It’s been a while since I looked at how people find my blog.
One surprise I found is this one. My blog is showing up for #4 and #5 for google search on “data center construction.”
Ooops, I’ll clean up the spill, EPA investigating Google chemical release
news.com has a post on EPA’s investigating a google data center which was part of the dobuleclick acquisition.
EPA investigating alleged Google chemical release
Greener-than-thou Google, which takes environmentalism seriously, is under investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency for an alleged coolant problem at one of its data centers, the company disclosed Wednesday.
"In February 2009, we learned of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigation into an alleged release of refrigerant at one of our smaller data facilities, which we acquired from DoubleClick, and the accuracy of related statements and records," Google said in a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
"We are cooperating with the EPA and have provided documents and other materials. The EPA investigation could result in fines, civil or criminal penalties, or other administrative action," Google said.
Supermicro Launches 4W and 8W Atom Servers
Supermicro has a press release for Intel Atom based servers.
Supermicro Launches 4W and 8W Atom Server Solutions
Extreme Low-Power & Quiet Server Building Block Solutions for Embedded IPC with Three Expansion Slots
SAN JOSE, Calif., May 4, 2009 - Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a leader in application-optimized, high performance server solutions, today announced the launch of 4-watt and 8-watt Intel® Atom™ processor-based Server Building Block Solutions®. These extreme low-power and quiet solutions deliver the best expansion and storage features of any Atom-based platform and are designed for embedded industrial PC (IPC) applications.
These quiet, energy saving solutions make ideal storage and network appliances or print and email servers. In addition, Supermicro's mini-tower chassis with advanced user-friendly design features create a very cost-effective home or office workstation for basic computing including Internet usage, office and educational applications.
"Bringing the low-power consumption advantages of Atom processors to the server appliance market empowers our customers with energy-saving, quiet solutions that provide flexible expansion and storage features previously unattainable with Atom solutions," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro.
PCWorld adds their own.
Intel's Atom Chip Finding Its Way Into Servers
Agam Shah, IDG News Service
May 6, 2009 12:50 pm
Intel's Atom processor is starting to find its way into some types of servers, bringing a new low-power option for end-users but raising a potential business challenge for Intel.
Hewlett-Packard has adopted the Atom for its new MediaSmart LX195 server for entertainment use at home, while a smaller vendor, Super Micro Computer, will use Atom in two storage backup servers announced this week.
Tranquil PC of the U.K. already sells Windows Home Server PCs running on Atom, and Microsoft has been experimenting with Atom chips to build energy-efficient servers for its vast data centers.
and points out the momentum for low power servers.
Since the Atom was designed primarily for netbooks, Intel was surprised to see companies experimenting with it in the server arena, said Bill Calder, an Intel spokesman. The chip is intended mainly for portable and embedded devices, but Intel has been talking to its customers about other possible uses, he said.
Intel's aren't the only netbook chips finding their way into servers. Last week, Via introduced its first server product based on its Nano netbook chip, a motherboard for multimedia servers.
"We are seeing a growing level of interest in the Via Nano for low-power server applications," Richard Brown, Via's vice president of international marketing, said via e-mail. Via is talking to server makers and system designers about using Nano in rack servers and media servers, where its older C7 netbook chip is already used today.The Nano has a few features found in traditional server chips that make it attractive for servers, including 64-bit and virtualization support, Brown said.
Green IT Service Forecast - $4.8 Bil in 2013
Found this eweek article on the growth of Green IT.
Green IT and Green Computing
Green IT Service Market to Grow to $4.8 Billion in 2013: Forrester
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Article Rating:/ 0By: Jeffrey Burt
2009-05-02
There are 1 user comments on this Green IT and Green Computing story.Driven by corporate desires to save money and improve efficiencies, Forrester Research is predicting the green IT services market will grow 60 percent per year into 2013, when it will peak at $4.8 billion before leveling off. More enterprises are investigating hiring IT services firms to help plan and implement green IT initiatives, and while the global recession is putting a squeeze on IT spending, it also is persuading corporations to optimize their existing IT assets rather than buy new ones, and is fueling the federal government’s drive to fund green projects.
The market for green IT services, fueled by the push by businesses to save money and improve efficiencies, could grow by as much as 60 percent a year over the next four years, according to a report from Forrester Research.
Christopher Mines from Forrester is the source for the article.
