Uptime's Tier Rating challenged by 7 layer Approach by Int'l DC Authority says "Tiers Officially Outdated"

SearchDatacenter has a post on a challenge by the International Data Center Authority (IDCA) of Uptime's Tier Rating.

““The existing [focus on just power and cooling] doesn’t reflect what we need today, and in the future,” said Mehdi Paryavi, president of the IDCA, a research and education organization headquartered in Washington, D.C.

The IDCA created a seven-layer pyramid of holistic data center operation: application, platform, compute, IT infrastructure, site facility infrastructure, the site’s space and topology. This model accounts for the interdependencies between IT and facilities that engender high-quality service delivery.

”We’re past the days of silos where people say, ‘I’m a database administrator. I don’t care about power.’ Everyone needs to know the impact of their choices,” Paryavi said.”

Going to the IDCA web site they say that

“Tiers Officially Outdated!”

I haven't studied IDCA.  Here is a video on the training program.


A difficult challenge for data center automation, availability of the control system

Part of the cloud is automation.  An example is PuppetLabs, and here is a blog post on the topic.

“Automation extends to the software layer, where complex systems can be configured once and then rolled out on the fly as needed, using cloud automation tools. Intelligent systems architecture can balance the load among compute, network or storage resources, bringing systems online or offline as demand dictates.

This infrastructure-as-code approach to the modern, increasingly complex data center requires advanced cloud management tools, and cloud automation answers that need. The same software-defined approach to managing private cloud architecture works equally well for managing public clouds. Bonus: By abstracting away the differences between clouds, sophisticated cloud automation software makes it easy to provision the resources the business needs at any given moment, without getting bogged down with where the servers actually sit.”
— http://puppetlabs.com/blog/what-cloud-automation-driving-force-data-center-automation

There are tons and tons of companies that have cloud automation tools.  But, how many people spend time addressing the availability of the automation control system.  ???  This may seem obvious, but a control system needs to have a higher availability than the services it is managing.  Otherwise the service will go down when the automation control system goes down.

And, this may mean you need a backup to the automation system when it goes down during an outage.

As Cloud environments get bigger and bigger, automation is a part of the solution, but have you thought about what happens when the automation system goes down.

Take the Web IQ test, what is your score?

Pew Research has a Web IQ test that the conducted and you can take it too.  Before you read and get hints try taking the test here.

“What Internet Users Know about Technology and the Web
BY AARON SMITH

TAKE THE QUIZ
Before you read the report, test your own Web IQ by taking the interactive knowledge quiz. The short quiz tests your knowledge of questions recently asked in a national poll. After completing the quiz, you can compare your score with the general public and with people like yourself.”
— http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/11/25/web-iq/

I took the test and got my score. 12 out of 12. Outscored 99.8% of population, but bet you lots of my friends can get 12 out of 12 too.


Qualcomm's Future Data Center Efforts built on Mobile

Barron's had reported on Qualcomm's announcing its data center effort in its latest analyst call.

“Perhaps the most interesting and surprising part of Mollenkopf’s presentation was his discussion of how the company is finally entering the server market, riding the wave of implementations of new kinds of data centers, where entities such as Google (GOOGL) build their own servers. That should bring Qualcomm into direct competition with server-chip Titan Intel (INTC).

Said Mollenkopf, the kinds of requirements that have nurtured the architecture of mobile device semiconductors is becoming more and more relevant to the way server chips must be designed. “The high end of the smartphone and the tablet really are starting to merge with what would be feasible in the data center.”

In addition to the architecture of mobile coming to servers, Mollenkopf sees an advantage in servers in the fact that the company can get its chips made in the most advanced semiconductor processes. “Our ability to go to the leading node puts us in a unique position.”

“It will take us awhile to build this business, but we think it’s an interesting business.””
— http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2014/11/19/qualcomm-analyst-day-ceo-mollenkopf-reflects-on-strong-2014-despite-china/

And the rest of the tech media referenced this post and one image.  Turns out there are 4 slides from the investor meeting. Let's start with one way far at the end slide #76 that shows where data centers are in other initiatives at Qualcomm for future growth.

As Dileep Bhandarkar presented in August 2014 on his life from Mainframe to Mobile, there is a movement from below to disrupt the data center industry.

Here is another slide from the investor review that shows Qualcomm's plan to come from its strength of high volume smartphones and move into mobile computing and data centers.

In this slide Qualcomm identifies the markets it sees for ARM - The cloud era and software defined data center.

And the last slide.  Well this isn't actually the last slide.  It is the 2nd slide in the deck that mentions "data center", but so many times I find the order in what gets presented misses the opportunity to tell the story.

This slide explains the vision of an integrated cloud.  It does make sense that an ARM mobile environment could support the development of an ARM server cloud environment.

There are some of you who are going to blow this off as just another anti-Intel (x86) initiative.

Here is something to think about.  What Qualcomm is explaining as the integrated cloud is being built by Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Samsung.

“iCloud
iCloud connects you and your Apple devices in amazing ways. It makes sure you always have the latest versions of your most important things — like documents, apps, notes, and contacts — on whatever device you are using. It lets you easily share photos, calendars, locations, and more with friends and family. It even helps you find your device if you lose it. And iCloud does it all automatically. Just like that.”
— https://www.apple.com/icloud/