27620578
submission
miller60 writes:
Asetek Inc., which makes liquid cooling systems for gaming PCs and high-performance workstations, is entering the data center market. On Wednesday the company unveiled a line of liquid cooling products for servers and racks. In making the jump from the PC market to servers, Asetek is following the lead of Hardcore Computer, which last year introduced a liquid-cooled blade server. A key difference: Asetek is offering rackmount server solutions for HPC clusters.
27296200
submission
miller60 writes:
It's a been a big year for big infrastructure. A review of the top 10 data center stories of 2011 at Data Center Knowledge reflects the fascination with the companies running the Internet’s largest infrastructures – Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon – and how they are scaling up their data centers. Also popular: coverage of supercomputers and data center cooling. What were other notable stories and trends for data centers and cloud compuitng in 2011?
26338784
submission
miller60 writes:
Is preventive maintenance on data center equipment not really that preventive after all? With human error cited as a leading cause of downtime, a vigorous maintenance schedule can actually make a data center less reliable, according to some industry experts.“The most common threat to reliability is excessive maintenance,” said Steve Fairfax of "science risk" consultant MTechnology. "We get the perception that lots of testing improves component reliability. It does not.” In some cases, poorly documented maintenance can lead to conflicts with automated systems, he warned. Other speakers at the recent 7x24 Exchange conference urged data center operators to focus on understanding their own facilities, and then evaluating which maintenance programs are essential, including offerings from equipment vendors.
25189734
submission
miller60 writes:
Facebook is sharply reducing its use of backup generators at its new data center in Sweden, saying it will rely upon redundant power feeds. The area near the new server farm in Luleå, Sweden has many hydro-electric power plants, making the local grid unusually reliable, with no outages since 1979. This allows Facebook to buy fewer generators, reduce emissions from testing, and store less diesel fuel. Yahoo has also contemplated a data center with no generators, relying upon its network to divert data to backup sites in the event of a utility outage at one site.
24617078
submission
miller60 writes:
Heat wheels, also known as rotary heat exchangers, have been used in industrial cooling but in recent years have been adapted for data centers. Early adopters in Europe cited impressive reductions in their power bills, but few U.S. data centers took the plunge — until now. In recent month heat wheels have been installed at Bend Broadband in Oregon, and today Dell said it would use one in a new facility in Washington state.
24586010
submission
miller60 writes:
AOL has begun operations at a new data center that will be completely unmanned, with all monitoring and management being handled remotely. The new "lights out" facility is part of a broader updating of AOL infrastructure that leverages virtualization and modular design to quickly deploy and manage server capacity. “These changes have not been easy,” AOL's Mike Manos writes in a blog post about the new facility. "Its always culturally tough to being open to fundamentally changing business as usual."
24409924
submission
miller60 writes:
Red Hat has acquired Gluster, which makes open source software to deploy cloud storage on commodity hardware. Gluster is used by Pandora, Box.net and Brightcove to manage large volumes of data. "We view Gluster to be a strong fit with Red Hat's virtualization and cloud products and strategies by bringing to storage the capabilities that we bring to servers today," said Red Hat. For details, see an FAQ from Red Hat and message from the founders of Gluster.
24311734
submission
miller60 writes:
Google is back in building mode. On Tuesday the company announced plans to expand its infrastructure in Asia with new data centers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Today Google opened its new server farm in Oklahoma, and announced plans to build a second facility to add capacity. It looks like Google will soon need more than the 900,000 servers it is reportedly using to run its operations.
22293202
submission
miller60 writes:
Citrix Systems has acquired Cloud.com, an open source platform that allows service providers to quickly deploy EC2-style cloud offerings. It also gets a prime cloudy domain. Citrix says it will continue Cloud.com's support for VMware, add support for Microsoft's Hyper-V, and also remains committed to the OpenStack open source cloud platform. Here's a video overview of Cloud.com and its technology.
20458760
submission
miller60 writes:
Google today released a video showcasing the security and data protection practices in its data centers. Filmed at the company’s South Carolina data center, it provides a look at Google's wiping of data and (literal) shredding of hard drives.
20145548
submission
miller60 writes:
Dell is is deploying a fleet of 10 data centers around the world to host cloud computing services for customers. The company plans to invest $1 billion to launch and market cloud offerings that will include email archiving and a hosted virtual desktop offering. Dell’s move reflects the cloud ambitions of server vendors, including rival HP, who are launching their own cloud platforms even as they market their gear to cloud providers.
