Evolution of the Data Center Idea – Remove people from installation and service of servers

I had a conversation with John G. Miner at Santa Fe Institute’s Business Network event.  John wrote the Intel paper on air economizer’s to reduce data center cost.

One of the ideas we discussed that totally makes sense for cloud computing and big data center companies is to look at automated handling systems for servers to be installed and serviced.  At some point if not now it is going to make economic sense to use automated handling equipment to deliver servers to the rack location.

This means current racks are obsolete and current form factors.  And special connectors need to be developed for power and cooling.  Imagine servers automatically being loaded in shipping to be sent for service, and the reverse for receiving.

How hot can you make a data center with no people?  And how much could you increase densities or change airflow with no thought for people access.

If anybody can do this I would guess Google and Amazon.  Google has complete control over its data center systems.  Amazon has experience with automated handling systems in its warehouses and knows the ROI of these devices.

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Missouri Data Center site update

DataCenterKnowledge had a post on a Missouri Data  Center Site.

Koman Eyes Missouri Plot for Data Center

February 10th, 2009 : Rich Miller

The Koman Group is working with officials in Boone County, Missouri to develop a 192-acre tract as a data center, according to local media reports. Koman was one of the developers of a huge speculative project in Illinois that was later leased by Microsoft and will soon become one of the world’s largest data centers.

Ewing Industrial Park has replaced the Koman Group to develop the property.

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Ewing Industrial Park of Columbia, Missouri is in an exceptionally strong position among development sites in the Midwest. The location sits on an unparalleled physical crossroads of power transmission, data infrastructure, water source, and transportation access. In concert with the physical aspects of the site, the Park is remarkably located with respect to intellectual assets, with easy access to world-class researchers in multiple global research-based organizations, including the University of Missouri, Danforth Plant Center, and Monsanto, among others.

The Ewing Industrial Park can easily accommodate a 150 acre industrial customer with up to 280 acres of total "shovel ready" area planned.  The industrial park offers the following assets in place or adjacent to the site.

  • Water (1.5 million gallon elevated tower)
  • Sewer
  • Redundant telecommunication with Centurytel Metro Ethernet to site and Fiber Path Technologies are available
  • High service gas
  • High service electric with multi-feed, multi-supplier substation on-site
  • Landfill adjacent to the site
  • 5 lane arterial (Missouri Route B)
  • Access by interchange to US Highway 63 (3.1 miles)
  • Access by interchange to I-70 (4.7 miles)
  • Fully signalized access to Missouri Route B
  • Direct access to COLT Railroad (Transload Facility) with Connection to Norfolk Southern
  • Directly adjacent to rail car transfer station
  • Columbia School District with Hallsville School District on site
  • Pre-graded sites with average site grades 0%-2%
  • Existing industrial uses

Here are some pictures of the site.

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Amazon announces Singapore Data Center expansion for AWS hosting in Asia

Here is Amazon’s announcement of data center expansion in AWS.

Amazon Web Services Announces Expansion into Asia in the First Half of 2010

New Asia-Based AWS Infrastructure Will Enable Businesses to Run Applications, Store and Process Data, and Better Serve Their End-Users Located in Asia

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 12, 2009-- Amazon Web Services LLC, an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced an expansion of its services into an Asia-Pacific region in the first half of 2010, enabling businesses to deploy compute and storage resources in close proximity to their end-users in the region. Software developers and businesses will be able to access AWS’s infrastructure services from multiple Availability Zones in Singapore in the first half of 2010, then in other Availability Zones within Asia over the second half of 2010. AWS services available at the launch of the Asia-Pacific region will include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Elastic MapReduce, and Amazon CloudFront. To get started using Amazon Web Services, visit http://aws.amazon.com.

“Developers and businesses located in Asia, as well as those with a multi-national presence, have been eager for Asia-based infrastructure to minimize latency and optimize performance,” said Adam Selipsky, Vice President of Amazon Web Services. “We’re very excited to announce the expansion of AWS infrastructure into Asia to help our customers plan their technology investments and better serve their end-users in Asia.”

