Washington hit with 911 outage, what was cause?

Here is something you don’t hear about too often.  911 outage.  Washington state had an outage that lasted for hours.

Washington state 911 restored after overnight outage

by KING 5 News and Associated Press

Posted on April 10, 2014 at 5:57 AM

Updated today at 7:54 AM

 

 

SEATTLE  -- 911 service has been restored in Washington following a statewide outage Thursday.

CenturyLink spokeswoman Kerry Zimmer says it's unknown if the problem was caused by computer hacking or an equipment problem.

Zimmer says it began about 1:30 a.m. Thursday at Sheridan, Ore., and service in Oregon was also affected for a time.

All service was restored just after 7 a.m.

Veterans in the DC continue to grow, Uptime joins the efforts

People with military experience are all over the data center industry, but what hasn’t existed is a proactive effort to give veterans a clear path to work in the DC industry.

Veterans in the Data Center initiative has Lee Kirby to thank and the following companies who joined early.

NewImage

The latest to join is Uptime Institute.

NewImage

About Uptime Institute Veterans’ Initiative

The catalyst for the Uptime Institute Veterans’ Initiative was at the Uptime Institute Network meeting in spring of 2013.  Lee Kirby, who at the time was CEO and Founder of Salute Inc., presented what he was striving to accomplish for military veterans within the data center industry.  His unique approach to proving the value of veterans caught the attention of Uptime Institute and its Network Members and a subcommittee was developed to address the personnel shortage in the data center industry and how to better target and attract Veteran applicants. Founding members included representation from Compass Datacenters, Bayer, and General Electric, among others.

Beyond building the job forum within this website, the subcommittee is establishing a foundation of training for veterans whose military specialty did not include technical training and will assess and recommend human resource polices.

If you are interested in participating or learning more about the initiative please contact us:
+1 206 706-4149
veterans@uptimeinstitute.com

See 40 years of Wind Power in the USA

Fast Company has a post showing 40 years of Wind Power in the USA.  Thanks to Google’s investments in wind power, we take it for granted Wind Power is a renewable energy source for data centers.

Watch 40 Years Of Wind Farms Spreading Across The Country

We've gone from one small collection of turbines in 1975 to nearly 1,000 wind farms--capable of generating enough electricity for 15 million homes.

Recent NASA studies on the effects of climate change have been rather harrowing, highlighting the need for alternative energy sources. NASA climate scientist Dr. Drew Shindell stated that “it's more clear than ever that we need large, rapid emissions reductions to avoid the worst damages from climate change.”

Reducing our overall energy usage is obviously a big part of curtailing emissions. But renewable energy sources are also a key piece of the puzzle. So it is somewhat heartening to play watch this .GIF of wind-farm growth from the Department of Energy.

The map starts with one tiny wind farm in southern California in 1975. From there, wind farms continue to spread throughout California for the next two decades. Then in 1994 the first wind farm outside of California appears. From there, they quickly spread across 39 states by 2012 (the most recent statistics available). You can play with an interactive version of this map here.

Here is the original source of data for the graphic from energy.gov. There are a bunch of other cool maps.

Psst, WSJ says the Data Center is Cloud, Duhh

WSJ has a post in its CIO journal that had me laughing this morning.

The Morning Download: Microsoft Shift Shows the Data Center Is the Cloud

[Steve Rosenbush]

Deputy Editor

The Morning Download comes from the editors of CIO Journal and cues up the most important news in business technology every weekday morning. Send us your tips, compliments and complaints. You can get The Morning Download emailed to you each weekday morning by clicking here.

Good morning. The transformation underway at Microsoft Corp. probably is the biggest change that the company has undergone since it discovered the Internet back in the ’90s. The evolution tells us as much about the market as it tells us about the company itself, which is shrugging off the weight of its past.

In recent weeks, the company that once fought for the ability to bundle its applications to its platform launched Office for Apple Inc.’s iPad, open-sourced more of its .NET software framework and renamed its Windows Azure cloud computing platform as Microsoft Azure. ”We are witnessing the biggest shift in attitude by Microsoft since the pivot around the Internet in the late 90′s,” IDC analyst Al Hilwa tells CIO Journal.

I don’t know about you, but I wonder where people thought the Cloud was if it was not in data centers.

How many IT/DC problems are caused by the mindset of Repairing vs. Fixing the problem

The wise can see the difference between repairing a problem and fixing a problem.  A repair is many times temporary whereas a fix can take more time, resources, and money.

Here is a story about a simple problem of transporting a crane across a bridge.  When I read this story it reminds of the problems when people don’t understand the difference between a repairing vs. fixing a problem.

The story begins with a company that makes very large and very heavy pieces of equipment. 

They had a special order for an especially large piece of equipment. They completed the piece of equipment and got it ready to ship to the client. In order to ship it to the client it had to pass over a bridge that was located very close to the plant where the piece of equipment was built. 

As the piece of equipment was passing over the bridge, the bridge collapsed and the huge piece of equipment fell into the river. The company quickly went into action and rented a crane that was used to extricate the piece of equipment from the river and place it safely on the plant side of the bridge. 

The city which owned the bridge quickly went into action building a new bridge relying on the assumed knowledge that the company would never try to go over the bridge with another piece of equipment that weighed so much.

...

Click this link to read the whole story.