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Submission + - New Approach to Immersion Cooling Powers HPC in a High Rise (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: How do you cool a high-density server installation inside a high rise in Hong Kong? You dunk the servers, immersing them in fluid to create an extremely efficient HPC environment in a hot, humid location. Hong Kong's Allied Control developed its immersion cooling solution using a technique called open bath immersion (OBI), which uses 3M's Novec fluid. OBI is an example of passive two-phase cooling, which uses a boiling liquid to remove heat from a surface and then condenses the liquid for reuse, all without a pump. It's a slightly different approach to immersion cooling than the Green Revolution technique being tested by Intel and deployed at scale by energy companies. Other players in immersion cooling include Iceotope and Hardcore (now LiquidCool).

Submission + - Microsoft Developing Self-Powered Racks With on-Board Fuel Cells (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: Microsoft wants to bring power generation inside the rack. The company says it will test racks with built-in fuel cells, a move that would eliminate the need for expensive power distribution systems seen in traditional data centers. Using a rack-level fuel cell can “collapse the entire energy supply chain, from the power plant to the server motherboard, into the confines of a single server cabinet,” says Microsoft, which plans to use biogas as fuel. The plan builds on Microsoft's plan for poop-powered data centers built alongside water treatment plants. The company has published a white paper describing its research.

Submission + - London Internet Exchange Brings Euro-Style Exchange Model to US (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: The London Internet Exchange (LINX) is teaming with Dutch data center provider EvoSwitch to start a European-style neutral internet exchange in northern Virginia. In the European model, traffic exchanges are managed by participants, rather than the colocation providers hosting the infrastructure. LINX will launch in EvoSwitch's Manassas facility, but also build a fiber ring to expand the exchange to at least two other sites in Virginia. The project is part of a broader effort to launch Euro-style exchanges as an alternative to Equinix and other commercial network hubs focused in single facilities. In London, the LINX spans 10 data centers run by four different colo providers.

Submission + - Quirky Anime Tradition Triggers Epic Tweetstorm - 143,000 Tweets Per Second (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: It lasted just 10 seconds. But a barrage of Tweets from fans of Hayao Miyazaki's 1986 anime film "Castle in the Sky" set an all-time Twitter traffic record on Aug.3, hitting 143,199 Tweets per second. The event provided an unusual test of Twitter's infrastructure, which has been broadly retooled since a series of embarrassing outages during the 2010 World Cup. The focused Tweetstorm during "Castle in the Sky" is tied to the practice of tweeting a key line of dialogue as it is spoken in the film.

Submission + - How the Leap Second Bug Led Facebook to Build DCIM Tools (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: On July 1, 2012 the leap second time-handling bug caused many Linux servers to get stuck in a loop. Large data centers saw power usage spike, sometimes by megawatts. The resulting "server storm” prompted Facebook to develop new software for data center infrastructure management (DCIM) to manage its infrastructure, providing real-time data on everything from the servers to the generators. The incident also offered insights into the value of flexible power design in its server farmss, which kept the status updates flowing as the company nearly maxed out its power capacity.

Submission + - U.S. Government Data Center Count Rises to 7,000

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: The U.S. government keeps finding more data centers. Federal agencies have about 7,000 data centers, according to the latest stats from the ongoing IT consolidation process. The number started at 432 in 1999, but soon began to rise as agencies found more facilities, and exploded once the Obama administration decided to include server closets as well as dedicated data centers. The latest estimate is more than double the 3,300 facilities the government thought it had last year. The process has led to the closure of 484 data centers thus far, with another 855 planned over the next year. The GAO continues to call for the process to look beyond the number of facilities and focus on savings.

Submission + - Fidelity Now Selling Mutual Funds, Data Centers (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: Mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments has developed its own factory-built data centers and will begin selling them to other companies. The company liked the benefits of modular data center design, including faster deployment and the ability to adapt to new technology, but was unsatisfied with the leading offerings, so it built its own. After using the design in its own facilities, Fidelity is commercializing its pre-fab units as Centercore. Fidelity's move follows the recent decision by another giant US brand, the retailer Sears Holdings, to enter the data center real estate market.

