eBay (first Windows Azure platform appliance customer) uses Microsoft Azure Cloud to host Apple iPad sales

July 13, 2010 Dave Ohara

eBay and Microsoft both posted press releases on the first customer for Windows Azure private cloud.

eBay and Microsoft Announce Cloud Computing Agreement

Microsoft unveils new Windows Azure platform appliance for cloud computing; eBay signs up as early customer.

WASHINGTON — July 12, 2010 — Microsoft Corp. and eBay [NASDAQ: EBAY] today announced that eBay will be one of the first customers of Microsoft’s new Windows Azure platform appliance for cloud computing. The partnership is a significant joint engineering effort that will couple the innovation and power of the Windows Azure platform appliance with the technical excellence of eBay’s platform — to deliver an automated, scalable, cost-effective capacity management solution.

Microsoft also announced the limited production release of the Windows Azure platform appliance, the first turnkey cloud platform for large service providers and enterprises to deploy in their own datacenters. eBay will incorporate the Windows Azure platform appliance into two of its datacenters to further optimize its platform and achieve greater strategic agility and datacenter efficiency.

Someone made an interesting decision to test Windows Azure to sell Apple iPad's

This partnership follows a successful pilot deployment by eBay of Microsoft’s public Windows Azure platform, which offers eBay the flexibility to deploy certain applications on a public cloud while maintaining the reliability and availability of eBay.com. eBay’s page for iPad listings —http://ipad.ebay.com— is hosted on the public Windows Azure platform.

Here is the cross company executive quote trade.

“Microsoft’s focus on and investment in the Windows Azure platform appliance shows it is committed to world-class cloud computing solutions. eBay has the right blueprint for next-generation software-as-a-service-based applications with our platform’s architecture, scale and reliability, ” said James Barrese, eBay vice president of technology. “Joint engineering on the Windows Azure platform appliance with eBay’s massive, high-volume systems allows Microsoft to demonstrate its leadership in this space and helps eBay improve our user experience through a flexible, scalable and cost-effective solution.”

The Windows Azure platform appliance consists of Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and a Microsoft-specified configuration of network, storage and server hardware. The appliance is optimized for scale out applications and datacenter efficiency across hundreds to tens of thousands of servers.

“eBay has one of the world’s largest ecommerce platforms, and we believe the Windows Azure platform appliance provides the scalability, automation, datacenter efficiency and low cost of operations that eBay requires to meet the needs of its customers worldwide, ” said Bob Muglia, president of Server and Tools Business, Microsoft.

HP and Microsoft announced their Windows Azure partnership for deploying private clouds. HP includes POD containers and HP networking to provide a complete HP owned solution.

HP and Microsoft to Partner on Windows Azure Built on HP Converged Infrastructure

Collaboration to help transition customers to cloud computing

PALO ALTO, Calif., and REDMOND, Wash. — July 12, 2010 — HP and Microsoft today announced their intention to work together on a Microsoft Windows Azure platform appliance that will enable large enterprise customers to confidently and rapidly adopt cloud-based applications as businesses needs change and grow.

The companies will work together to deliver a complete hardware, software, services and sourcing solution that will accelerate customers’ transition to the Windows Azure platform. Customers will be able to manage the appliance with HP Converged Infrastructure on-premises or choose HP data center hosting services.

Enterprise customers adopting cloud services need a comprehensive approach, including application modernization support, an optimized infrastructure platform and flexible sourcing options. With the new Windows Azure platform appliance, HP and Microsoft will help customers rapidly scale applications, deliver new online services, and migrate Windows and .NET-based applications to the cloud. This latest collaboration extends the $250 million Infrastructure-to-Application initiatives HP and Microsoftannounced in January and will result in HP delivering these offerings:

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Data center hosting services. HP Enterprise Services will combine deep systems management expertise, standardized processes and world-class secure data centers to manage the Windows Azure platform appliances for HP customers. HP and Microsoft plan to release a limited production Windows Azure platform appliance for deployment in HP data centers by the end of the year.

