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Submission + - UK Firm Claims Facebook Stole Data Center Designs (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: A British firm claims that Facebook stole its designs for modular data centers to build its efficient data center in Lulea, Sweden — and then shared them with the whole industry. BladeRoom Group has been making modular power-efficient data centers for some years, and says its technology has distinctive features it developed earlier in work for hospitals and other buildings. Facebook's data center opened last year,using pre-fabricated "flatpack" designs, which have been shared through the Open Compute Project.

Comment The service already exists elsewhere (Score 2) 160

by judgecorp (#49334147) Attached to: Energy Company Trials Computer Servers To Heat Homes
Whatever the drawbacks, it's worth pointing out that there are at least three other companies in this field, two of them are already offering service.

Qarnot Computing of France has around 300 Q-Rad servers installed in homes, offices and schools, carrying out specialised work, including risk calculations for a French bank
http://www.datacenterdynamics....

In Germany Cloud&Heat offers a generic OpenStack service to "cloud customers", and free heat to "heat customers" who have its cabinets installed in their buildings.
http://www.datacenterdynamics....

And in New York, Exergy is still at the Kickstarter phase, but has some interesting ideas
http://www.datacenterdynamics.... Peter Judge

Submission + - Fish Farmer Says Data Center Will Kill His Fish (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: A Bavarian fish farmer has filed a law suit complaining that a planned data center will kill his trout. Service provider e-shelter plans to build a data center cooled by groundwater, but Anton Kurz says it will warm his water by two degrees Celsius — which is enough to reduce the yield of his fish eggs by increasing the risk of disease. Kurz's lawsuit will be heard on 3 March.

Submission + - Kickstarter Project Promises to Reclaim Computing's Waste Heat (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Project Exergy promises to reclaim the heat generated in computing by distributing cloud servers to homes and offices where heat is needed. It has an air-cooled prototype, and is about to launch a Kickstarter request for $2 million to build a liquid cooled version. The concept could eliminate the real-estate required for cloud data centers, and heating bills for homes — at least in theory. The New York based Exergy folks have some good ideas, but they should be aware of two European projects promising the same deal: Qarnot in France and Cloud&Heat in Germany.

Submission + - UK Firm Promises Cash From Your Batteries (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Upside Energy of the UK promises you can get money from the battery power of your UPS (uninterruptible power supply). The National Grid suffers huge peaks, during which times old, expensive and polluting power stations have to be switched on. The Grid already offers a financial incentive for large organisations to use less power during these times; smaller firms have a UPS that can power the company for about 15 minutes. Run on the UPS during peak power load times, and the utility will pay you — and you test your UPS at the same time. Upside promises software which will manage the process, including claiming rebates from the electricity companies for going off-grid for short periods..

Submission + - Ubuntu Gets Container Friendly "Snappy" Core (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Canonical just announced a new Ubuntu Core which uses containers instead of packages. It's the biggest Ubuntu shakeup for 20 years, says Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth, and is based on a tiny core, which will run Docker and other container technology better, quicker and with greater security than other Linuxes. Delivered as alpha code today, it's going to become a supported product, designed to compete with both CoreOS and Red Hat Atomic, the two leading container-friendly Linux approaches. Shuttleworth says it came about because Canonical found it had solved the "cloud" problems (delivering and updating apps and keeping security) by accident — in its work on a mobile version of Ubuntu

Submission + - Amazon Promises To Go 100% Renewable. Greenpeace says 'When?' (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Amazon has promised that its data centers, including those for Amazon Web Services (AWS) will run entirely on renewable energy. It's a long term commitment and comes after similar promises from Facebook, Google and Microsoft. But there's not enough detail yet for Greenpeace, which has been campaigning for years for Amazon to make this move.

Submission + - Germans Get Free Heating From The Cloud (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: The idea of re-using waste server heat is not new, but German firm Cloud&Heat seems to have developed it further than most. For a flat installation fee, the company will install a rack of servers in your office, with its own power and Internet connection. Cloud&Heat then pay the bills and you get the heat. As well as Heat customers, the firm wants Cloud customers, who can buy a standard OpenStack-based cloud compute and storage service on the web. The company guarantees that data is encrypted and held within Germany — at any one of its Heat customers' premises. In principle, it's a way to build a data center with no real estate, by turning its waste heat into an asset. A similar deal is promised by French firm Qarnot..

Submission + - The Queen's Data Center Gets A Royal Warrant (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: The hosting firm that holds the Queen of England's data has been granted a "Royal Warrant". This allows it to use the phrase "By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen", and display the royal crest in public. The firm in question, Pulsant, has been working for the Royal Family for more than five years., and is understandably pleased with the marketing opportunities. "They are a very good customer," said somewhat-understated Pulsant CTO Matt Lovell.

Submission + - Vax, PDP/11, HP3000 And Others Live On In The Cloud (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Surprisingly, critical applications still rely on old platforms, although legacy hardware is on its last legs. Swiss emulation expert Stromasys is offering emulation in the cloud for old hardware using a tool cheekily named after Charon, the ferryman to the afterlife. Systems covered include the Vax and PDP/11 platforms from Digital Equipment (which was swallowed by Compaq and then HP) as well as Digital's Alpha RISC systems, and HP's HP3000. It also offers Sparc emulation, although Oracle might dispute the need for this.

Submission + - Xen Patch: IBM is Late, Rackspace Is Sorry (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Other cloud providers have followed Amazon in patching a flaw in the Xen hypervizor, a process which requires rebooting individual servers, and needs the co-operation of customers. The flaw can let an attacker with a virtual machine crash the host and read data belonging to other customers. Amazon got started before the bug was announced, and Rackspace followed fairly swiftly, apologising for bouncing its users into the process at short notice. IBM, however, waited until after the flaw was made public — potentially exposing some of its customers to attack.

Submission + - UK Government Faces Lawsuit Over emergency Surveillance Bill (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: The British Government has had to produce an emergency surveillance Bill after the European Court of Justice ruled that European rules on retaining metadata were illegal. That Bill has now been passed by the House of Commons with almost no debate, and will become law if approved by the House of Lords. But the so-called DRIP (Data retenteion and Investigatory Powers) Bill could face a legal challenge: the Open Rights Group (ORG) is fund-raising to bring a suit which would argue that blanket data retention is unlawful, so these emergency measures would be no more legal than the ones they replaced.

Submission + - UK Favourite AutoRoute LAid To Rest By Microsoft (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Microsoft has announced MapPoint will be closed by the end of 2014. The Windows mapping software has been replaced for most users by web services such as Google Maps or Bing Maps, but some saw value in an offline map application. The AutoRoute applicattion which formed part of MapPoint was hugely popular in the UK — running on half the UK's PCs in the 1990s

Submission + - Android Malware Poses as Google Play, Comes Pre-Installed (techweekeurope.co.uk) 1

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Two worrying developments in Android malware. FireEye has spotted a program which installs covertly and poses as the Google Play app store. The installation appears to fail, but carries an encrypted payload which is unpacked stealthily. Meanwhile, a Chinese phone manufacturer has a suspiciously cheap Android smartphone, which includes pre-installed malware, again pretending to be the Google Play app. Security firm G Data believes the manufacturer may be subsidising its costs using stolen data

Submission + - China Bans Windows XP On Government Computers (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: China has banned installation of Windows 8 on any new government computers. The ban could be a headache for Microsoft, and may be a bargaining tool in China's campaign to extend the life of Windows XP — still running on the vast majorith of Chinese government computers, and something like 70 percent of computers in the country as a whole.

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