US Military orders use of renewable energy

October 4, 2010 Dave Ohara

Greening the data center is not easy. Greening the US Military seems even harder. The NYTimes writes on the US military's use of renewable energy.

U.S. Military Orders Less Dependence on Fossil Fuels

Aaron Favila/Associated Press

Oil tankers that were set on fire in Pakistan. The convoys that haul fuel to bases have been sitting ducks for enemy fighters.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published: October 4, 2010

With insurgents increasingly attacking the American fuel supply convoys that lumber across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, the military is pushing aggressively to develop, test and deploy renewable energy to decrease its need to transport fossil fuels.

Renewables are strategic for US military.

“If the Navy comes knocking, they will build it,” Mr. Mabus said. “The price will come down and the infrastructure will be created.”

Yahoo VP Data Center Operations preaches Information Factory mindset as way to green the data center

October 4, 2010 Dave Ohara

I had the chance to meet Scott Noteboom at Data Center Dynamics in Chicago last week, but missed his talk as I was hosting the other hall while he presented. We had a nice discussion though later, and discussed the Yahoo Chicken Coop design as I had a chance to interview Chris Page 2 weeks earlier.

Yahoo's Data Center Future, Industrial Data Center Revolution

I had a chance to talk to Chris Page, Yahoo's Director Climate and Energy Strategy at Yahoo! Inc. I've had the opportunity to watch Chris's presentations over the years at various data center conferences, and I was curious on what she had to share after three years at Yahoo!.

Luckily at AFCOM's Data Center World I got a chance to see Scott present the same talk again. I really liked Scott's presentation as he presented on many topics I discussed a year ago like The Data Center as an Information Factory. Here is what I wrote a year ago.

Nov 04, 2009

Can you Green the Data Center? Maybe if you think in terms of an Information Factory

I have been writing on the Green Data Center topic for over 2 years with 1,000 blog posts. And, one of the things I have found is the name “data center” is not an accurate description to the layman of what data centers do. Are data centers the “center of data”? In the past there was one corporate building that was the place where data was housed for the corporation. The standard for Fortune 500 companies now is to have multiple data centers around the world to provide information availability, disaster recovery, and reliability. How can there be multiple centers of data? If you green the data center what am I supposed to green? These multiple centers? How?

What I propose is a more accurate description of what data centers are in this economy. The Data Center is an information factory, a building that makes information suitable for use with information machinery – servers, storage, and networking hardware. Information is the raw material input into the factory. Software running on the hardware processes information increasing the value. Like any other manufacturing process electricity is used to power and cool the machinery. How much power is used to run these information factories, in 2006 1.5% of the US electricity production was in data centers, doubling 2000 consumption, growing at a 12% annual rate.

The above is an image Google uses to illustrate its green Information Factory (aka data center).

Here is Scott's talk

with a point made to demand three things - speed , performance, cost.

Scott makes the point about Castles vs. Factories.

Which looks like my point about Fortresses vs. Factories. :-)

Aug 06, 2009

Data Center Site Selection - Are you building an Information Fortress or a Flexible Information Factory?

Mike Manos writes a long post on his blog driven by Microsoft’s recent decision to move Windows Azure out of Washington State.

The Cloud Politic – How Regulation, Taxes, and National Borders are shaping the infrastructure of the cloud

Yahoo suggests a change in site selection, innovation, and efficiency which leads to a greener data center.

I could go on about things I liked about Scott's talk as so much of what he presented are ideas I have discussed on this blog. But, talking about ideas is not nearly as interesting as showing the results.

Yahoo is setting the bar to share its current data center practices which align with a green data center.

Yahoo!

Religion in the Data Center

October 3, 2010 Dave Ohara

There are many views in the data center world, and sometimes the way people think it reminds me of religious discussions that are all over the technology industry.

I joked about Google destroying a church.

Google Demolishes Presbyterian Church, do no evil?

InformationWeek has a picture gallery of Google's data center construction in Council Bluffs, Iowa. One interesting picture for company with the motto of do no evil is below where a Presbyterian Church will be demolished as part of the construction. A funny point made by one blogger is do no evil is an anagram for o no devil seems to be appropriate.

And, Steve Manos discusses his religious moment.

