5 Data Center Technology Predictions for 2012

December 28, 2011 Leave a Comment

2011 was a great year for technology innovation.  The science of data center design and operations continued to improve, the move away from mixed-use buildings used as data centers continued, the watts/sqft metric took a second seat to overall kilowatts available to a facility or customer, and the idea of compute capacity and broadband as a utility began to take its place as a basic right of citizens.

However, there are 5 areas where we will see additional significant advances in 2012.

1.  Data Center Consolidation.  The US Government admits it is using only 27% of its overall available compute power.  With 2094 data centers supporting the federal government (from the CIO’s 25 Point Plan  to Reform Fed IT Mgt), the government is required to close at least 800 of those data centers by 2015.

Data Center ConstructionThe lesson is not lost on state and local governments, private industry, or even internet content providers.  The economics of operating a data center or server closet, whether in costs of real estate, power, hardware, in addition to service and licensing agreements, are compelling enough to make even the most fervent server-hugger reconsider their religion.

2.  Cloud Computing.  Who doesn’t believe cloud computing will eventually replace the need for a server closets, cabinets, or even small cages in data centers?  The move to cloud computing is as certain as the move to email was in the 1980s. 

Some IT managers and data owners hate the idea of cloud computing, enterprise service busses, and consolidated data.  Not so much an issue of losing control, but in many cases because it brings transparency to their operation.  If you are the owner of data in a developing country, and suddenly everything you do can be audited by a central authority - well it might make you uncomfortable…

A lesson learned while attending a  fast pitch contest during late 2009 in Irvine, CA…  An enterprising entrepreneur gave his “pitch” to a panel of investment bankers and venture capital representatives.  He stated he was looking for a $5 million investment in his startup company. 

A panelist asked what the money was for, and the entrepreneur stated “.. and $2 million to build out a data center…”  The panelist responded that 90% of new companies fail within 2 years.  Why would he want to be stuck with the liability of a data center and hardware if the company failed? The gentleman further stated, “don’t waste my money on a data center – do the smart thing, use the Amazon cloud.”

3.  Virtual Desktops and Hosted Office Automation.  How many times have we lost data and files due to a failed hard drive, stolen laptop, or virus disrupting our computer?  What is the cost or burden of keeping licenses updated, versions updated, and security patches current in an organization with potentially hundreds of users?  What is the lead time when a user needs a new application loaded on a computer?

From applications as simple as Google Docs, to Microsoft 365, and other desktop replacement applications suites, users will become free from the burden of carrying a heavy laptop computer everywhere they travel.  Imagine being able to connect your 4G/LTE phone’s HDMI port to a hotel widescreen television monitor, and be able to access all the applications normally used at a desktop.  You can give a presentation off your phone, update company documents, or nearly any other IT function with the only limitation being a requirement to access broadband Internet connections (See # 5 below).

Your phone can already connect to Google Docs and Microsoft Live Office, and the flexibility of access will only improve as iPads and other mobile devices mature.

The other obvious benefit is files will be maintained on servers, much more likely to be backed up and included in a disaster recovery plan.

4.  The Science of Data Centers.  It has only been a few years since small hosting companies were satisfied to go into a data center carved out of a mixed-use building, happy to have access to electricity, cooling, and a menu of available Internet network providers.  Most rooms were Data Center Power Requirementsdesigned to accommodate 2~3kW per cabinet, and users installed servers, switches, NAS boxes, and routers without regard to alignment or power usage.

That has changed.  No business or organization can survive without a 24x7x265 presence on the Internet, and most small enterprises – and large enterprises, are either consolidating their IT into professionally managed data centers, or have already washed their hands of servers and other IT infrastructure.

The Uptime Institute, BICSI, TIA, and government agencies have begun publishing guidelines on data center construction providing best practices, quality standards, design standards, and even standards for evaluation.  Power efficiency using metrics such as the PUE/DCiE provide additional guidance on power management, data center management, and design. 

The days of small business technicians running into a data center at 2 a.m. to install new servers, repair broken servers, and pile their empty boxes or garbage in their cabinet or cage on the way out are gone.  The new data center religion is discipline, standards, discipline, and security. 