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Converged infrastructure for Windows Azure. HP’s current position as a primary infrastructure provider for the Windows Azure platform, coupled with HP and Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to optimize Microsoft applications for HP’s Converged Infrastructure through extensive joint engineering and development, will allow HP to deliver an industry-leading cloud deployment experience for its customers. The Converged Infrastructure for the Windows Azure platform appliance will include the following:

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HP Networking, which delivers to customers a flexible network fabric that is simpler, higher-performing and more secure, at up to 65 percent lower cost of ownership than competitive solutions.*

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HP ProLiant servers, which are highly dense, highly scalable computing platforms that help customers speed application delivery, better utilize IT resources and achieve strong returns on investments.

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The appliance can be deployed in HP Performance-Optimized Datacenters (PODs), which deliver improved power and data center capacity as well as rapid data center expansion. HP PODs allow customers to increase capacity without the capital expense of brick-and-mortar construction. They will be used in addition to traditional data center deployments.

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Application modernization, migration and integration services for Windows applications.HP’s expertise in complex environments, specific industries, frameworks, processes and resources will help customers modernize, migrate and integrate their applications while balancing costs and speed when adopting the Windows Azure platform.

Microsoft, HP, and Digital Realty Trust win Green Data Center awards at Uptime Symposium, recognizing top achievement

May 20, 2010 Dave Ohara

Here is a summary of Three winners of Green IT awards at Uptime Symposium. Being Green in the Data Center is now becoming an accepted behavior and leadership like below helps others with their own plans.

HP has their press release for the Wynyard facility.

Green Enterprise IT Awards showcase organizations pioneering energy-efficiency improvements in their IT and data center operations or providing technology that can significantly reduce energy consumption.

HP was recognized as the winner in the Data Center Design category for its Wynyard facility in the United Kingdom. Commissioned in September 2009, the data center uses a large quantity of fresh air supplied by fans through high-efficiency filters to reduce the energy required for cooling. The building features an energy-efficient and sustainable design that incorporates recycled materials as well as harvested rainwater.

here is a video of the air side economizer system.

Microsoft received a Green IT Award for its Chicago data center.

Chicago Datacenter Wins Green Enterprise IT Award from Uptime Institute

Today, Microsoft won a prestigious Green Enterprise IT Award from the Uptime Institute for the bold IT initiatives we utilized in our recently opened datacenter in Chicago. The facility integrates new design solutions which have led to greater efficiencies and carbon waste reductions. This includes a significant reduction in water and material usage enabled by the deployment of containers and other IT innovations. The Uptime Institute is an organization that is focused on providing education and thought leadership for the enterprise datacenter industry and for datacenter professionals. The Green Enterprise IT Awards are the Uptime Institute's highest honor.

By incorporating containers we have reduced carbon waste from extra packaging of servers and equipment and individual transport shipping consumables such as cardboard, styrofoam, plastic, and other packaging materials. The highly innovative approach to design, construction and operations has also allowed us to fully deploy thousands of servers within a few hours, with a drastically reduced carbon footprint and great cooling efficiencies, with a reduced PUE of 1.15 - 1.22 across the facility.

Digital Realty Trust also won an award for its leadership in LEED Data Centers.

Digital Realty Trust received the award for its commitment to sustainability and innovation in the construction of a LEED certified data center utilizing full airside economization for more than 65 percent of each year. The LEED Platinum-certified datacenter project in Santa Clara, California is expected to save 3.5 million kilowatt hours of energy annually saving more than $250,000 per year at today’s energy prices.

“The construction of the green datacenter in Santa Clara demonstrates Digital Realty Trust’s strong commitment to energy efficiency and sustainability,” said Thomas Freeman, Managing Director and head of the Data Center practice at Jones Lang LaSalle. “Their adoption of industry best practices ensures a reduction in energy use, cost and associated greenhouse gas emissions.”

Here are photos from the presentation on DataCenterKnowledge.

DATA CENTER DESIGN: HP was honored for its design of the Wynyard data center in northern England, which makes extensive use of free cooling. Accepting for HP is Ed Kettler (with plaque), a fellow in the Chief Technologist Office at HP Enterprise Services.

AUDACIOUS IDEA: The data center team from Microsoft was recognized for its IT PAC container technology. Accepting for Microsoft are Dan Costello (center) and Sean Farney (second from right). Representing Uptime are Ken Brill (left), Lex Coors of Interxion (second from left) and Tom Freeman of Jones Lang LaSalle (far right).

