Comparing Google Cloud Services vs. Amazon Web Services at the Infrastructure Level

Google I/O is one of the few times you know Urs Hoelzle is going to speak.  Urs is the MAN behind Google's Infrastructure.  Urs is Google employee #8.  He is wicked smart, got plenty of money to do what ever he wants, and has the backing of the Google executive staff to build for the future. 

When most hear the words of "Cloud Services" they think of Amazon Web Services.  Amazon.com being a great retailer has a phenomenal presence and selection of Cloud Services.  But, I'll tell you something that is not widely known, just because something is well marketing and looks like a good price doesn't mean it is built to last and to handle stress.  An example of this I've noticed is ski jackets that get used by ski mountain staff.  They wear the jackets multiple times a week, wash every week (we hope), putting more stress on a jacket in a month than most would put on their ski jackets over 5 years.  Quickly, they learn what will really last or not, and how it is priced and what brand is many times irrelevant.  They learn to look at the material, construction, and quality of the jacket and where their past jackets have broken.  fyi, AWS breaks in various areas that developers run into which can frustrate the hell out of them.  I know this first hand because my friends have gone through the hell of finding where AWS breaks, and had to make the choice to build the services themselves.

So, let me walk through Urs's keynote and point out some of the cool infrastructure things.  Note: I mention in the title than I'll compare to AWS.  Well I threw that up to get your attention, but actually there is very little out there if any that discusses AWS infrastructure.  It is like a retailer, it is all about price, selection, and selling to the target audience.

If you want to see the presentation go to about 21minute mark in this video.

Here is Urs's title slide.

The next slide, Urs's discusses the physical world of data centers to support the cloud.  It's not a bunch of fluffy stuff that scales infinitely.  It is built on physics.

Then slides showing the physical infrastructure that Connie Zhou documented in her pictures.  There weren't any new pictures that most of you haven't already seen.

The environmental message is delivered.

Google's announcements over the past year of expansion.

Besides building data centers, Google runs their own network with their own sub marine cables

The network spans the world and at some point will most likely reach Africa, Middle East, and India.

One of the thing Google does is it thinks of its SW as infrastructure.  Urs reviews the history of the Google SW infrastructure.

At about the 30:24 mark Urs discusses the obsolescence of features to learn from the past and make things better, focusing on quality and performance.  Sounds like my ski jacket story above. :-)

163 improvements are listed over 12 months.

Customer wins are discussed on the platform.

To disrupt the business model of an AWS, Google has added sub minute billing.

In the spirit of a little green server, Google has a micro VM of only 0.6 GB.

Getting Cloud to be useful many times requires integrating with on data center services in the company's data center if you can have an encrypted VPN connection.

Persistent disks are useful, but the standard is 1TB.  Google has announced 10 TB.

Platform infrastructure is great, but what good is it if you can't develop apps.

To meet the needs of Information Security, Google Cloud Service are ISO 27001 are certified.

If you want to see an app to build at the 45:00 mark you can see a demo of building an app.

In building applications this is what AWS has tons of content on. 

Data Centers lease for Sq ft, kWh, ISP connections, Not Energy Brokers

In the old days, data centers were all about space, # of sq ft.  The power was actually hard to figure out.  The data center salesman would almost always talk in sq ft. 1,000 sq ft. 10,000 sq ft.  How much power?  Ohhh,  10,000 sq ft x 50 watts/sq ft = 500kW.  I would joke that part of why sq ft is used so much in commercial real estate is it is nice easy math.  How much does it cost to build per sq ft.  What is operating expense per sq ft.  What is rent per sq ft.  This set up a bad practice of thinking people would save money by using less space in a data center.  I am charged by space so if I go higher density, then I’ll save money.  Uh NO.  The expensive stuff in a data center is the electrical and mechanical systems.  You talk to any experienced data center operator/designer who has control over his destiny with budget for CAPeX and OPeX, he’ll choose 100 - 150 watts/sq ft.  Any higher density increases the chances of stranded power, cooling issues and a variety of things that could increase costs.  If you don’t know what stranded power is go have a talk with your electrical team and ask them how big an issue stranded power is.  

Those who lease data center space know the stranded power problem which is why they charge for the Power committed to your environment in addition to the power you consume.  If you strand 1/2 your power because you made bone headed decisions in how you designed your data center space, you’ll pay for that power as the data center operator cannot simply use that power some place else.

I read NYTimes’ James Glanz’s post on Landlords Double as Energy Brokers a few times and I am confused.  James makes the point that data centers moved from charging for space to an energy broker.

A result, an examination shows, is that the industry has evolved from a purveyor of space to an energy broker — making tremendous profits by reselling access to electrical power, and in some cases raising questions of whether the industry has become a kind of wildcat power utility.