Electricity is as valuable as platinum, just as cooling and heat are managed more closely than inmates at San Quentin.  While every other standards organization is now offering certification in cabling, data center design, and data center management, we can soon expect universities to offer an MS or Ph.D in data center sciences.

5.  The 4th Utility Gains Traction.  Orwell’s “1984” painted a picture of pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control (Wikipedia).  Many people believe the Internet is the source of all evil, including identity theft, pornography, crime, over-socialization of cultures and thoughts, and a huge intellectual time sink that sucks us into the need to be wired or connected 24 hours a day.

Yes, that is pretty much true, and if we do not consider the 1000 good things about the Internet vs. each 1 negative aspect, it might be a pretty scary place to consider all future generations being exposed and indoctrinated.  The alternative is to live in a intellectual Brazilian or Papuan rain forest, one step out of the evolutionary stone age.

The Internet is not going away, unless some global repressive government, fundamentalist religion, or dictator manages to dismantle civilization as we know it.

The 4th utility identifies broadband access to the ‘net as a basic right of all citizens, with the same status as roads, water, and electricity.  All governments with a desire to have their nation survive and thrive in the next millennium will find a way to cooperate with network infrastructure providers to build out their national information infrastructure (haven’t heard that term since Al Gore, eh?).

Without a robust 4th utility, our children and their children will produce a global generation of intellectual migrant workers, intellectual refugees from a failed national information sciences vision and policy.

2012 should be a great year.  All the above predictions are positive, and if proved true, will leave the United States and other countries with stronger capacities to improve their national quality of life, and bring us all another step closer.

Happy New Year!

Filed under Cloud Computing, Data Center, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Networking, Virtualization Tagged with , , , , ,

Charting the Future of Small Data Centers

February 27, 2011 2 Comments

Every week a new data center hits the news with claims of greater than 100,000 square feet at >300 watts/square foot, and levels of security rivaling that of the NSA.  Hot and cold aisle containment, marketing people slinging terms such as PUE (Power Utilization Efficiency), modular data centers, containers, computational fluid dynamics, and outsourcing with such smoothness and velocity that even used car salesmen regard them in complete awe.

Don’t get me wrong, outsourcing your enterprise data center or Internet site into a commercial data center (colocation), or cloud computing-supported virtual data center, is not a bad thing.  As interconnections between cities are reinforced, and sufficient levels of broadband access continues to find its way to both business and residences throughout the country – not to mention all the economic drivers such as OPEX, CAPEX, and flexibility in cloud environments, the need or requirement to maintain an internal data center or server closet makes little sense.

Small Data Centers Feel Pain

Small Data Center Cabinet LineupIn the late 1990s data center colocation started to develop roots.  The Internet was becoming mature, and eCommerce, entertainment, business-to-business, academic, government IT operations found proximity to networks a necessity, and the colocation industry formed to meet the opportunity stimulated by Internet adoption.

Many of these data centers were built in “mixed use” buildings, or existing properties in city centers which were close to existing telecommunication infrastructure.  In cities such as Los Angeles, the commercial property absorption in city centers was at a low, providing very available and affordable space for the emerging colocation industry.

The power densities in those early days was minimal, averaging somewhere around 70 watts/square foot.  Thus, equipment installed in colocation space carved out of office buildings was manageable through over-subscribing air conditioning within the space.  The main limitation in the early colocation days was floor loading within an office space, as batteries and equipment cabinets within colocation areas would stretch building structures to their limits.

As the data center industry, and Internet content hosting continued to grow, the amount of equipment being placed in mixed-use building colocation centers finally started reaching a breaking point in ~2005.  The buildings simply could not support the requirement for additional power, cooling, backup generators needed to support the rapidly developing data center market.

Around that time a new generation of custom-built data center properties began construction, with very little limitation on either weight, power consumption, cooling requirements, or creativity in custom designs of space to gain greatest PUE factors and move towards “green” designs.

