Video if you like Data Centers and Racing - 2011 Le Mans Triple Redundancy wins with one car

Audi has created a video documentary of their 2011 Le Mans win that will appeal to those who think about triple redundancy, operations, and designing for unexpected events.

The video is free on iTunes and you can download it here.

I have this video on my MacBook Pro Retina to show how nice the display is.  The story that the data center crowd will like is how a three car strategy changes when only one car is left.

The film TRUTH IN 24 II documents the tenth and arguably most emotional triumph of the brand with the four rings at this sports car classic. After two Audi R18 TDI cars have retired following spectacular accidents, the remaining Audi fights a dramatic battle for overall victory with the three Peugeot 908 cars which the Audi trio ultimately decides in its favor with a narrow margin of 13 seconds. The film captures the entire drama of the fourth-narrowest running of the Le Mans 24 Hours with intimate insights into the team of Audi Sport and breath-taking pictures.

Here is a 60 second teaser of the video.

Green Data Center in NC featuring Apple, Google, and Facebook

GigaOm's Katie Fehrenbacher has a detailed state of the green data center story in NC featuring Apple, Google, and Facebook.

The controversial world of clean power and data centers

By Katie Fehrenbacher Jul. 11, 2012, 12:00am PT 6 Comments

 

 
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Poles dot the dusty solar farm, which will eventually hold solar panels.

This article is the third in a four-part series that we’re publishing this week.

Over the past several years, a couple-hundred-mile area north of Charlotte, North Carolina, has emerged as a new hub for massive data centers that power the Internet, attracting industry heavyweights like Apple, Google and Facebook. North Carolina has been able win over those companies despite the fact it generates its power largely from dirty coal and nuclear, which runs counter to a general trend toward a desire for greener sources of energy.

The post is long, but a quick read.  Here is the main point that highlights Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook.

Grid-connected vs off-grid clean power

At this point, Apple seems to mostly stand alone in its desire to build such massive clean power plants next to a data center. The only other firm to announce that it will tackle something similar is eBay. Last month eBay announced that it would build an extension to one of its data centers in Utah that would run off 30 fuel cells, powered by biogas, and use the grid as backup power.

Google’s data center in Lenoir

Google has arguably been the most innovative and aggressive web business when it comes to clean power. But Google’s Demasi told me that Google has “a basic philosophy that renewable energy should be provided through the utility.”

Likewise Facebook’s VP of Site Operations Tom Furlong, told me: “The utility is the obvious location [for clean power]. It would be a lot easier if the utility came to the site with 20 percent renewables and said this is our mix.” Facebook’s sustainability guru Bill Weihl (formerly of Google) emphasizes that Facebook is still working out its strategy for clean power for data centers and he isn’t ruling out onsite clean-power generation. But Weihl also says he’s interested in one day possibly creating an industry trade group that could help bring together companies to influence utilities’ grid choices through the group purchasing of clean power.

Note that Greenpeace is planning an update tomorrow.

While questions still remain about how exactly Apple will meet its 100 percent clean power data centers goals (see Greenpeace report out tomorrow),  Apple is clearly acting as a pioneer.

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.