Green (Low Carbon) Data Center Blog

An unintended consequence of China's censorship, a game of who can beat the system

Dave Ohara — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 13:10:56 +0000

NYTimes has a post on the 23rd anniversary of Tiananmen Crackdown has possible effects in the Shanghai Stock Market's decline.

Anniversary of Tiananmen Crackdown Echoes Through Shanghai Market

By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: June 4, 2012

HONG KONG — The Shanghai Stock Exchange produced an unlikely, almost ghostly result on the 23rd anniversary of the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square, an odd echo of a tragedy thatChina’s leaders have tried desperately to erase from their country’s consciousness.

The index fell 64.89 points on Monday, a figure that looks like June 4, 1989. In yet another unusual development, the index opened on Monday at 2346.98 — a figure that looks like the date of the crackdown written backward, followed by the 23rd anniversary.

Hopefully, most of you realize how silly this is to think that there is a meaning in the numbers 89/6/4 = 89 June 4. We have all read silly things like this being read into things. Which reminds me of my Cargo Cult Science post.

What is real though is the activity of China's censors.

Chinese censors, showing characteristic heavy-handedness, especially on anniversaries of Tiananmen Square, began blocking searches for “stock market,” “Shanghai stock” and “Shanghai stock market” and started deleting large numbers of microblog postings about the numerical fluke.

This got me thinking what happens when China's censors delete and block content.

The Chinese have great pride in figuring out how to be smarter than the next guy, including countries, races, as well as individuals. What comes to mind is with tthe billion plus people in China, there must be thousands and thousands of people who are trying to figure out how to be smarter than the censors. Why? It is like a game to show how smart you are.

A Lesson from why Art is Valuable, could explain human decisions on value

Dave Ohara — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 22:49:20 +0000

It is interesting watching the really smart people make their decisions on data center design and specific pieces of equipment they choose.

I was watching a TED video of Paul Bloom discuss the origins of pleasure. And, he had this slide up.

This statement can be used to explain the data center experts perception of value. Here is the above quote modified.

The value of a data center power/mechanical equipment is rooted in assumptions about the human performance underlying its creation.

They have an assumption of the creation of the equipment built by humans. They know the equipment design, and many times the specific engineers that were on the design team. They know the past performance of the equipment. The manufacturing and sourcing of material. Even what service operations are like for the equipment.

The #1 thing that will cause a drop in value of the equipment is if assumptions are no longer valid. Parts have been changed due to supply chain issues, quality has dropped due to manufacturing staff changes, designs are modified for cost reductions. As most have learned, just because the equipment was good for you 2 years ago, it doesn't mean the latest versions are the same.

You can watch this complete video to get the full story. The part I mention is at 11:05.

A Seth Godin post can on collision of code and humans can be applied to Data Centers

Dave Ohara — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 22:29:47 +0000

Seth Godin has a post on the collision of code and humans.

Thriving in a wet environment

If you've ever fixed any kind of machinery, you know that a device that's exposed to the elements is incredibly difficult to maintain. A washing machine or the underside of a car gets grungy, fast.

On the other hand, the dryest, cleanest environment of all is the digital one. Code stays code. If it works today, it's probably going to work tomorrow.

A Challenge for data centers comes to mind with his next paragraph.

Whatever we build gets misunderstood, corroded and chronic, and it happens quickly and in unpredictable ways. That's one reason why the web is so fascinating--it's a collision between the analytic world of code and wet world of people.

It's hard to make money in Mobile, China's Smartphone market

Dave Ohara — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 23:49:40 +0000

Now it may seem obvious that a small screen limits the amount of advertisements that can be displayed which then effects the revenue possible from mobile devices. In addition with iMessage and others creation of messaging services SMS is under threat as well.

WSJ has a post that describes some of these conditions occuring in China. Tencent is threatening the mobile carriers the same way iMessage is.

Among the biggest losers could be the telecom companies. HSBC analyst Tucker Grinnan estimates that SMS (short-messaging services) accounted for about 15% of China Mobile'sCHL -1.41% revenue in 2011. That's under threat from Internet-based messaging systems like Tencent's Weixin. From zero users at the beginning of 2011, Weixin grew to 100 million in March 2012.

It's no coincidence that China's SMS traffic per subscriber declined 7% over the same period, or that Internet giant Tencent is reorganizing its business to focus more on mobile.

Mobile ads as well.

China's social-networking and portal sites like RenrenRENN -4.11% and Sina Corp. SINA -5.16%are also struggling to monetize a growing number of mobile users.

Mary Meeker's 2012 Internet Trends Presentation, watch out data center industry Mobile will change your world

Dave Ohara — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 22:48:48 +0000

Mobile is probably going to be one of the greenest effects on data centers. Why? The market penetration will dwarf the desktops, yet the lower mobile ad margins put huge pressures to be more efficient. In addition all kinds of things are being re-imagined for mobile devices.

I was slow to move to Mobile. i didn't get an iPhone until the 3GS. The kids got an iPad, not me. I stuck to my IBM laptop. Now I have an iPhone 4S, Samsung Galaxy Note, Galaxy Nexus, Kindle Fire, latest iPad, and MacBook Air. Mobile is where I spend more time thinking about new services. Data Centers are critical to the mobile solution. The way of fat clients is the past. Mobile = Highly Connected cost effective energy efficient data centers.

Mary Meeker gave a presentation at WSJ's all things d. The presentation is here.

All things d has a post that gives you a good summary.

My cut at what I found interesting is as follows.

Let's start with the bad news Mobile is 5X lower eCPMs vs. Desktop

Average revenue per user 1.7-5x lower on mobile vs. Desktop.

Google's cost per click is referenced as limiting revenue growth.

Apple's revenue growth is good news for its business model.

The change is illustrated by the past vs. present.