The “boom town” inner-city data centers then began experiencing difficulty attracting new customers and retaining their existing customer base.  Many of the “dot com” customers ran out of steam during this period, going bankrupt or abandoning their cabinets and cages, while new data center customers fit into a few categories:

  • High end hosting and content delivery networks (CDNs), including cloud computing
  • Enterprise outsourcing
  • Telecom companies, Internet Service Providers, Network Service Providers

With few exceptions these customers demanded much higher power densities, physical security, redundancy, reliability, and access to large numbers of communication providers.  Small data centers operating out of office building space find it very difficult to meet demands of high end users, and thus the colocation community began a migration the larger data centers.  In addition, the loss of cash flow from “dot com” churn forced many data centers to shut down, leaving much of the small data center industry in ruins.

Data Center Consolidation and Cloud Computing Compounds the Problem

New companies are finding it very difficult to justify spending money on physical servers and basic software licenses.  If you are able to spool up servers and storage on demand through a cloud service provider – why waste the time and money trying to build your own infrastructure – even infrastructure outsourced or colocated in a small data center?  It is simply a bad investment for most companies to build data centers – particularly if the cloud service provider has inherent disaster recovery and backup utility.

Even existing small eCommerce sites hitting refresh cycles for their hardware and software find it difficult to continue one or two cabinet installations within small data centers when they can accomplish the same thing, for a lower cost, and receive higher performance refreshing in a cloud service provider.

Even the US Government, as the world’s largest IT user has turned its back on small data center installations throughout federal government agencies.

The goals of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative are to assist agencies in identifying their existing data center assets and to formulate consolidation plans that include a technical roadmap and consolidation targets. The Initiative aims to address the growth of data centers and assist agencies in leveraging best practices from the public and private sector to:

  • Promote the use of Green IT by reducing the overall energy and real estate footprint of government data centers;
  • Reduce the cost of data center hardware, software and operations;
  • Increase the overall IT security posture of the government; and,
  • Shift IT investments to more efficient computing platforms and technologies.

To harness the benefits of cloud computing, we have instituted a Cloud First policy. This policy is intended to accelerate the pace at which the government will realize the value of cloud computing by requiring agencies to evaluate safe, secure cloud computing options before making any new investments. (Federal Cloud Computing Strategy)
Adding similar initiatives in the UK, Australia, Japan, Canada, and other countries to eliminate inefficient data center programs, and the level of attention being given to these initiatives in the private sector, it is a clear message that inefficient data center installations may become an exception.

Hope for Small Data Centers?

Absolutely!  There will always be a compelling argument for proximity of data and applications to end users.  Whether this be enterprise data, entertainment, or disaster recovery and business continuity, there is a need for well built and managed data centers outside of the “Tier 1” data center industry.

dc2However, this also means data center operators will need to upgrade their existing facilities to meet the quality and availability standard/requirements of a wired global network-enabled community.  Internet and applications/data access is no longer a value-added service, it is critical infrastructure.

Even the most “shoestring” budget facility will need to meet basic standards published by BICSI (Ex BICSI 2010-002), the Telecom Industry Association (TIA-942), or even private organizations such as the Uptime Institute.

With the integration of network-enabled everything into business and social activities, investors and insurance companies are demanding audits of data centers, using audit standards such as SAS70 to provide confidence their investments are protected with satisfactory operational process and construction.

Even if a data center cannot provide 100,000 square feet of 300 watt space, but can provide the local market with adequate space and quality to meet customer needs, there will be a market.

This is particularly true for customers who require flexibility in service agreements, custom support, a large selection of telecommunications companies available within the site, and have a need for local business continuity options.  Hosting a local Internet exchange point or carrier Ethernet exchange within the facility would also make the space much more attractive.

The Road Ahead

Large data centers and cloud service providers are continuing to expand, developing their options and services to meet the growing data center consolidation and virtualization trend within both enterprise and global Internet-facing community.  This makes sense, and will provide a very valuable service for a large percentage of the industry.

Small data centers in Tier 1 cities (in the US that would include Los Angeles, the Northern California Bay Area, New York, Northern Virginia/DC/MD) are likely to find difficulty competing with extremely large data centers – unless they are able to provide a very compelling service such as hosting a large carrier hotel (network interconnection point), Internet Exchange Point, or Cloud Exchange.

