Cloud Hype reaches milestone, Toilet Humor

The cloud is everywhere and now it has reached a milestone and achieve Toilet Humor status with Chris Hoff's presentation on Commode Computing.

One nice thing about blogging about topics is it makes you read an article twice, and I missed Part 2 of the video of my first read.

Here is Chris's blog post. with more background.

Video Of My CSA Presentation: “Commode Computing: Relevant Advances In Toiletry & I.T. – From Squat Pots to Cloud Bots – Waste Management Through Security Automation”

February 19th, 2011beakerLeave a commentGo to comments

This is probably my most favorite presentation I have given.  It was really fun.  I got so much positive feedback on what amounts to a load of crap.

This video is from the Cloud Security Alliance Summit at the 2011 RSA Security Conference in San Francisco.  I followed Mark Benioff from Salesforce and Vivek Kundra, CIO of the United States.

Example of a blog that gets labeled as content farm

Google has made changes to its search algorithm to reduce rankings of content farms.

Finding more high-quality sites in search

2/24/2011 06:50:00 PM

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.
Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Some professional bloggers make a significant portion of their income from advertising.  Check out this post as one example of a blogger labeled as a content farm.

Unfortunately (and surprisingly), this change has had a major impact* on organic traffic flowing through Google to Digital Inspiration as well. See this chart from Google Analytics.

Google has rolled out their new algorithm in US only but once the changes are propagated to other country-specific Google sites - like google.co.in and google.co.uk – the organic traffic from Google to Digital Inspiration would take an even bigger hit.

The AdSense-centric business model of this blog, where online advertising revenues are more or less based on the number of page-views, will obviously suffer because of this change in search engine rankings.

I am so glad I don't depend on Google Adsense for income as much as it is another metric to measure how well my site works.

Thanks for continuing to visit the Green Data Center blog.  Total traffic is the important if you are focused on advertising revenue.  I have different goals that I'll be sharing in more details as I roll out changes in the site.

DatacenterDynamics reports on India’s Power Grid

DatacenterDynamics has an article on India’s power grid after their first event in India.

India's struggle for power

India is growing but power problems can still be a major issue for new projects as DatacenterDynamics finds out at its first event in India held this February

Published 21st February, 2011 by Nivedita Mohanty and Penny Jones

Data center demand is growing in India. Despite struggles with power provision, latency bottlenecks and site selection, the figures show India is seeking more data centers than ever before. India’s rise ties in with a larger story covering the whole of the Asia Pacific.

DatacenterDynamics ran its first event in India on February 15. Leading data center companies and end users will joined at the ITC Maratha to hear about how India’s data centers can help prepare the country to become the outsourcing hub of the world, and overcome IT infrastructure reliability challenges

If you are thinking of Green Data Centers in India, there is potential renewable energy sources.

India currently generates about 13,878MW of grid power from renewable resources, which accounts for 9% of total installed generation capacity. It also has the fifth largest installed windpower capacity in the world along with solar resources. That said, India’s renewable dream is still a long way off, with financing and government red-tape holding a number of projects back.

But, hydroelectric power is a challenge.

“Most of the sites where hydroelectricity is generated, for example, are not suitable for setting up data centers due to the lack of other infrastructural facilities such as roads, airports, connectivity and so on,” Reddy says. “The problem is that if you produce hydropower and use the public network to get it transferred to the data centers you can have a loss in transmission of about 20%.”

Power and Logistics issues to consider for a Brazil Data Center

WSJ has an article on Brazil’s problem supporting growth and issues with the power grid.

Brazil Economy Flickers as Bottlenecks Drive Up Prices

By PAULO PRADA

SÃO PAULO, Brazil—When the lights returned after an hours long blackout in northeast Brazil early this month, the problems were just beginning for the Camaçari industrial park, one of the country's biggest.

Restarting a data center after a power outage can take hours.  Consider after this power outage two chemical plants were offline for two weeks.

Two huge chemical plants, which make ingredients for surrounding industries, were halted for nearly two weeks for repairs. Collectively, the shutdown cost the companies, which employ about 8,000 people, at least $150 million, says Manoel Carnaúba, a vice president at Braskem SA, operator of the two plants. "You can't just stop and restart those things," he says. "The plants have to run steady to run well."

The are a lot of companies looking at expanding data center capacity in Brazil, but here is another point on the supply logistics being twice as long as China.

Compared with China, it takes goods twice as long to move the same distance, according to Paulo Fleury, director of the Rio de Janeiro-based Logistics and Supply Chain Institute. Despite government plans to spend more than $500 billion in the coming years on programs that include new infrastructure, he says, "these are long-term projects that won't ease any of the bottlenecks hurting us now."

What is the condition of Brazil’s infrastructure?

A week after the northeast power outage, a power failure in São Paulo, the country's industrial and financial hub, affected 2.5 million people on a busy Tuesday afternoon. Since 2005, Brazilian consumers on average suffered more than 16 hours of failures annually—well beyond the regulatory target. Brazil greatly expanded its generating capacity after a series of nationwide blackouts early last decade, but upkeep and investment since has been poor, specialists say. And while the grid was designed to accommodate predictable demand growth from factories and otherindustry, the surge lately comes from millions of new air conditioners, refrigerators, and other consumer goods.

Says Rafael Schechtman, a director at the Brazilian Infrastructure Center, in Rio: "Brazil isn't wired for this type of growth."

Looking for Renewable Energy funding? Look beyond DOE to USDA

When you discuss renewable energy projects for data centers almost everyone discusses Department of Energy (DOE) which makes a lot of sense.  But, what few consider is the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).  Why the USDA.  Consider this bit of funding news for 2012.

USDA Requests Renewable Energy Funds in FY 2012 Budget

Although President Obama's fiscal year (FY) 2012 proposed budget for the U.S. Department of Agriculture decreased to $23.9 billion from the $27 billion level in FY 2010, the budget still invests $6.5 billion to support renewable and clean energy. In particular, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative is getting an increase of $8.2 million for a research initiative to develop high-quality, cost-effective feedstocks for biofuel production. And the Rural Business-Cooperative Services, which operates a renewable energy loan and grant program for the purchase of renewable energy systems and energy efficiency improvements, will see a combination of mandatory funding and grants for programs at about $57 million above the 2011 total.

The USDA connection is what  I learned from my friends in Missouri a big Aggie state.

The proposed USDA budget provides $6.1 billion for loans for electric programs, with $4 billion used for generation, transmission, and distribution of renewable energy. This sum is down from the estimated FY 2011 funding, but still provides Rural Utilities Services with extensive resources that can be used to purchase or construct peaking units in conjunction with an electric generating plant that produces electricity from solar, wind, or other intermittent source of energy. The loans also can support applicants seeking to switch from fossil fuels to renewable technologies.

You'll hear a lot about Solar, Wind in the press.  Who can ignore $5 billion for USDA renewable energy projects?