Three features of DCIM I would focus on - Ease of use, Ability to Scale, and Availability

I've worked on lots of complex software projects at Apple and Microsoft.  6 years ago I started working on data centers and before DCIM was a buzz word I worked on some projects that were the early forerunners of DCIM.  When I was doing this I had no desire to start a company or join a company that was building DCIM.  Why?  I just thought it would be too hard to get users to buy the right thing vs. buying what they thought they needed.

Here is CA says DCIM is.

Data center infrastructure management(DCIM) from CA Technologies provides a web-based centralized solution for monitoring power, cooling and environmentals across facilities and IT systems in the data center as well as managing the use of space and lifecycle of assets which make up the data center infrastructure. CA DCIM is capable of taking data from highly diverse devices and systems using SNMP or other protocols such as BACnet or Modbus. CA DCIM will also allow your organization to track assets within the data center and understand them in data center space using powerful 3D visualization. In addition, CA DCIM enables integration of data center infrastructure management with broader IT Management and business service provision.

This works for the executive sell and is fairly representative of what others say DCIM does.

Given I could build a DCIM solution, I look at it differently.

First and most important is the DCIM easy to use.  Do the operators welcome the system or do they see it as another system they need to input data to, login, and add to their frustration.  Show me a DCIM system that makes the task of operations easier, then it would get my interest.  The above is like a description of an ERP system.  How many of you want to go through the same pains of an ERP deployment in your data center?

Second, is the system built on a state of the art high performance platform that will scale and respond quickly.  If the system can handle 1,000-10,000s of transactions a second, then it can scale and under every day use should perform quickly.  It is amazing when you look under the covers and you see system design. Look to see whether it will scale.

Third is the system highly available.  Are there three nodes working to keep the service up and running?  Two nodes might work.  Three nodes or more means the failure of the DCIM service is lower what you are measuring.  Trying to operate a data center when the DCIM tool is down can be done, but many times means lots of data entry is needed later.  Who wants that.  If you see only one node in the system, then run.

There are many features of a DCIM system.  If it is not easy to use, scales, and highly available, then I would walk away and continue your search.

Is Bill Gates paying more attention to the data center world?

In all the news about Microsoft's latest reorganization I haven't seen any reference to Bill Gates.  Being a relatively old Microsoftee (1992 - 2006), I could see Bill's imprint on things and guess what he is thinking of.  I had a few small meetings with Bill, worked on some of his keynotes, and had plenty of friends who had way more interaction with Bill.

What got my attention today to write is on Bill Gates personal web page on his reading list the following three books are listed as the top on his list.

I have had Jared Diamond's book on my list. How Children Succeed is one I have made part way through.  The Box is about the history of the shipping container and how it changed distribution logistics.  Most of you are familiar with The Box if you were thinking of containers in the data center.  Mike Manos posted on the Container Concept.

In some ways Modularization of the data center industry is/can/will have the same effect as the shipping container did in manufacturing.   All puns intended.  If you are unaware of how the shipping container revolutionized the world, I would highly recommend the book “The Box” by Marc Levinson, it’s a quick read and very interesting if you read it through the lens of IT infrastructure and the parallels of modularization in the Data Center Industry at large.

So is Bill paying more attention to the data center world?  By looking at what he is reading you can't tell.  But here is something that makes sense.  Bill is Chairman of the Microsoft Board of Directors.  He spends one day a week working on Microsoft business.  And I have heard of people going to Bill's Kirkland office to discuss Microsoft business.

So, Bill is reviewing the new One Microsoft strategy which I mentioned says datacenter 4 times.

Given Bill is paying more attention to logistics and operations and is focused on technology he is being exposed to the world of data centers.  He is spending a lot time creating stochastic models and has a Windows Cluster to run models to evaluate ways to improve health and education.

Bill is looking at History for ways to tell stories that get people to understand a better way to do things.  Here is how Bill opened his 2013 annual letter with telling story of the steam engine and its incremental improvements.  This is the same method used by Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft  to improve data centers.  It makes sense that in the past the changes that the steam engine enabled is what data centers do now.  Being a technology guy Bill must be seeing the connection of data centers, not desktop computers are enabling the big change.

We can learn a lot about improving the world

in the 21st century from an icon of the industrial

era: the steam engine.

Over the holidays I read The Most Powerful Idea

in the World, a brilliant chronicle by William

Rosen of the many innovations it took to harness

steam power. Among the most important were a

new way to measure the energy output of engines

and a micrometer dubbed the “Lord Chancellor,”

able to gauge tiny distances.

Such measuring tools, Rosen writes, allowed

inventors to see if their incremental design changes

led to the improvements—higher-quality parts,

better performance, and less coal consumption—

needed to build better engines. Innovations in

steam power demonstrate a larger lesson: Without

feedback from precise measurement, Rosen writes,

invention is “doomed to be rare and erratic.” With

it, invention becomes “commonplace.”

Bill is studying those things that revolutionized an industry.  There are no books to read about data centers that way though.  Although I would imagine someone has pitched the idea of writing a data center book.  So much is changing though, that the book would be outdate by the time it is published.

NSA data center's 1.7 mil daily water use has people's attention

The NSA is suffering from bad PR.  When the folks designed the data center they probably thought who cares about the water use.  Well the media has picked up the latest published numbers and spread the word riding the wave of negative PR.

