Wouldn't it be great if Data Center and Clouds were like an REI Guarantee

I've been in Seattle for 20 years and one of the old time Seattleites conversation is around how low their REI number is. What?

REI assigns member numbers consecutively, they are serial numbers. Yesterday I was checking out at Seattle Main Store and the guy said, that is a low number, do you know when you signed up? I said can't remember, so he looked it up. June, 1967. My number is mid 5 digits. As I remember the store had already moved from Downtown up to Capitol Hill, in a building at 11th and Pine that is now home to a Bianchi bicycle dealer. There was only one store, and they sold a lot of army surplus and cheap but good stuff that kept you "warm even when wet", which was a common condition-wet was anyway. It was known as The Coop, and Coops of various kinds have a long history in Seattle. They had then as they do now a policy of "if it fails, bring it back". Now there are many stores, and I called and was told that new members are assigned numbers >7 million. I read in a Seattle Times article that after the Pike Place Public Market, the new downtown REI store is the #2 Seattle tourist attraction.

Part of the fanaticism is the REI Guarantee.  REI stands behind everything they sell.

The REI Guarantee

We stand behind everything we sell. If at any time your REI purchase doesn't meet your expectations, you can return it for a replacement or refund. What's more, if you're an REI member, you don’t even need a receipt—we'll have a record of your purchase.

http://www.rei.com/help/guarantee.html#ooid=g2OTFjMjrNwNqnO_CToUcx8sZsK8ZtKK

We have been outfitting outdoor adventurers since 1938. And in that time, we've learned a lot about what makes great gear. Our employees continually use all the gear we have to do the same activities that you do—from weekend day hikes to ascents in the Himalayas.

With recent outages wouldn't' it be great if there was a cloud provider that had the same customer loyalty and trivia on how low your number was because they have a guarantee like REI?

Wil City of SF employees protest their EPEAT policy that stops the purchase of Apple Computers

There are some people out there who think City of SF stopping the purchase of Apple Computer products due to lack of EPEA will cause the focus to be on Apple to change.

City of SF won’t buy Macs without EPEAT certification

By Erica Ogg Jul. 10, 2012, 8:04am PT 9 Comments

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We sort of knew this was coming. Just days after news hit that Apple no longer wants its computers and monitors evaluated for EPEAT certification, the first public agency has said it will no longer be allowed to buy Macs as a result.

The City of San Francisco is (unsurprisingly) first up, according to theWall Street Journal:

Officials with the San Francisco Department of Environment told CIO Journal on Monday they would send out letters over the next two weeks, informing all 50 of the city’s agencies that Apple laptops and desktops “will no longer qualify” for purchase with city funds.

Who will suffer in the short term?  The City of SF users who were hoping that July 1 in a new quarter to purchase Macs will find their orders rejected.  Which will also mean buying Windows SW to replace their Mac copies.  Who has the budget for that?  And worse, the Mac Loyalists will be forced to switch to Windows.

Maybe one of the media people will go interview some City of SF employees, but most likely not.  Who wants to read news about City of SF employees whining about their switch from Macs to Windows. 

If this seems silly.  It is.  And, most likely will not play out the way some hope that Apple change its mind and accept EPEAT.

oops Salesforce.com down twice in two weeks

Salesforce has second outage in two weeks.

Seven instances went down at some time or another on Tuesday, starting with NA1, NA5 and NA6 in North America, according to a notice posted at 12:49 a.m. PDT on Salesforce.com's system status page. Shortly thereafter, the CS0, CS1, CS3 and CS12 regions, which are part of a set of "sandbox" instances Salesforce.com customers can use for development, testing and new feature previewing, were also affected, according to the site.

The official status is here.

The first status is this.

12:49 am PDT : NA1/NA5/NA6 Service Disruption
The salesforce.com Technology Team is currectly investigating a service disuption issue affecting the NA1/NA5/NA6 instance.
Please check the status of trust.salesforce.com frequently for updates regarding this issue.

The latest is here.

9:00 am PDT : NA1/NA5/NA6/CS0,CS3,CS1,CS12 salesforce.com System Status - Update
The salesforce.com Technology Team has restored the search functionality on the NA1, NA5, and NA6 instances.

The salesforce.com Technology Team continues to work on restoring the service on CS12 instances and the salesforce.com application configurator. 

Please check the status of trust.salesforce.com frequently for updates regarding this issue.

We'll see what the post mortem says the cause of this outage.

Modular Rally Car Design is behind Ken Block's Viral Video

In the data center industry, we all hear about modular data centers.  Some designs are more flexible than others.  Ken Block's Gymkhana 5 video has reached over 3.7 million Youtube views in less than 2 days.  The car behind the video is a modular design.  You can watch this video to see the three different configurations that have suspension, engine, tire, and cooling system changes.

For the mechanical engineers here are some details.

"Many people may not realize this, but despite the fundamental similarities between stage rally, rallycross and gymkhana, in order to be the best at each, you must have specific built vehicles," says Block. "My WRC Fiesta just can't do what my Gymkhana Fiesta can, and vice versa. But having to campaign three separate cars is a nightmare, so we built one car that can be transformed to suit each form of racing I do on the highest level."

The chassis of the H.F.H.V. is based on M-Sport's current 2011 Ford Fiesta RS WRC car, but in order to achieve the power outputs required for both rallycross and gymkhana, the 1.6L engine has been replaced with a Pipo Moteurs-built 2.0L, inline-four cylinder. This mill is based off the power plant found previously in the Ford Focus RS WRC car, a motor that has over 10 years of development. The result is a massive 600hp and 665 ft. lbs. of torque when using the 45mm restrictor required by the Global Rally Cross series. While the 2.0l engine makes the H.F.H.V. ineligible for WRC competition, the addition of a 34mm restrictor will allow the car to compete in the Rally America series. Engine management is handled by Cosworth Electronics.

Mated to the Ford EcoBoost motor is a custom AWD system designed by Sadev. The drivetrain features a 6-speed Sadev sequential transmission and three adjustable Sadev mechanical differentials. Different gear ratios are used for each of the Hybrid's three modes. To handle the varying surface conditions, specific Reiger suspension set-ups have been developed for each of the three modes.

If you don't know the video I am talking about.  Here it is.

Let's see a modular data center that can be this cool.

The World's Undersea Cable Network

There is a race to provide Worldwide services by Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and any mature Web 2.0 companies.  Also in this mix are Equinix, Verizon, AT&T, Digital Realty Trust.  

If you want to design your own map. You can got to this site.

GigaOm has a post on Undersea Cable Network.  When you look at this below graphic you can see the USA is the hub of the cable network.  The USA has the most bandwidth used.

A visual guide to undersea cables and their $5.5B price tag

By Stacey Higginbotham Jul. 9, 2012, 6:35am PT 8 Comments

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The U.S., the Netherlands, France, the UK and Germany are all mega users of bandwidth, using more than 10 terabytes of capacity to feed their web surfing needs.

But the rest of the world is continuing to demand more broadband, and the industry of undersea cables and long haul broadband providers has spent up to $5.5 billion to meet that demand with new cables coming online in 2012 and 2013, according to TeleGeography.

Here are a list of some of the top land stations.

 

Besides size of the pipe an issue is the speed.

 

 

 

 

 

(Disclosure: I work for GigaOm Pro as an analyst.)