When I hear the word Energy Broker it makes me think this is like an Enron type of deal. 

Soaring power prices have pushed the state’s utilities to the brink of bankruptcy and forced Third World-style blackouts across the world’s sixth-largest economy. Enron and other electricity marketers and generators are being investigated by the state attorney general and sued by consumers amid accusations of profiteering and market manipulation. ”Every trading company in the country has been feasting on California, and Enron is the shrewdest of them all. They are like sharks in a feeding frenzy,” says Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers’ Action Network in San Diego. Enron, an early critic of California’s deregulation plan, hotly denies those charges.

The reason why data centers charge more for power than what they pay is because of the cost of electrical systems and mechanical systems required to deliver the power.

Some data center companies, including Digital Realty Trust and DuPont Fabros Technology, charge tenants for the actual amount of electricity consumed and then add a fee calculated on capacity or square footage. Those deals, often for larger tenants, usually wind up with lower effective prices per square foot.

Regardless of the pricing model, Chris Crosby, chief executive of the Dallas-based Compass Datacenters, said that since data centers also provided protection from surges and power failures with backup generators, they could not be viewed as utilities. That backup equipment “is why people pay for our business,” Mr. Crosby said.

….

Melissa Neumann, a spokeswoman for Equinix, said that in the company’s leases, “power, cooling and space are very interrelated.” She added, “It’s simply not accurate to look at power in isolation.”

OK, data centers aren’t energy brokers.  They do a bad thing operating as a REIT to save on taxes.

Some of the biggest data center companies have won or are seeking Internal Revenue Service approval to organize themselves as real estate investment trusts, allowing them to eliminate most corporate taxes. At the same time, the companies have not drawn the scrutiny of utility regulators, who normally set prices for delivery of the power to residences and businesses.

…

Equinix is seeking a so-called private letter ruling from the I.R.S. to restructure itself, a move that has drawn criticism from tax watchdogs.

“This is an incredible example of how tax avoidance has become a major business strategy,” said Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog. The I.R.S., she said, “is letting people broaden these definitions in a way that they kind of create the image of a loophole.”

So, data centers shouldn’t be able to operate as a REIT because they’ll save on taxes?

I am confused on what points James was trying to make.  

DCIM that is focused on operators using the software, Yeea! Digital Realty announces EnVision

I've been in Santa Clara for the past there days hosting our data center social, hanging with friends, and meeting new ones.  I was talking to a company who just bought a DCIM license and they asked what I think about DCIM. The problem with DCIM software is it is not designed for someone to say "I used DCIM every day to run my data center."  DCIM is most of the time positioned as a management reporting tool.  

I've been so busy meeting I haven't had a chance to read the press releases and other news this week.  One of the news I got a chance to discuss is the DCIM solution for Digital Realty with one of their executives, but I didn't get the PR stuff cleared, so let me just chat about the press release.

One of the people I have had the pleasure of having hours of conversations with is DRT's David Schirmacher who makes the following statement.

"Up until now, data has been collected, but it has not necessarily been easily accessed or arranged in an intuitive manner that is helpful to a data center operator," said David Schirmacher, senior vice president of portfolio operations at Digital Realty. "The goal in rolling out EnVision across our global portfolio is to give our customers a common database that is structured around the specific needs of data center operators and can therefore manage the millions of data points that are found in today's large-scale facilities.

I was making my point about problem of DCIM without knowing that David makes the same point with the EnVision solution.

There are some good people and I am looking forward to see and hear about Digital's progress.

The EnVision rollout will begin this month and take approximately 18 months to complete across Digital Realty's global data center portfolio, which consists of 122 properties in 32 markets as of April 26, 2013.

I was talking to one of my friends and he said I should write a critique on DCIM SW on what works and what doesn't.  Not.  It takes too much time and there are too many analysts making money telling others how great a variety of DCIM sw is.  

My other issue with the analysts writing about DCIM are they not operations people, so they are basing their analysis on what someone tells them. They don't know what good operations SW is.  I would talk to people who actually use the DCIM sw and hear what they say.  The prettier it is the more suspicious you should be.  Don't talk to the executives who made the original purchasing decision as they will tell you their perceived expectations of DCIM.  The realty is a totally different world that few know about.  And it is not pretty.

I have my opinions of what I would buy.  And, there are different rules on what to look for then is it pretty.  Like does it scale and what are the performance limits.  How is the DCIM SW designed for high availability?  You can always make something with good internal design look pretty.  But ugly internal designs will just worse over time and use.