Building your First Data Center, learn some lessons from Microsoft who say they can build for 50% less

May 20, 2010 Dave Ohara

Building your first data center can be a challenge. Many have tackled this task over the past few years - Microsoft, Yahoo, Intuit, ask.com, eBay, Apple, and Facebook. Building your first is an opportunity to consolidate your IT loads and reduce costs. Given the difficulty of getting all the ducks lined up to get the project going, the budget for the first data center can be over $250 million.

DataCenterKnowledge reports on Microsoft's latest Quincy data center.

The new data center is being built next to Microsoft’s existing 470,000 square foot data center in Quincy, which was built in 2007 and is now one of the largest data centers in the world. But the new facility will be dramatically different in both its cost and design. After years of investing up to $500 million in each data center project, Microsoft plans to spend about $250 million or less on each data center going forward.

One trap I have seen many fall into is to build a big data center as the first. Why? Well, part of what drives this is data centers are the highest profit margin business for the construction industry and there are plenty of people who will tell you bigger is better. The analysts will help you justify a $250 million dollar data center is the sweet spot of getting an ROI.

But, a different way of thinking about this problem is to build Ten $25 million data centers instead of one. The first one may be a bit more than $25 million, but you can cut costs on the next, and the next, then after your third, you realize "hey there is a different way we can be doing this. Let's change the design. Build three more, then you go "wow we learned a lot, let's really push for something innovative." The last three now cost $12.5 million instead of $25 million.

This is what Microsoft has done, but spending $500 million a data center. They built Quincy 1, San Antonio, Dublin (air side economizer), and Chicago (container). And the 4th generation data center is next.

One additional benefit of building a $25 million data center is you don't end up with consultants, designers, and construction companies swarming to get your business. If you choose an incremental data center design you'll learn a lot on what is real and what is hype. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon can do this why can't you too?

BTW, another thing Microsoft has done is figured out how to build the 4th generation data center faster than the 1st generation. Part of the reason the first data center is so big is because it was so hard to get the project going. Speed is important in addition to capabilities.

I've discussed these ideas with a few data center designers, and we have used the metaphor that data centers are designed like Battle tanks. But not all businesses, so not all data centers should be same and if you have geo redundant SW like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, it can be more cost effective to build different data center types for the same reason why there are light and heavy tanks.

Which brings up another benefit of the Microsoft 4th generation data center, the design is not in a concrete bunker which means it could be moved much easier if need be.

This next-generation design allows Microsoft to forego the concrete bunker exterior seen in the original Quincy facility in favor of a steel and aluminum structure built around a central power spine. The data centers will have no side walls, a decision guided by a research project in which the company housed servers in a tent for eight months.

What happens if you focused on building iterative data centers with a range of capabilities to adapt to business needs and could be moved if business or power conditions change in a location. Doesn't this sound like a better way to spend $250 million. But, the data center ecosystem is not going to promote this idea as it changes their profits and business models.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon's battle for cloud computing is going to continue to drive some of the most innovative thinking. And you don't have to wait to start thinking like they do.

Cisco targets Data Center Containers for Federal/Defense market saves 50% capital and 30% operating costs

March 15, 2010 Dave Ohara

Containers have gone through its hype phase, and now we'll see how many start buying containers. There is some new media coverage on Cisco's move in containers.

Cisco claims that by purchasing a portable data center—which cost around $1.2 million for a 40-foot, fully loaded model and some $600,000 for a 20-footer—an enterprise can save 50 percent in capital expenses and 30 percent in operating expenses compared with a similar-sized, permanent land-based facility. But those are very general numbers.

InformationWeek Gov't has coverage.

Cisco has long been selling pieces of containerized data centers to the military through systems integrators, but with the company now selling servers in addition to network equipment, it has the product line in place to get into the containerized data center business.

"We're looking at a model of building a Cisco container -- with a Cisco part number -- that will contain the unified computing platform," said Bruce Klein, Cisco's U.S. public sector senior VP.

Cisco has a PDF on containers.