Submission + - Sears is Turning Shuttered Stores Into Data Centers (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: Servers may soon fill the aisles where shoppers once roamed. Sears Holdings is seeking to convert former Sears and Kmart stores into Internet data hubs. Some stand-alone stores and distribution centers may be repurposed as data centers, while mall-based stores can be converted into disaster recovery sites, the company says, offering access to stores and eateries for displaced workers who may be on site for weeks. Then there's the wireless tower opportunity. Seventy percent of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Sears or Kmart store, and these rooftops can be leased to fill gaps in cell coverage. It's not the first effort to convert stores into IT infrastructure, as Rackspace is headquartered in an old mall, and companies have built data centers in malls in Indiana and Maryland. But Sears, which operates 25 million square feet of real estate, hopes to make this strategy work at scale.
Hardware

Submission + - 'Data Center in a Box' Brings Colo to the Customer (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: What if your company could have a data center delivered to its doorstep in less than 120 days? That's what IO has done for LexisNexis, using modular data centers to create a Tier III data center just minutes from the company's global headquarters in Dayton, Ohio. LexisNexis, which provides database and disaster recovery services for law firms, is the prototype customer for the on-site offering from IO, whose "data center in a box" offering is being adopted by Goldman Sachs and the Securities & Exchange Commission, which will use modules to house its EDGAR database. The concept has come a long way since Sun introduced the Blackbox container in 2006.
Hardware

Submission + - Data Centers Springing Up in Old Chip Fabs (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: A growing number of former semiconductor fabs are becoming server farms. A data center company will convert a former fab near Dallas into a massive data center that will offer between 700,000 and 1.4 million square feet of server space. The company, QTS, followed a similar path with a huge former Qimonda facility in Richmond. In Silicon Valley, Facebook's servers live in an old Seagate plant converted by Fortune Data Centers. Up in Oregon, a former Hynix chip plant is becoming a data center. These facilities offer several attributes that make them good covnersion prospects: lots of existing power and cooling capacity, with raised floor already available in many faciltiies. Data center companies says this existing infrastructure saves them money, leaving less to retrofit.
Mars

Submission + - Mars Astronauts will drink a lot of pee (smartplanet.com)

Submitted by Andy Prough
Andy Prough writes: Thanks to ambitions of humans going to Mars one day, technology that turns wastewater into drinking water is improving. Conserving water all the way to Mars and back will be vital, and so NASA is working overtime to make pee-drinking far more efficient. NASA's “first generation forward osmosis secondary treatment system” is being tested at Johnson Space Center in Houston, and pee-drinking technology is currently in use onboard the Space Station and at NASA’s Sustainability Base in Silicon Valley. The systems recover more than 95% of water from wastewater, which includes other water sources such as laundry water.

Don't be surprised to see Wall Street investing in pee soon. Not only is pee being churned into a tasty beverage to parch an interplanetary thirst, but yesterday one company announced that they are developing a pee-powered fuel cell for our soldiers to charge their smartphones on the battlefield.
Supercomputing

Submission + - Titan is New Champ in Supercomputing's Top500 (top500.org)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: The new Top500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers is out, and the new champion is Titan, the new and improved system that previously ruled the Top500 as Jaguar. Oak Ridge Labs' Titan knocked Livermore Labs' Sequoia system out of the top spot, with a Linpack benchmark of more than 17 petaflops a second. Check out the full list, or an illustrated guide to the top 10.
Hardware

Submission + - New York Data Centers Battle Floods, Utility Outages (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: At least three data center buildings in lower Manhattan are struggling with power problems amid widespread flooding and utility outages caused by Hurricane Sandy. Flooded basements at two sites took out diesel fuel pumps, leaving them unable to refuel generators on higher levels. One of these was Datagram, which knocked out Buzzfeed and the Gawker network of sites. At 111 8th Avenue, some tenants lost power when Equinix briefly experienced generator problems.
Facebook

Submission + - Open Compute Hardware Adapted for Colo Centers (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by 1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: Facebook has now adapted its Open Compute servers to work in leased data center space a step that could make the highly-efficient "open hardware" designs accessible to a broader range of users. The Open Compute Project was launched last year to bring standards and repeatable designs to IT infrastructure, and has been gaining traction as more hardware vendors join the effort. Facebook's move to open its designs has been a welcome departure from the historic secrecy surrounding data center design and operations. But energy-saving customizations that work in Facebook's data centers present challenges in multi-tenant facilities. To make it work, Facebook hacked a rack and gave up some energy savings by using standard 208V power.

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