Data Center Jobs: USAA

At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from USAA, which is seeking a Data Center Facilities Director for its San Antonio data center, who will lead a highly skilled team in maintaining continuous data center facility uptime for multiple data centers. USAA is a Fortune 200 financial services company with more than $113 billion in owned and managed assets. Click here to learn more and apply.

Are you hiring for your data center? You can list your company’s job openings on the Data Center Jobs Board.

Halloween As A Marketing Opportunity?

Is Halloween a big holiday in the data center? HP has seized upon Halloween as a marketing opportunity with its “”What Haunts Your Data Center?” video campaign on YouTube. In this case, animated skeletons warn of energy-sucking ghosts that lurk in racks and mysterious corners of your data center.

For more news about Hewlett Packard, visit our HP Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Hardware Financing Terms Tightening

Loans used to purchase servers and other data center hardware are becoming harder to find, which could leave some customers unable to finance IT purchases, or more inclined to buy from well-heeled vendors who can offer financing. The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports:

Troubles are brewing in the technology-financing business, the credit that greases many technology sales. Defaults on tech financings, loans that allow companies to purchase computers, software and other products, have spiked this year. The problems are surfacing after years in which such loans flowed freely. Now the banks and specialty lenders that most tech companies rely on to finance customer sales are retrenching, and financing terms are getting tougher. Some big tech companies, such as International Business Machines Corp., Oracle Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc., are stepping into the void — lending more of their own money to customers and taking on new risks.

Who stands to benefit? IBM, Cisco and Oracle all have large customer financing operations. How bad is the problem? In September, 0.86% of equipment loans were written off as losses, up from 0.48% a year earlier, according to the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, an industry group for 700 lenders. Tech-financings will reach $88 billion, about 14% of the total amount spent on computer hardware and software this year, estimates research firm IDC.

Equinix Expands With Paris Lease

Equinix has leased a 116,800 square foot property near Paris from Digital Realty Trust, the company said today. The new property will be the third Equinix data center in the Paris market, and will be completed in two phases, with the first phase coming online in the second quarter of next year.

The large lease is the latest sign of confidence in data center demand from one of the industry’s leading players. Equinix (EQIX) is expected to invest $30 million to $35 million to convert the building, which is currently a warehouse, into a data center.

“We continue to see strong demand for our high quality data center services in the Paris market, which is a strategic interconnection point for Internet traffic in Europe,” said Eric Schwartz, president of Equinix Europe. “This new center is important for the continued growth of our customers in this market as we expect our recently expanded Paris 2 center to be almost fully occupied by the time our Paris 3 center is available for customer installations in the second quarter.”

Savvis to Launch SaaS Hosting Platform

Managed hosting provider Savvis, Inc. is launching a new solution to help independent software vendors (ISVs) offer their products as hosted applications. Savvis said the new platform is designed to meet growing demand for software as a service (SaaS)  licensing and delivery models.

Savvis (SVVS) also announced a major SaaS contract with Availity, an electronic health exchange that handles more than 500 million transactions a year between health care professionals and providers.

The new platform is designed for ISVs entering the SaaS market and existing providers who want to outsource their IT infrastructure. Savvis will partner with virtualization specialist Parallels to make it easier for software companies to port their existing products to a hosted, multi-tenant SaaS offerings on Savvis’ new platform. 

The result is an SaaS “enablement platform” in which Savvis provides infrastructure, services and partnership opportunities to software companies.

Video: Intel’s Air-Side Economization Test

Intel data center manager Don Atwood provides an overview of the company’s proof of concept research on air-side economizers (using outside air to cool the data center). He describes Intel’s New Mexico testbed for its 10-month proof-of-concept, which it found “no consistent increase in server failure rates as a result of the greater variation in temperature and humidity, and the decrease in air quality.” See our full story for additional details. This video runs about 5 minutes and 15 seconds.

For more news from Intel, visit our Intel Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Cray Introduces ECOPhlex Cooling Technology

Most folks find it hard enough to cool server installations dealing with megaflops and gigaflops, and are glad they don’t have to worry about petaflops of processing power. Not so for Cray Inc. (CRAY), which specializes in supercomputers. Cray said this week that it has introduced a liquid cooling technology that will allow computers to operate at “unprecedented speeds of multiple petaflops (thousands of trillions of calculations per second) while delivering significant energy savings.” Cray XT5 systems will begin shipping with the company’s new ECOphlex (short for PHase-change Liquid EXchange) technology later this year.

Cray’s ECOphlex-equipped cabinet has the flexibility to use either vertical air cooling or a new liquid evaporative phase-change cooling technology that converts an inert coolant, R134a, from a liquid to a gas. ECOphlex systems can also use chilled or unchilled water at various temperatures, reducing the need for many CRAC units. R134a, also known as Tetrafluoroethane, is an inert gas used in refrigerators and automobile air conditioners.

The ‘Lights Out’ Data Center

Data centers are known for being cold and loud. Add “dark” to the list, if you haven’t already.

The Planet said today that it expects to reduce its annual energy consumption by 1.4 million kilowatt hours, gaining nearly $140,000 in savings, through “more efficient use of lighting.” Translation: they’re strictly enforcing a policy for turning out the lights after hours. That means The Planet’s six data centers will be lit only from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with smaller lamps remaining on in main areas for safety and navigation. ”Data-center technicians who work around the clock now turn on lights as needed in computer rooms,” the company said.  

The Planet’s lights-off policy extends to all data center facilities, including the electrical and mechanical rooms, as well as the company’s corporate offices. Primary lighting and HVAC are programmed to run from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Only the areas staffed 24/7, including the Call Center, Network Operations Center and Sales, have the option for after-hours zone lighting and HVAC.

This seems like a simple and obvious step, but practices differ. Some data centers keep the raised-floor area brightly lit. Others use minimal lighting, creating an environment in which the green and blue server lights provide the primary illumination. Still others use purple or blue lighting, which may or may not have environmental benefits, but definitely gives the data center that wicked cool “alien spaceship” look.

“While lighting is a small portion of the total power usage of a datacenter, it can be often be safely reduced through mature, inexpensive technologies and designs,” according to data center energy management best practices from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which recommends using motion sensors to turn lights off in empty rooms.