Microsoft was evil at one.  Google has the issue.  Facebook to an extent and even Apple.  The NSA with its large data center has taken over the position of who in the data center industry is most hated by outsiders.

I wonder when Greenpeace will start protesting the NSA.

1. 1. NSA data center will use 1.7M gallons of water per day to read your email
      

      Geek ‎- by Ryan Whitwam ‎- 16 hours ago

      Data centers are notorious for using a lot of power and other resources, but residents of Bluffdale, Utah are a little annoyed by the volume of ...
   1.  

      NSA's Data Center So Big It May Use Up To 1.7M Gallons Of Water A Day

      The9Billion‎ - 11 hours ago

2. NSA data center will use 1.7M gallons of water per day to ... - Infowars

   www.infowars.com/nsa-data-center-will-use-1-7m-gallons-of-water-per-...‎

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   21 hours ago - What kind of data? Well, this is the NSA so the official answer is, “that's classified. ” More generally, the data center will be processing the ...

3. NSA Utah Data Center - Serving Our Nation's Intelligence Community

   nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/‎

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   NSA Utah Data Center: Site plan, technical specs, photos, and map. ... Other supporting facilities include water treatment facilities, chiller plant, power ...

4. New Utah NSA Center Requires 1.7 Million Gallons Of Water Daily ...

   amresolution.com/.../new-utah-nsa-center-requires-1-7-million-gallons-o...‎

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   16 hours ago - More secrets, more water? The NSA data center in Bluffdale could require as many as 1.7 million gallons of water per day to operate and keep ...

5. Amid Data Controversy, NSA Builds Its Biggest Data Farm : NPR

   www.npr.org › News › US › National Security‎

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   Jun 10, 2013 - The Utah Data Center, 26 miles south of Salt Lake City, will begin operations in ... Though the NSA director has said it won't hold data on U.S. citizens, ...the computers will fry without 1.5 million gallons of cooling water a day.

6. New Utah NSA center requires 1.7M gallons of water daily to operate

   www.blacklistednews.com/_New...NSA_center...water.../M.html‎

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   2 days ago - More secrets, more water? The NSA data center in Bluffdale could require as many as 1.7 million gallons of water per day to operate and keep ...

7. New Utah NSA center requires 1.7M gallons of water daily to ...

   ►►

   www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=25978926‎

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   4 days ago

   More secrets, more water? The NSA data center in Bluffdale could require as many as 1.7 million gallons of ...

    

8. Why the NSA put a data center in Utah | The Salt Lake Tribune

   www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/56472070.../utah-nsa-data-center.html.csp‎

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   Jun 29, 2013 - NSA Bluffdale Center won't gobble up Utah's power supply ... Either of two nearby water districts could provide the data center with what ...

9. NSA data center will use 1.7M gallons of water per day to cool the ...

   inagist.com/all/357042506178891776/?utm_source=inagist&utm...‎

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   9 hours ago - NSA data center will use 1.7M gallons of water per day to cool the collection of servers required to read your email. http://t.co/Sqab1ovJCz by ...

   
   

Climate Change puts USA Power Generation at Risk

US Dept Of Energy put out a report on the risks to the USA power generation system by climate change.

Today’s report U.S. Energy Sector Vulnerabilities to Climate Change and Extreme Weather examines current and potential future impacts of these climate trends on the U.S. energy sector. Researchers have identified several critical issues, including power-plant disruptions due to drought and the disruption of fuel supplies during severe storms. They’ve also pinpointed potential opportunities that would make our energy infrastructure more resilient to these risks.

If you go to the interactive map on the site you can get the specifics for the marked locations.

The map above shows how the following three extreme climate trends have caused major issues to the energy sector across the country over the past ten years:

1. Increasing air and water temperatures;
2. Decreasing water availability across regions and seasons; and
3. Increasing intensity and frequency of storm events, flooding and sea level rise.

Here are some more details from the report:

• Climate change has created an increased risk of shutdowns at coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants. Why? Changes in the climate mean decreased water availability -- which affects cooling at thermoelectric power plants, a requirement for operation. 
• There are also higher risks to energy infrastructure located along the coasts thanks to sea level rise, the increasing intensity of storms, and higher storm surge and flooding.
• Power lines, transformers and electricity distribution systems face increasing risks of physical damage from the hurricanes, storms and wildfires that are growing more frequent and intense. 
• Air conditioning costs will rise due to increasing temperatures and heat waves, along with the risks of blackouts and brownouts in regions throughout the country.

Microsoft's new organization puts "datacenter" four times and "supply chain" three times in Steve Ballmer's memo

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer sent out a memo to the company and rest of the world on a new organization for innovation, speed, and efficiency. Which may be kind of obvious.  Who wants to enable legacy, slow, and wasteful organizations. :-)

Being an a data center guy, Industrial Engineer, and ex-Microsoft I was curious where data centers showed up and saw "supply chain" show up three times.

Datacenter shows up 4 times.  The correct way to spell data centers is datacenter, but almost no one does.

The Microsoft data center group used to report to Qi Lu and will now report to Satya Nadella.  Qi Lu is focused on apps and services.

Applications and Services Engineering Group. Qi Lu will lead broad applications and services core technologies in productivity, communication, search and other information categories

Supply chain shows up three times.

With Microsoft showing up with so much interest in supply chain I wonder if they'll start recruiting amazon.com supply chain folks.  Wal-mart people have already joined Microsoft including COO Kevin Turner.