Page 36 starts a series of other re-imagination.

If you agree with Mary Meeker's questions, ask the questions are you rowing the same direction?

For the past year, I have been rowing in the same direction Mark Meeker describes and it is so much easier. Are you ready to change?

Video Google Employee shares How Google Search Works

Dave Ohara — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 18:02:43 +0000

Google is the dominant player in search, and has more data center capacity and servers than any one company providing information services.

With Google Search so much part our lives it is probably a good thing for you to understand how Google Search works.

The Elite go Private, Public companies are not so hot

Dave Ohara — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 05:21:58 +0000

There is all kinds of news on Facebook's IPO. Some have learned to be cautious of an IPO.

What some people don't get is the elite, the smart ones have figured out that being a private company is better than being public.

The Economist has an article on this topic. Here is an excerpt that will get you thinking.

Companies are like jets; the elite go private

Mr Zuckerberg will be joining a troubled club. The burden of regulation has grown heavier for public companies since the collapse of Enron in 2001. Corporate chiefs complain that the combination of fussy regulators and demanding money managers makes it impossible to focus on long-term growth. Shareholders are also angry. Their interests seldom seem to be properly aligned at public companies with those of the managers, who often waste squillions on empire-building and sumptuous perks. Shareholders are typically too dispersed to monitor the men on the spot. Attempts to solve the problem by giving managers shares have largely failed.

At the same time, alternative corporate forms are flourishing. Once “going public” was every CEO’s dream; now it is perfectly respectable to “go private”, like Burger King, Boots and countless other famous names. State-run enterprises have recovered from the wreck of communism and now include the world’s biggest mobile-phone company (China Mobile), its most successful port operator (Dubai World), its fastest-growing big airline (Emirates) and its 13 biggest oil companies.

One of the most unstable factors in a data center site is the economic situation

Dave Ohara — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:30:36 +0000

To be a green data center you need a sustainable solution that reduces your environmental impact. This is complicated in itself figuring out the power grid, local weather conditions, and designing an efficient solution. What few talk about is the #1 thing that will cause the top guys to go from one state to another though are the taxes.

Mike Manos's posts on his observation on the pay to play game to get data centers to be in a state can backfire.

The Pay to Play that I am referring to is an emerging set of regulations and litigation techniques that require companies to pay tax bills upfront (without any kind of recourse or mediation) which then forces companies to litigate to try and recover those taxes if unfair. Increasingly I am seeing this in states where the budgets are challenged and governments are looking for additional funds and are targeting Internet based products and services.

If the state your data center is in not financially healthy then you could be in for a few surprises.

It does beg the question as to whether or not you have checked into the financial health of the States you may be hosting your data and services in. Have you looked at the risk that this may pose to your business? It may be something to take a look at!

Everyone lies, do you support the fork to honest or dishonest actions?

Dave Ohara — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:31:52 +0000

WSJ has a post by Dan Ariely who has a new book.

The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone---Especially Ourselves [Hardcover]
Dan Ariely (Author)

4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews) | Like(12)

I've pre-ordered the book. Why? I have read and watched Dan Ariely's works and he is on to some good issues that need to be addressed. The human factor of lying is something few think about, but it is human nature to lie.

Check out the WSJ article.

What we have found, in a nutshell: Everybody has the capacity to be dishonest, and almost everybody cheats—just by a little. Except for a few outliers at the top and bottom, the behavior of almost everyone is driven by two opposing motivations. On the one hand, we want to benefit from cheating and get as much money and glory as possible; on the other hand, we want to view ourselves as honest, honorable people. Sadly, it is this kind of small-scale mass cheating, not the high-profile cases, that is most corrosive to society.

Morales can help people take the path to honesty vs. dishonesty.

...my colleagues and I ran an experiment at the University of California, Los Angeles. We took a group of 450 participants, split them into two groups and set them loose on our usual matrix task. We asked half of them to recall the Ten Commandments and the other half to recall 10 books that they had read in high school. Among the group who recalled the 10 books, we saw the typical widespread but moderate cheating. But in the group that was asked to recall the Ten Commandments, we observed no cheating whatsoever. We reran the experiment, reminding students of their schools' honor codes instead of the Ten Commandments, and we got the same result. We even reran the experiment on a group of self-declared atheists, asking them to swear on a Bible, and got the same no-cheating results yet again.

Heading to GigaOm Structure, some of the Data Center Related topics

Dave Ohara — Thu, 31 May 2012 17:15:41 +0000

I went to GigaOm Structure for the first time last year as a blogger. I am attending again this year as a GigaOm Pro Analyst.

Here are a few of the companies that look interesting from a data center perspective.

Atlantis Computing goes beyond the VDI market and makes it possible to leverage commodity servers for storage-intensive virtualized applications in cloud environments.

Cluttr focuses on helping companies manage their data centers more efficiently and responsibly, with a smaller environmental footprint.

ComputeNext is a transparent marketplace for consumers and providers of cloud services that empowers choice and enables the search, purchase, and utilization of compute resources.

Garantia Data is a fully automated cloud service for reliable memcached and infinitely-scalable redis, requiring zero management and guaranteeing absolutely no data loss.

Keen provides analytics infrastructure as a service for mobile applications.

MLstate is the provider of Opa, a new open source cloud development language designed to accelerate time-to-market for high-performance, massively scalable, exceptionally secure services and applications on any connected device.

OneOps enables organizations to design cloud-based applications that align software requirements with business goals, automating the transition to agile operations.

Tempo is the data layer for the measured world, purpose-built to store and analyze massive streams of time-series data generated by sensors and connected devices.

I'll be there for both days. I know DatacenterKnowledge's Rich Miller attends and DatacenterDynamics's Yevgeniy usually attend. It's a great event to learn something new.