And, DataCenterKnowledge points out NASA's cloud computing container was delivered by Cisco.

Cisco Containers Target Federal Market
March 15th, 2010 : Rich Miller

The data center container housing the NASA Nebula cloud computing application arrives at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

It’s no surprise that Cisco Systems has confirmed that it is officially developing a data center container offering. In reality, Cisco (CSCO) has been busy in the container market for some time, most visibly in procuring a container for the Nebula cloud computing project at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. The Nebula “data center in a box” was built inside a FOREST container from Verari Systems filled with Cisco Systems’ Unified Computing System (UCS).

Microsoft’s Flexible Data Center System, Kevin Timmons presents at DCD NY

March 3, 2010 Dave Ohara

I couldn’t make it to DataCenterDynamics NY, but I have plenty of friends there, so I can get a virtual report.

Kevin Timmons gave the keynote and Rich Miller wrote up a nice entry.

Microsoft’s Timmons: ‘Challenge Everything’
March 3rd, 2010 : Rich Miller
The building blocks for Microsoft’s data center of the future can be assembled in four days, by one person. The two data center containers, known as IT PACs (short for pre-assembled components) proof of concept, are built entirely from aluminum. The first two proof of concept units use residential garden hoses for their water hookups.

“Challenge everything you know about a traditional data center,” said Kevin Timmons, who heads Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services, in describing the company’s approach to building new data centers. “From the walls to the roof to where it needs to be built, challenge everything.”

So much of what is wrong with data centers and prevent them from being Green is people do what they have done in the past. This includes the engineer companies and the customers who specify the data centers. You don’t hear customers saying “bring me a data center design no one has done before.”

The efficiency of the data center is a given to have a low PUE (sub 1.2), but with Cloud Computing and Mobile as top needs for data center growth, speed of how quickly you can add capacity is a higher requirement by executive decision makers.

Here is a video showing some of the concepts Microsoft has been willing to share.

and the blog post from Microsoft’s Daniel Costello.

Then we had to take these single lines and schematics and break them into logical modules for the components to reside in. This may seem easy but represents a shift in thinking from a building where, for instance, we would have a UPS room and associated equipment and switchgear manufactured by multiple vendors and put it physically in sometimes separate modules. The challenge became how to shift from a traditional construction mindset to the new, modularized manufacturing mindset. Maintainability is a large part of reliability in a facility, and became a key differentiator between the four classes. Our A Class infrastructure, which is not concurrently maintainable and is on basically street power and unconditioned air, will require scheduled downtime for maintenance. The cost, efficiency, and time-to-market targets for A Class are very aggressive and a fraction of what the industry has come to see as normal today. We realized that standardization and reuse of components from one class to the next was a key to improving cost and efficiency. Our premise was that the same kit of parts (or modules) should be usable from class to class. These modules (in this new mindset) can be added to other modules to transition within the data center from one class to the next.

I would call this a Flexible Data Center System. This has been done in manufacturing in flexible manufacturing systems for decades and is just now coming to data center design.

A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a manufacturing system in which there is some amount of flexibility that allows the system to react in the case of changes, whether predicted or unpredicted. This flexibility is generally considered to fall into two categories, which both contain numerous subcategories.

The advantage of this system is

Advantages

Faster, Lower- cost/unit, Greater labor productivity, Greater machine efficiency, Improved quality, Increased system reliability, Reduced parts inventories, Adaptability to CAD/CAM operations.

With one disadvantage.

Disadvantages

cost to implement.

But in data centers the cost to implement can be lower than traditional data centers with enough people adopting the approach. And, whereas the flexibility in manufacturing typically applies to the product produced, the flexibility concepts are being applied to the data center infrastructure.

And, what else is changing is the hardware that goes in these data centers. Microsoft’s Dileep Bhandarkar discussed here.

IT departments are strapped for resources these days, and server rightsizing is something every team can do to stretch their budgets. The point of my presentations and the white paper our team is publishing today is two-fold:

1. To quantify some of the opportunities and potential pitfalls as you look for savings, and

2. To present best practices from our experiences at Microsoft, where the group I lead manages server purchases for the large production data centers behind Microsoft’s wide array of online, live and cloud services.