However, there will always be a need for local content delivery, application (and storage) hosting, disaster recovery, and network interconnection.  Small data centers will need to bring their facilities up to international standards to remain competitive, as their competition is not local, but large data centers in Tier 1 cities.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Data Center, Disaster Recovery, Internet and Telecom Tagged with , ,

The Bell Tolls for Data Centers

October 17, 2010 1 Comment

MC900250330In the good old days (late 90s and most of the 2000s) data center operators loved selling individual cabinets to customers.  You could keep your prices high for the cabinet, sell power by the “breakered amp,” and try to maximize cross connects  through a data center meet me room.  All designed to squeeze the most revenue and profit out of each individual cabinet, with the least amount of infrastructure burden.

Forward to 2010.  Data center consolidation has become an overwhelming theme, emphasized by the US CIO Vivek Kundra’s mandate to force the US government, as the world’s largest IT user, to eliminate most of more than 1600 federal government owned and operated data centers (into about a dozen), and further promote efficiency by adopting cloud computing.

The Gold Standard of Data Center Operators hits  Speed Bump

Equinix (EQIX) has a lot of reasons and explanations for their expected failure to meet 3rd quarter revenue targets.  Higher than expected customer churn, reducing pricing to acquire new business, additional accounting for the Switch and Data acquisition, etc., etc., etc…

The bottom line is -  the data center business is changing.  Single cabinet customers are looking at hosted services as an economical and operational alternative to maintaining their own infrastructure.  Face it, if you are paying for a single cabinet to house your 4 or 5 servers in a data center today, you will probably have a much better overall experience if you can migrate that minimal web-facing or customer facing equipment into a globally distributed cloud.

Likewise, cloud service providers are supporting the same level of Internet peering as most content delivery networks (CDNs) and internet Service Providers (ISPs), allowing the cloud user to relieve themselves of the additional burden of operating expensive switching equipment.  The user can still decide which peering, ISP, or network provider they want on the external side of the cloud, however the physical interconnections are no longer necessary within that expensive cabinet.

The traditional data centers are beginning to experience the move to shared cloud services, as is Equinix, through higher churn rates and lower sales rates for those individual cabinets or small cages.

The large enterprise colocation users or CDNs continue to grow larger, adding to their ability to renegotiate contracts with the data centers.  Space, cross connects, power, and service level agreements favor the large footprint and power users, and the result is data centers are further becoming a highly skilled, sophisticated, commodity.

The Next Generation Data Center

There are several major factors influencing data center planners today.  Those include the impact of cloud computing, emergence of containerized data centers, the need for far great energy efficiency (often using PUE-Power Utilization Effectiveness) as the metric, and the industry drive towards greater data center consolidation.

Hunter Newby, CEO of Allied Fiber, strongly believes ”Just as in the last decade we saw the assembly of disparate networks in to newly formed common, physical layer interconnection facilities in major markets we are now seeing a real coordinated global effort to create new and assemble the existing disparate infrastructure elements of dark fiber, wireless towers and data centers. This is the next logical step and the first in the right direction for the next decade and beyond.”

We are also seeing data center containers popping up along the long fiber routes, adjacent to traditional breaking points such as in-line amplifiers (ILAs), fiber optic terminals (locations where carriers physically interconnect their networks either for end-user provisioning, access to metro fiber networks, or redundancy), and wireless towers. 

So does this mean the data center of the future is not necessarily confined to large 500 megawatt data center farms, and is potentially something that becomes an inherent part of the transmission network?  The computer is the network, the network is the computer, and all other variations in between?

For archival and backup purposes, or caching purposes, can data exist in a widely distributed environment?

Of course latency within the storage and processing infrastructure will still be dependent on physics for the near term, actually, for end user applications such as desktop virtualization, there really isn’t any particular reason that we MUST have that level of proximity…  And there probably are ways we can “spoof” the systems to think they are located together, and there are a host of other reasons why we do not have to limit ourselves to a handful of “Uber Centers…”

A Vision for Future Data Centers

What if broadband and compute/storage capacity become truly insulated from the user.  What if Carr’s ideas behind the Big Switch are really the future of computing as we know it, and our interface to the “compute brain” is limited to dumb devices, and that we no longer have to concern ourselves with anything other than writing software against a well publicized set of standards?

What if the next generation of Equinix is a partner to Verizon or AT&T, and Equinix builds a national compute and storage utility distributed along the fiber routes that is married to the communications infrastructure transmission network?