Pricing for Amazon Web Services in Asia will be announced when the services launch next year.

Amazon recently announced European hosting of AWS, and now Asia.  As quiet as Amazon is about its data centers, they need to give in to the market pressures to know where AWS is hosted.

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Some Companies attending Santa Fe Institute Business Networking – Google, Microsoft, eBay, IBM, Intel, Cisco

I blogged I chose to go to Santa Fe Institute’s Business Network event instead of 7x24 Exchange.  Santa Fe focuses on complex systems research.

Q: What is "complex systems research?"
A: The study of nonlinear, interactive systems from which interesting and unpredictable behavior emerges is the hallmark of the research that is pursued at SFI. This includes examining the dynamics of these 'complex systems' and how the systems evolve. The work is basic, theoretical science. Organizations that join the Business Network are often involved in applied research areas that have their roots in, or can be informed by, the work being performed at SFI. The Business Network provides a bridge between SFI's basic research and the applied work in which our members are engaged.

There a maximum of 60 companies as business network members.  Out of the list of attendees.  Here are the ones I want to connect to discuss green data centers as a use case in complex systems research.

Cisco

eBay

Google

IBM

Intel

Microsoft

I have already connected with one of the attendees from the above list and he is an infrastructure architect.  But, his idea of infrastructure is all at the software level not at the physical infrastructure for data centers.  He is interested in discussing whether others can follow their model of operation.  We’ll see if he gives me permission to blog anything. 

One downside of being a blogger is it can be hard to get people to discuss ideas, so sometimes i don’t start a conversation by saying I am a blogger.  I do blog, but it is still less than 10% of what I do, so there is plenty to discuss with a blog post being written only if appropriate.  If my blogging comes up I explain, I always ask permission to blog on conversations that are private and not specifically set up as blog interviews.

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GreenM3 1,000 blog post – We are as gods

This is my 1,000 blog post, and I have been thinking about what to write about.  But, I didn’t get to 1,000 blog posts in 2 years by spending a bunch of time thinking about what to write.

2 years ago I started this blog to discuss the green data center topic and had a goal to get in the top ten of Google search.  Knock on wood, I am #1 on Google search for “green data center” out of 116,000,000.

Google

Web

Results 1 - 10 of about 116,000,000 for green data center. (0.34 seconds)

Search Results

  1. Green Data Center Blog

    Monitoring, Modeling, Managing the Green Data Center.
    www.greenm3.com/ - Cached - Similar -

  2. Apple Recruits eBay Data Center Executive Olivier Sanche, Can ...

    Aug 10, 2009 ... I have been lucky to meet eBay's Sr. Director, Data Center Services & Strategy, Olivier Sanche at a variety of data center events and ...
    www.greenm3.com/.../can-apple-change-data-centers-the-way-they-changed-cell-phone-and-media-players-apple-recruits-ebay-data-center-exec... - Cached -

    Show more results from www.greenm3.com

My most popular post is when Apple recruited eBay’s Data Center Executive Olivier Sanche.  With one post the Mac community knew Apple was serious about data centers, and Olivier became a known to people inside Apple.

Yesterday I saw a presentation by Steward Brand as a welcome presentation at Santa Fe Institute Business Network.  Stewart has a recent book Whole Earth Discipline. One point that struck me as interesting from Stewart’s presentation is. “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”  This quote is infamous in context of understanding Whole Systems.image

After 2 years of blogging and realizing how popular my Google search results are the consequences of what I write like Olivier’s move to Apple can have impact beyond my blog. Just like the quote above I need to keep on figuring how to “get good at it.”  There are a bunch of data center innovators out there, and this is simple test they all pass, they are figuring out how to “get good at it.”

Thanks for reading as I keep on figuring out how to write about Green Data Centers.

-Dave Ohara

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