“In the context of a $500 billion global market for IT services in 2008, the $5 billion market for green IT services [in 2013] may look like small potatoes to vendor strategists,” Mines said in the report. “However, we expect that the visibility and strategic importance of green IT projects will put them near the top of many corporations’ consulting agendas.”
Essentially, enterprises are going green and want to find vendors that can help them, from data center giants such as Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems to service providers such as Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte and Infosys.
Note the last paragraph and the list of companies with green data center practices.
Mike Manos Forecasts the Weather Change for the Data Center Industry
Mike Manos wrote his follow on post to explaining his exit from Microsoft to Digital Realty.
Forecast Cloudy with Continued Enterprise
May 5, 2009 by mmanos
This post is a portion of my previous post that I broke into two. It more clearly defines where I think the market is evolving to and why companies like Digital Trust Realty will be at the heart of the change in our industry.
It is a long post, are a few nuggets.
On Fogs, Mist, and the Clouds Ahead . . .
After living in Seattle for close to 10 years, you learn you become an expert in three things. Clouds, rain, and more clouds. Unlike the utilities of the past, this new Information Utility is going to be made up of lots of independent cloudlets full of services. The Microsoft’s, Google’s and Amazon’s of the world will certainly play a large part of the common platforms used by everyone, but the applications, products, content, customer information, and key development components will continue to have a life in facilities and infrastructure owned or controlled by companies providing those services. In addition, external factors are already beginning to have a huge influence on cloud infrastructure. Despite the growing political trend of trans-nationalism where countries are giving up some of their sovereign rights to participate in more regionally-aware economics and like-minded political agendas, that same effect does not seem to be taking place in the area of taxation and regulation of cloud and information infrastructure. Specifically as it relates to electronic or intellectual property entities that derive revenue from infrastructure housed in those particular countries or do so (drive revenue) off of online activity of citizens of those nations.
Mike’s bottom line is there will be a hybrid of data centers and cloud services.
The Continued and Increasing Importance of Enterprise Data Centers
This post has concentrated a lot on the future of cloud computing, so I will probably tick off a bunch of cloud-fan-folk with this next bit, but the need for the corporate data centers is not going away. They may change in size, shape, efficiency, and the like, but there is a need to continue to maintain a home for those company jewels and to serve internal business communities. The value of any company is the information and intellectual property developed, maintained, and driven by their employees. Concepts like FOGs and MISTs and such still require ultimate homes or locations for that work to be terminated into or results sent to. Additionally look at the suite of software each company may have in its facilities today supporting their business. We are at least a decade or more away before those could be migrated to a distributed cloud based infrastructure. Think about the migration costs of any particular application you have, then compound that with having the complexity of having your data stored in those cloud environments as well. Are you then locked into a single cloud provider forever? It obviously requires cloud interoperability, which doesn’t exist today with exception of half-hearted non-binding efforts that don’t actually include any of the existing cloud providers. If you believe as I do that the “cloud” will actually be many little and large channelized solution cloudlets, you have to believe that the corporate data center is here to stay. The mix of applications and products in your facilities may differ in the future, but you will still have them. That’s not to say the facilities themselves will not have to evolve. They will. With changing requirements around energy efficiency and green reporting, along with the geo-political and other regulations coming through the pipeline, the enterprise data center will still be an area full of innovation as well.
The cloud hybrid approach is one that aligns with Mike’s forecast. Here are a few articles on AWS hybrid approach.
http://reddevnews.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=10815
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-cloudpt1/ Explore cloud computing and the offerings from the major cloud platform vendors: Amazon, Google, Microsoft®, and SalesForce.com. In this first of a three-part series, take an example of a typical corporate application that uses a JMS queue, and examine what would be involved to hybridize part of this JMS infrastructure in the cloud.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-cloudpt2/ This is Part 2 of a three-part series on connecting to the cloud. To determine the best solution for creating a hybrid cloud application, Part 1 examined some of the offerings from the major cloud platform vendors. In this article, Part 2 of the series, you will implement the hybrid cloud application, which combines local application components with cloud computing. The application makes use of a JMS queue locally as well as an SQS queue in the cloud, combining the two in a single hybrid application
http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/03/04/WTIAScalingIntoTheCloudWithAmazonWebServices.aspx
If Mike is correct more people will be looking as a choice to host cloud services at Digital Realty Trust or Amazon Web Service.