What if our monthly bill for entertainment, networking, platform, software, and communications is simply the record of how much utility we used during the month, or our subscription fee for the month? 

What if wireless access is transparent, and globally available to all mobile and stationary terminals without reconfiguration and a lot of pain?

No more “remote hands” bills, midnight trips to the data center to replace a blown server or disk, dealing with unfriendly or unknowledgeable  “support” staff, or questions of who trashed the network due to a runaway virus or malware commando…

Kind of an interesting idea.

Probably going to happen one of these days.

Now if we can extend that utility to all airlines so I can have 100% wired access, 100% of the time.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Internet and Telecom, Virtualization Tagged with , ,

Data Centers Hitting a Wall of Cloud Computing

October 9, 2010 1 Comment

Equinix lowers guidance due to higher than expected churn in its data centers and price erosion on higher end customers.  Microsoft continues to promote hosted solutions and cloud computing.  Companies from Lee Technologies, CirraScale, Dell, HP, and SGI are producing containerized data centers to improve efficiency, cost, and manageability of high density server deployments.

The data center is facing a challenge.  The idea of a raised floor, cabinet-based data center is rapidly giving way to virtualization and highly expandable, easy to maintain, container farms.

The impact of cloud computing will be felt across every part of life, not least the data center which faces a degree of automation not yet seen.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer believes “the transition to the cloud <is> fundamentally changing the nature of data center deployment.” (Data Center Dynamics)

As companies such as Allied Fiber continue to develop visions of high density utility fiber ringing North America, with the added potential of dropping containerized cloud computing infrastructure along fiber routes and power distribution centers, AND the final interconnection of 4G/LTE/XYZ towers and metro cable along the main routes,the potential of creating a true 4th public utility of broadband with processing/storage capacity becomes clear.

Clouds Come of Age

Data center operators such as Equinix have traditionally provided a great product and service for companies wishing to either outsource their web-facing products into a facility with a variety of internet Service Providers or internet Exchange Points providing high performance network access, or eliminate the need for internal data center deployments through outsourcing IT infrastructure into a well-managed, secure, and reliable site.

However the industry is changing.  Companies, in particular startup companies. are finding there is no technical or business reason to manage their own servers or infrastructure, and that nearly all applications are becoming available on cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service) hosted applications.

Whether you are developing your own virtual data center within a PaaS environment, or simply using Google Apps, Microsoft Hosted Office Applications, or other SaaS, the need to own and operate servers is beginning to make little sense.  Cloud service providers offer higher performance, flexible on-demand capacity, security, user management, and all the other features we have come to appreciate in the rapidly maturing cloud environment.

With containers providing a flexible physical apparatus to easily expand and distribute cloud infrastructure, as a combined broadband/compute utility, even cloud service providers are finding this a strong alternative to placing their systems within a traditional data center.

With the model of “flowing” cloud infrastructure along the fiber route to meet proximity, disaster recovery, or archival requirements, the container model will become a major threat to the data center industry.

What is the Data Center to Do?

Ballmer:

“A data center should be like a container – that you can put under a roof or a cover to stop it getting wet. Put in a slab of concrete, plumb in a little garden hose to keep it cool, yes a garden hose – it is environmentally friendly, connect to the network and power it up. Think of all the time that takes out of the installation.”

Data center operators need to rethink their concept of the computer room.  Building a 150 Megawatt, 2 million square foot facility may not be the best way to approach computing in the future.

Green, low powered, efficient, highly virtualized utility compute capacity makes sense, and will continue to make more sense as cloud computing and dedicated containers continue to evolve.  Containers supporting virtualization and cloud computing can certainly be secured, hardened, moved, replaced, and refreshed with much less effort than the “uber-data center.”

It makes sense, will continue to make even more sense, and if I were to make a prediction, will dominate the data delivery industry within 5~10 years.  If I were the CEO of a large data center company, I would be doing a lot of homework, with a very high sense of urgency, to get a complete understanding of cloud computing and industry dynamics.

Focus less on selling individual cabinets and electricity, and direct my attention to better understanding cloud computing and the 4th Utility of broadband/compute capacity.  I wouldn’t turn out the lights in my carrier hotel or data center quite yet, but this industry will be different in 5 years than it is today.