A Data Center Thought Leadership Social, built on quality of friends

Management and other marketing recognize using the words thought leadership are good, but mistake claiming thought leadership doesn't you a thought leader.

January 09, 2009 

 

Monday night we had a data center social with thought leaders.  Thought leadership is not how we market what the event is. Thought leaders are the type of people we are looking to invite.  So, why do the thought leaders we invited make time in their  busy schedule and some flying in from Chicago, Atlanta, Austin, NY, and Seattle?  The event works because it is about friends being able to chat in a comfortable environment.  Spending 10 minutes, 20 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes just chatting about whatever they want.  There is no hurry, there is hovering salesman looking to interject.  In fact some of the vendors who we let come in because they wanted to meet with some others who were in town recognized that they need to tread softly as the slightest hint of someone to sell a product, get a business card could set you in a bad light in front of influentials.  

 

People catching up what's up with their kids, their latest vacation or hunting trip, funny data center stories, doesn't fit in with someone who is trying to explain the value of their product/service.

 

So, what is the value of people attending? It's about friends catching up who haven't caught up in months, maybe years, and making new friends in the data center industry.  The #1 type of people we almost always welcome are data center operations people.  These are the people who many times who are so busy running the data centers, they don't go to many conferences.  Also, there are some of the people who make the data center circuit, but want some downtime to just catch up with friends.

 

How valuable are data center friends?  Oprah.com has a post that will help explain the value.

Why do you want authentic, deep friendships? Friends touch your heart, challenge your mind, inspire you to pursue your passions, double the good times, halve the bad times and make your life a happier and more fulfilling place to be.

And that's not just my opinion! Here are the researched facts from Tom Rath, a researcher at Gallup:

• If you feel close to other people, you are four times more likely to feel good about yourself and life.
• People who claim to have five or more true friends with whom they can discuss important problems are 60 percent more likely to say that they are "very happy."
• People with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their work! However, only 30 percent of employees report having a best friend at work!

"Friendships are among the most fundamental of human needs," Rath says. "When we asked people if they would rather have a best friend at work or a 10 percent pay raise, having a friend clearly won."

It is a little corny to read the "friends who touch your heart." In thinking  though, the one friend who touched all our hearts is our departed Olivier Sanche.  One of the best qualities of Olivier is we all remember the first time we met him, and how everyone can recall that first conversation.  Olivier is a true friend and one we all miss so much in the industry.

And a great lesson is the quality of your friends can make life so much better.

 

 

 

A strategy to have meaningful data center socials, listening to the infuentials

I have known a few people who thought it was a good idea to start a conference.  They thought it was a great way to make money from attendees, exhibitors, and sponsor.  Many of these people were people who didn't have technical expertise in the area of the topic, but worked on many conferences and saw the money flow through.  

Sometimes I think these are the type of people who are running many of the data center conferences.  They are playing around with the sponsorship packages, how much it will cost to exhibit, and how much they will charge attendees.

A different strategy is focus on the dynamics of the groups who attend.  Back in Aug 2010 I wrote about Steve Manos's data center social events in Chicago.

http://www.greenm3.com/gdcblog/2010/8/6/first-reaction-to-lee-tech-on-tap-in-chicago.html

First reaction to Lee Tech on Tap in Chicago,

THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 2010 AT 11:38PM

The energy was high at Lee Tech on Tap in Chicago and I can see why people keep on attending.  Given how much I have written about the event many people were surprised this was my first one to attend and I am glad my first was where it started.

There are some great people I met there and discussed ideas that wouldn't have happened if  I wasn't at the event.  Usually when you go to an event you feel good if you make a couple of good contacts.  In one night, I made at least 7 good connections that I will follow up on.

The benefit of an event is finding people of the same mindset and people who are different who stimulate new thinking.

...

Attending Lee Tech on Tap in Chicago - Aug 5, 2010

MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2010 AT 1:04PM

Thanks to the folks at Lee Technologies I was extended an invite to attend the Lee Tech on Tap event in Chicago on Aug 5, 2010.  I've written about the event so much, it will be good to see the people and event in person.

I would live blog the event, but I think I'll be too busy talking to people.  I don't expect any press releases surrounding the event so there is no need to hurry and post.

Some of the decline of revenue, sponsors, and attendees for some of the data center conferences is caused by event folks focusing on the numbers and not looking at the dynamics of the groups. 

A key set of people to listen to are the influentials.  The people that almost everyone knows or want to know, and listen to whether they find the event useful.  If not, you need to figure out what will get them to attend.

When is the last data center conference you said I am so glad I went.  That hosted reception in the exhibit area was worth the trip.  Not.

Whereas most of those who attend data center socials, see the benefit and will attend again.