Losing My Religion

Posted on Thu, Sep 30, 2010

By Steven Manos

Four years ago I made a significant change in my life. Four years ago I became a member of the Church of the Critical Facility. I can remember the euphoria that came over me as I was immersed and baptized in the chilled water along the banks of the River Crah as the high cleric quoted verse from the Book of Tiers. In the first several months as a member of the congregation I learned that though our flock had its share of zealots who constantly challenged one another on issues like DC vs. AC distribution, Rotary vs. Battery or whether or not to use raised floor, that ultimately we all had the same underlying belief system. Our religion, my friends, is rooted in the bedrock of ideas that we must build grand monuments whose complexity and design at times seem as though we are channeling a more superior technological being. We build such monuments to honor those of us who reside in the clouds, those who welcome us in as their hosts and others we build to those around us who provide our world with all that we need to live.

Gazing upon these monuments one can’t help but feel a sense of tremendous pride, the jubilation of such a feat and at the same time feel humble in the shadows that they cast. It is at this point that our toils really just begin. By the nature of their design, these facilities require skilled and diligent shepherds to ensure that that they are maintained in a way that is fitting for such a grandiose accomplishment. The exhaustion of our energy, labor, efforts and around the clock vigilance is only matched by the exhaustion of our worldly goods through our immense contribution not only to build such an edifice, but through our constant tithes required to keep them running.

To this church I have been a loyal member. That is, until now.

I'll see Steve in Las Vegas at Data Center World, and I brought my Canon 7D to capture the moments.

Visiting Data Center World Las Vegas, Oct 4 - 5 2010

October 3, 2010 Dave Ohara

I've been travelling more than usual and I am in the airport now going to Las Vegas for Data Center World.

Data Center World is the largest global event of its kind and has been named one of the 50 fastest growing tradeshows in the U.S. It is the leading educational conference for data center professionals.

Data Center World is presented by AFCOM, the premier data center association representing 4,500 of the largest data centers around the world. To learn more about the association, visit

I'll see if I have time to live blog, but it should be a full 2 days.

Verizon’s Cloud Services expand Data Centers WW

October 3, 2010 Dave Ohara

Verizon announced expansion of its Data Centers WW to support its cloud offering.

Verizon Business Furthers Cloud Strategy Through Global Data Center Expansion

Expanded Facilities to Accommodate Increased Customer Demand for Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud Services

September 30, 2010

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - To meet the increasing demand for the full range of cloud services, Verizon Business is enhancing its data centers around the globe. Within the next year, Verizon Business will expand its flagship cloud computing services suite - Computing as a Service (CaaS) - into centers in San Jose, Calif.; London; and Canberra, Australia. In addition, CaaS data centers to serve U.S. government customers will come online in Miami and Culpeper, Va., during the first quarter of 2011.

Here are some of the details on how much expansion Verizon plans.

As part of this infrastructure enhancement project, more than 5,500 additional server cabinets for enterprise clients also will be added to Verizon Business premium Internet data centers in Paris, Dublin, London, Frankfurt, Belgium, Canberra, Hong Kong and throughout the U.S. The expansion further enables the delivery of private clouds via more than 200 global data centers connected to Verizon's MPLS network, Private IP.

…

Verizon Enterprise-Class CaaS Solutions Lead Market in Performance, Security

Verizon's cloud computing solutions suite, Computing as a Service, offers enterprises on-demand computing resources, including server, network and storage capacity, with high-performance and built-in security that are ideally suited to the complex needs of large enterprises. Enterprises have a choice between Verizon's flagship CaaS offering of its hybrid solution, CaaS enabled VMware vCloud™ Datacenter, which facilitates moving applications from a private to a public cloud setting. Clients can configure their enterprise cloud using Verizon's Private IP network or its global IP network.

Today, the company has CaaS data centers in Amsterdam and the U.S. A third center in Hong Kong will come online in October.

…

Some of the customers are.

Early adopters of Verizon's cloud services include Modevity, Celstream, iSOFT, ISID and GWR Medical and Intelenet.. Many are using cloud computing to drive further efficiencies within their operations as well as a way to provide corporatewide access to applications while delivering enhanced ease-of-use for end-users.

And VMware is part of the Verizon partnership.

Verizon Builds Hybrid Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter

The widgetry won’t be quite as secure as Verizon’s existing Computing as a Service (CaaS) – but pretty close

…

Verizon is trusting the solution will get its target accounts up off their collective arse and into the cloud.

Right now the thing, whose clumsy handle is Computing as a Service (CaaS) enabled by VMware vCloud Datacenter, is in field-test with the big International Hotel Group (IHG), a company whose business inherently sees peaks and troughs, expecting to widen the beta before the stuff goes GA in Q1.

While the high-end CaaS enterprise is priced à la carte, the Datacenter version will be available on both a utility model and a reservation model.

The company says it hasn't worked out the numbers yet but that's how it wants to price it; the first for transient trade, the latter for those with predictable workloads that want guaranteed resources.