Top 10 Data Center Stories of the Year: 2017

10. Microsoft Runs a Simulation of the Entire Azure Network to Prevent Outages - Because at hyper-scale, replicating your network just for testing is simply not an option

9. How Cloud is Changing the Colocation Data Center Market - As they suck smaller workloads away from colos and lease up wholesale space, public clouds are causing tectonic shifts in the market.

8. Google Reveals Espresso, Its Edge Data Center SDN - Fourth and most challenging pillar of its SDN strategy, Espresso manages performance at peering points.

Network room at a Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa

7. Microsoft's Cloud Market Share Grew More than Anyone Else's in the Second Quarter - Microsoft Azure, with 11 percent of the total public cloud market, showed the largest growth in market share, with a 3 percent gain over the preceding four quarters.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaking at the 2014 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, DC.

6. Here’s How the Software-Defined Network that Powers Azure Works - Albert Greenberg, one of the leading minds behind modern data center and backbone networks, explains how Azure SDN is designed.

Fan wall inside Microsoft’s fifth-generation data center in Quincy, Washington (Source: Microsoft video)

5. Why HPE No Longer Wants to Sell Cheap Servers to Cloud Giants - The company decides commodity gear is not a business it wants to be in, doubles down on higher-margin product.

Microsoft's custom cloud servers, open sourced through the Open Compute Project, as seen at the OCP Summit 2017

4. AWS Outage that Broke the Internet Caused by Mistyped Command - Amazon says mayhem resulted from mistake during a routine debugging exercise.

AWS cloud pavilion at the 2016 CeBIT digital technology trade fair in Hanover

3. Who Leased the Most Data Center Space in 2016? - Cloud companies are creating huge supply-demand imbalance in top data center markets.

Digital Realty's ACC7 data center (formerly DuPont Fabros) in Ashburn, Virginia

2. OVH to Disassemble Container Data Centers after Epic Outage in Europe - “This is probably the worst-case scenario that could have happened to us.”

OVH's SBG1 container data center in Strasbourg, France

1. Google and Cisco Signed the Papers, and Now Starts the Heavy Lifting - What to look out for when the latest marriage in the land of hybrid cloud starts bearing fruit.

Inside Google's data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa