Funny Video- ”The IT Room: Ugly baby crashes servers”

Happy Friday Readers! This weeks video is from The IT Room and is called “The IT Room: Ugly baby crashes servers”. An IT tech thinks his baby is beautiful and sends it to 30,000 people in his company. See how it crashes the servers and scares the staff. Have a great rest of your day and a relaxing weekend!

The IT Room: Ugly baby crashes servers – http://www.youtube.com/watchNR=1&feature=endscreen&v=mNy4fxmGnXE

Interop 2012

We’re home from Vegas and ready to fill you in!

Last week we had the pleasure of exhibiting and sponsoring the NOC at Interop Las Vegas 2012! We had a great show and we want to thank everyone for stopping by our booth .It’s always exciting to see what new products are being introduced and the innovative ways our industry is growing!

Some Memorable Highlights Include:

• Keynotes from some industry heavy-weights like; Padmasree Warrior; Cisco, Jonathan Rochelle; Google, and Dario Zamarian; Dell. Just to name a few.
• 13,000+ Attendees
• Over 100 general sessions and workshops with topics ranging from cloud computing to wireless and mobility.
• Daily Booth Crawls
• Best of Interop Awards:
  -Best of Interop- NEC ProgrammableFlow PF6800 Controller NEC Corporation of America
  -A full list of all 16 winners can be viewed here!
• After Hours Tweet-Ups, Attendee Party, and Networking Events
• 200+ Exhibitor Booths
• Crowd-Pleasers:  The yo-yo national champion at the ExtraHop booth, The oversized claw machine at F5, the racecars and motorcycles, the giant pumpkin carver at gigamon and never ending iPad giveaways.

If you had the chance to stop by our booth we would love to hear from you again, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to us! We hope that those of you who were in attendance learned as much as we did and had an equally great time at Interop Las Vegas 2012!

Also, if you didn’t get a chance to watch how Interop uses a ServerLIFT to prepare for the show, you can check it out here!

Interop Las Vegas 2012 – Forklift Upgrades… without the forklift. – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECTBbov0HDk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Recently some of the ServerLIFT team had the opportunity to visit one of the world’s largest data centers! Lucky for us, i/o data centers calls Arizona home and it just so happens that their Phoenix ONE data center is one of the most technologically advanced facilities in the world.

i/o 538,000 square foot monster facility houses more than 80,000 square feet of office space, allowing its corporate headquarters to conveniently reside at the same location, alongside the most advanced colocation space in the world. The rest of the 460,000 square feet are is covered by raised floor, divided into four data center “pods” and the facility as a whole has been awarded Tier III Design Certification by the Uptime Institute.

Besides i/o’s enormous size, the data center boasts a number of really cool innovative design features.

The facility has its own on-site sub-station providing 55 MW of utility power and a huge array of solar panels on the roof.

To keep things cool, Phoenix ONE uses a thermal storage system, ultrasonic humidifiers, LED lighting, CRAHs (computer room air handlers), high-efficiency chillers, and sealed server racks.

Like most data centers, i/o is very concerned with their environmental impact and has taken measures to help make their facility as green as possible, down to their recycled car tire flooring.

To keep things safe, i/o secures the perimeter with automatic bollards and a guard station that is monitored 24 hours a day. If you’re lucky enough to get past the lobby, you will be watched closely by digital video surveillance and be subjected to numerous biometric and ID card screenings. Phoenix ONE is intent on keeping anyone who shouldn’t be on the premise out.  And with that, our tour ended and we were back to the offices at ServerLIFT headquarters.

ServerLIFT Sponsors the NOC

This Friday instead of posting a funny video, I thought I would share with you this video from Interop Las Vegas! It shows how the team at Interop uses ServerLIFTs to prepare for their show! For two weeks, some of the best and brightest engineers in IT gather at an uberGeek bunker in Brisbane, CA to assemble the most advanced temporary network in the world and use ServerLIFTs to rack and lift all of the equipment!

Interop Las Vegas 2012 – Forklift Upgrades… without the forklift. – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECTBbov0HDk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Funny Video- “Extreme Makeover: Server Room Edition”

Happy Friday readers! I thought I would start this week’s post by telling you how thrilled I am to see comments starting to appear on the posts and watching our reader count climb! It’s great to know that we’re providing you with something you find interesting or informative! I would love your feedback on the blog and what you would like to see talked about in the future, so don’t be afraid to leave a comment. After all, the purpose of our blog is post things that you want to read about! With that said, this week’s Funny Friday video was created by Microsoft and is called “Extreme Makeover: Server Room Edition”. It’s a spoof on the hit TV show, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” hosted by Ty Pennington and is pretty hilarious. If you like the TV show, you’ll find this video especially entertaining. As always, have a safe and relaxing weekend!

The Data Center Industry 

It seems that everyone in the data center industry these days is looking to find the most efficient and cheap way to run their facility. It makes sense when you think about it. Why spend more and narrow your profit margin, when you could be actively seeking ways to reduce the cost of keeping your server farm efficiently up and running. With reducing project budgets and more economic pressure, data center managers are considering all savings opportunities and free cooling is one of them.

Data center industry leaders are leading this trend.

EBay is currently running their data center, Project Mercury, in Phoenix AZ, at industry high temperatures of 80+ degrees Fahrenheit and is still able to maintain a PUE of 1.046 when the desert sun spikes to a scorching 115+ degrees. Project Mercury uses warm water to cool the facility and in a case study released by The Green Grid, was able to show that this method of high temperature cooling is as efficient as running data centers at cooler temperatures.

Facebook’s Prineville data center in Washington St. and facility in Sweden were both built to use 100 percent “free” cooling and have also both been very successful in keeping low PUEs. Google’s datacenter in Belgium has no chillers and simply relies on the cold temperatures of the climate to keep their servers cool.   The facility only relies on its backup internal air-conditioning on an average of 7 days a year.

As more data centers turn to free cooling methods, it is understandable that The Green Grid would update and release new free air cooling maps and resources. The updated Free Air Cooling Maps take into account new ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers) regulations and now include two new classifications of datacenters and have expanded the range of allowable environmental conditions in hopes of encouraging more energy efficient practices.  The updates maps are published in a white paper released by the Green Grid and graphically show the potential for free cooling, under ideal conditions, in any location in North America, Europe, and Japan. In addition to the maps The Green Grid has made it simpler for data center managers to calculate the estimated savings of free cooling by launching a webpage that has an easy to use free cooling savings calculator.

So as the data center industry continues to progress towards a more green and efficient way of operating, The Green Grid continues to stay in the forefront of these efforts by publishing and introducing information to help make sure the industry stays on the right path.

Resources: 

White Paper #46 – Updated Air-Side Free Cooling Maps: The Impact of ASHRAE 2011 Allowable Ranges-
http://www.thegreengrid.org/~/media/WhitePapers/WP46UpdatedAirsideFreeCoolingMapsTheImpactofASHRAE2011AllowableRanges.pdf?lang=en

http://www.thegreengrid.org/en/Global/Content/white-papers/WP46-UpdatedAirsideFreeCoolingMaps-TheImpactofASHRAE2011AllowableRanges

The Green Grid- Free-Cooling Estimated Savings Calculator-
http://cooling.thegreengrid.org/calc_index.html

The Green Grid- North American Free Air Cooling Low Res Map – ASHRAE Class A2-
http://www.thegreengrid.org/~/media/Files/FreeCoolingTool/fac_CLASSA2_NA%20-%20low%20res.png?lang=en

The Green Grid- North American Free Air Cooling Low Res Map – ASHRAE Class A3-
http://www.thegreengrid.org/~/media/Files/FreeCoolingTool/fac_CLASSA3_NA%20-%20low%20res.png?lang=en

Funny Video- “I Want To Be A Technology Consultant”

It’s the end of another week, which means it’s time for the Funny Friday Video! This week’s video was posted by www.TheITRoom.com and is called “I Want To Be A Technology Consultant.” The manager of the data center is sick of his CEO hiring consultants, so he dreams of being one himself. It’s hilarious and I think you will all get a few laughs out of it! Happy Friday everyone and have a great weekend!

Data center as a service (DCaaS) is the provision of offsite physical data center facilities and infrastructure to clients, but does it benefit an organization or business more than having their own facility? Some companies find it more beneficial to lease a space and simply provide their own servers, switches and any other hardware needed to implement in the new location. What attracts many of their clients is the fact that oftentimes, the DCaaS provider will assist the client in customizing the space to accommodate unique needs, such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet fiber connectivity, high-density cooling or other resources.

A major benefit that DCaaS offers is expansion for data centers that can no longer do so in their own facilities; this may be due to a lack of power or cooling, lack of physical space, lack of capital, lack of experienced IT staff or other factors. By turning to a DCaaS provider, a client essentially outsources some portion (or perhaps all) of its data center to the provider. The client then is able to accesses the provider’s computing resources remotely across a wide-area network (WAN).

For example, a business may choose to focus on maintaining a small number of mission-critical applications in-house. Rather than staff up or invest capital in additional computing hardware, the business will rent resources from a DCaaS provider to handle secondary or transient applications.

The principal advantages of using a DCaaS provider are the level of “ownership” and customization available – a client uses their own hardware, and the provider can customize the space to meet that client’s unique needs. The space can also be constructed with sensors and controls allowing the client to monitor and react to changes in the computing environment. When the provider and client work together to identify those needs from the start, the result can be quite effective. Overlooking those needs, however, can lead to client problems and dissatisfaction with the provider. The challenge is for the prospective client to ask the right questions, understand their needs, and communicate them effectively to the DCaaS provider.

Depending on the company, clients may find that opting for DCaaS is more cost effective, easier and faster than attempting their own data center builds, especially when dealing with facilities in multiple locations. The customization available with DCaaS deployments also allows clients to define the role of each facility. For example, one DCaaS facility may be built for disaster recovery, while another location may be tailored as a primary site, and so on. However, a client will need some level of data center expertise to make best use of a DCaaS (or even a colocation) provider.

Funny Video- “ PUNKED by a magician in the IT data center”

Happy Friday readers! This week’s video was posted on the website funny or die. Magician Scott Tokar, goes to an Isilon data center, cuts a live ethernet cable and then magically repairing it. The engineers reaction is pretty hilarious! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! As always, have a safe and enjoyable weekend! 

Would you sleep at work?

As England prepares for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, one company thinks they may have found an innovative way to beat the congestion that is about to clog London’s travel and road networks.

Interxion, a colocation data center, located in the heart of the city, has come up with a solution that will ensure its tech staff will be available 24/7. What you ask is so ingenious that it can guarantee that employees will be at work on time, at all times? A hover craft to fly over the bumper to bumper traffic? A special car designated specially for Interxion employees in the Tube? No, Interxion has conveniently cut out all issues created by the massive traffic and transportation headache that the Olympics will bring. It has, very creatively and resourcefully, installed sleeping pods in its data center, effectively ensuring that its techs never have to see the outside world or the light of day again. No late workers, no downtime issues, no stress.

Interxion does have reason to worry about how the games will affect the operation and uptime of its data center. It plays an integral part in London’s digital world, housing online services such as digital businesses, social media, entertainment, online retail and banking, and education. Millions of people across the UK rely on Interxion’s service delivery, so any downtime can be detrimental.

As Greg McCulloch, UK Managing Director, Interxion commented in a press release this week, “Due to the nature of our business we need to be ready for all eventualities and while we are excited to have the Olympics in London we also need to be sure that we can continue to offer the highest level of resilience to our customers. The installation of the sleeping pods is another great example of Interxion putting resilience and uptime at the forefront of everything it does.”

The pods themselves were created by the UK-based company Podtime and are modular in design. Although originally intended for the use of “power naps”, Interxion has thought of that issue as well and has had its 10 pods retrofitted for overnight stays. Said to be comfortable, private, and secure for the user, these pods have TVs, radio with earphones, laptop holders, and memory foam mattresses. How comfortable they actually are is yet to be known.

“Everyone working in central London will feel the challenging side-effect of the Games, and the organizations they work for will face operational issues with employees being stuck in queues rather than being in the office,” said Jon Gray, Director at Podtime. “We see the sleeping pods as a good cheap solution for those ‘staff-critical’ companies which must have 24/7 cover for vital procedures… our pods offer comfort, privacy and security at a reasonable price.”

So as London gears up for the 2012 Olympic games, it seems that Interxion is one step ahead of its competitors in ensuring that nothing will go wrong in its data center. But as innovative as their pod strategy is, would you be willing to sleep at work?