, which last month shut down the company’s oldest data center in Sacramento. The facility was retired as part of a major data center consolidation for the giant Internet auction site, which will shift much of its operations to a new data center in Utah. Dean describes the process, gives some history on the facility, and shares details of the ceremony for de-activating the final server and powering down the building.

California Plans Fast Data Center Consolidation

When it comes to inefficient legacy data center space, the Governator has a clear message: “Hasta la Vista, baby!”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order Tuesday stipulating that California reduce the total amount of data center square footage currently utilized by state agencies by 25 percent by July, and by 50 percent by July 2011.

The executive order sets in motion a massive, fast-moving data center consolidation of the 400 data centers and server rooms operated by California state agencies, which span 400,000 square feet of space and house more than 9,500 servers. That means eliminating 100,000 square feet of data center space in less than five months, and another 100,000 square feet by July 2011.

The initiative isn’t just targeting square footage. Schwarzenegger’s order also emphasizes the need to house applications in a Tier III or Tier IV  data center, based on the Uptime Institute reliability scale.

State May Seek Third-Party Space
In most cases, agencies will migrate applications to a state-owned data center. But given the timetable, state officials say some workloads may move to third-party data centers, potentially boosting demand for colocation and managed hosting services.

“The state will be using existing state Tier III data centers and may use private Tier III data centers to the extent it is necessary,” said Adrian Farley, Chief Deputy Director for Policy and Program Management for the Office of the Chief Information Officer.

State Dept. to Consolidate Data Centers

The U.S. State Department has posted a notice indicating it will consolidate its data center, according to Federal Computer Week. The consolidation plans are described in a presolicitation notice on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site. The project “includes a broad range of services not limited to hardware and software evaluation and recommendations, configuration management system design and implementation, physical server virtualization and transition, and LAN administration support for server transition and consolidation,” the document states.

The Obama administration’s stimulus plan includes $290 million for a “Capital Investment Fund” for the Department of State to beef up its IT security and mission-critical operations, with $38 million of that earmarked for the Agency for International Development.

Congress Debates DHS Data Center Budget

It looks like funding for a critical data center consolidation for the Department of Homeland Security has become a political football in the wake of a critical report from  DHS’ own inspector general. Here’s what’s happening:   

• In April the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report (PDF) that the department had made progress in establishing a disaster recovery program, citing an ongoing plan to close 16 legacy data centers and consolidate their workloads in two new data centers in Mississippi and Virginia. But more work is needed, the OIG said. “DHS has not established the necessary connectivity to ensure that DC1 and DC2 can provide backup capabilities for each other,” said the report, which also faulted risk assessments at both sites, including the placement of diesel fuel storage tanks “within several feet of the building” at the Virginia site.
• On June 12 the House Appropriations Committee agreed to give DHS just $20 million in fiscal 2010 for the data center consolidation, considerably less than the $200 million that the Obama administration had requested for the program. Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), chairman of the committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee, released a report saying the committee was “disturbed” by the inspector general’s findings that included “a number of alarming problems and vulnerabilities at these two data centers.”
• On June 17 a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill that would provide “significant funding” for the DHS consolidation program. The specific amount of funding will be made public later this week when the full committee considers the bill.

It looks like there’s more to come on this story, as lawmakers seek to hold DHS officials accountable for ensuring that the consolidation project creates a reliable disaster recovery system for the department’s IT operations. Still, it’s hard to fix an expensive problem without funding.

Michael Dell: We’re Ready to Go Shopping

Dell Inc. (DELL) is ready to make acquisitions to equip itself for the Battle for the Data Center. CEO Michael Dell said today in Beijing that the company is eyeing acquisitions in key markets for data center equipment and services. “We are focused on data centers, services, software, servers and storage, Dell said. “Those are likely areas for Dell to use its capital for non-organic growth. If you look in the last few years at the acquisitions we have made, it really has been focused in those areas.”

On Wednesday Dell unveiled 14 new products for the data center, including new hardware and services. See coverage at Silicon Valley Watcher, GigaOM, Cnet, ZDNet and Network World. 

What kind of acquisitions make the most sense for Dell? What do you think?

EDS to Support FDA Data Center Consolidation

Electronic Data Systems (EDS) has won a key contract to support the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as it consolidates its data center network into two facilities. The FDA recently selected 10 contractors to support the project, which will invest $2.5 billion in updating the agency’s IT services and data center infrastructure over the next 10 years.

EDS was awarded a contract to oversee migrate the FDA’s existing applications to a “contractor-owned” data center, with an initial funding of $12 million. The agency’s infrastructure will be consolidated in two locations: the EDS facility and a second data center at the agency’s White Oak campus in Silver Spring, Maryland.

EDS was recently acquired by HP for $13.9 billion.

Roundup: New Data Center Projects

There have been a number of new data center unveilings this week. Here’s a roundup:

• Perimeter Technology Center opened for business today at its new 23,000 square foot data center in Oklahoma City. This is  the third new facility for the company, but the first ground-up greenfield build.
• Dartmouth College has opened a new data center in Lebanon, New Hampshire for the school’s Computer Services Department. The new facility adds 80 terabutes of storage and is designed to prevent a power outage like the one that hit the Dartmouth data center in 2004.
• Telehouse Europe has announced its third data center in France, a 15,000 square meter facility in Saint-Quentin-en Yveline.

DHS Data Center Consolidation Goes to CSC

A $390 million contract to consolidate data centers for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been awarded to Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC). The DHS is in the process of consolidating 18 data centers into two next-generation facilities. CSC will take over management of the first DHS facility, based at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, from Science Applications International Corp. See NextGov for details.

HP Consolidation Update: 28 Sites Retired

InformationWeek has an update on the data center consolidation by HP (HP), in which the company is consolidating 85 data centers worldwide into six larger centers located in three U.S. cities. CIO Randy Mott shares a status report:

The six data centers – two in Austin, two in Houston, and two in Atlanta – are operational. So far, 28 of the old data centers have been shut off and 700 applications moved into the new ones. … The number of applications now stands at 3,300, and active IT projects are actually down to less than 500. Mott says he’ll get close to the 8,000 mark for IT workers, but just as important is that the ratio of HP IT employees to contract workers will shift from approximately 50-50 in 2005 to about 90-10.

HP’s plan called for it to build two 200,000 square foot data centers in each of three markets. In Atlanta, the facilites are located in Suwanee and Alpharetta.