Given the recent stock volatility in the data center industry, it appears investors are also becoming concerned.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Energy, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, startup business, Virtualization Tagged with , , ,

Expanding the 4th Utility to Include Cloud Computing

April 17, 2010 1 Comment

A lot has been said the past couple months about broadband as the fourth utility. The same status as roads, water, and electricity. As an American, the next generation will have broadband network access as an entitlement. But is it enough?

Carr, in “the Big Switch” discusses cloud computing being analogous to the power grid. The only difference is for cloud computing to be really useful, it has to be connected. Connected to networks, homes, businesses, SaaS, and people. So the next logical extension for a fourth utility, beyond simply referring to broadband network access as a basic right for Americans (and others around the world – it just happens as an American for purposes of this article I’ll refer to my own country’s situation), should include additional resources beyond simply delivering bits.

The “New” 4th Utility

So the next logical step is to marry cloud computing resources, including processing capacity, storage, and software as a service, to the broadband infrastructure. SaaS doesn’t mean you are owned by Google, it simply means you have access to those applications and resources needed to fulfill your personal or community objectives, such as having access to centralized e-Learning resources to the classroom, or home, or your favorite coffee shop. The network should simply be there, as should the applications needed to run your life in a wired world.

The data center and network industry will need to develop a joint vision that allows this environment to develop. Data centers house compute utility, networks deliver the bits to and from the compute utility and users. The data center should also be the interconnection point between networks, which at some point in the future, if following the idea of contributing to the 4th utility, will finally focus their construction and investments in delivering big pipes to users and applications.

Relieving the User from the Burden of Big Processing Power

As we continue to look at new home and laptop computers with quad-core processors, more than 8 gigs of memory, and terabyte hard drives, it is hard to believe we actually need that much compute power resting on our knees to accomplish the day-to-day activities we perform online. Do we need a quad core computer to check Gmail or our presentation on Microsoft Live Office?

In reality, very few users have applications that require the amounts of processing and storage we find in our personal computers. Yes, there are some applications such as gaming and very high end rendering which burn processing calories, but for most of the world all we really need is a keyboard and screen. This is what the 4th utility may bring us in the future. All we’ll really need is an interface device connecting to the network, and the processing “magic” will take place in a cloud computing center with processing done on a SaaS application.

The interface device is a desktop terminal, intelligent phone (such as an Android, iPhone, or other wired PDA device), laptop, or anything else that can display and input data.

We won’t really care where the actual storage or processing of our application occurs, as long as the application’s latency is near zero.

The “Network is the Computer” Edges Closer to Reality

Since John Gage coined those famous words while working at Sun Microsystems, we’ve been edging closer to that reality. Through the early days of GRID computing, software as a service, and virtualization – added to the rapid development of the Internet over the past 20 years, technology has finally moved compute resource into the network.

If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that for 95% of computer users, a server-based application meets nearly all our daily office automation, social media, and entertainment needs. Twitter is not a computer-based application, it is a network-enabled server-based application. Ditto for Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIN, and most other services.

Now the “Network is the Computer” has finally matured into a utility, and at least in the United States, will soon be an entitlement for every resident. It is also another step in the globalization of our communities, as within time no person, country, or point on the earth will be beyond our terminal or input device.

That is good

Filed under Cloud Computing, Government Regulatory, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Issues, Social Networking, Virtualization Tagged with , , , ,

A Cloudy Future for Networks and Data Centers in 2010

December 23, 2009 Leave a Comment

The message from the VC community is clear – “don’t waste our seed money on network and server equipment.” The message from the US Government CIO was clear – the US Government will consolidate data centers and start moving towards cloud computing. The message from the software and hardware vendors is clear – there is an enormous Data Center within a Data Center Cloudinvestment in cloud computing technologies and services.

If nothing else, the economic woes of the past two years have taught us we need to be a lot smarter on how we allocate limited CAPEX and OPEX budgets. Whether we choose to implement our IT architecture in a public cloud, enterprise cloud, or not at all – we still must consider the alternatives. Those alternatives must include careful consideration of cloud computing.

Cloud 101 teaches us that virtualization efficiently uses compute and storage resources in the enterprise. Cloud 201 teaches us that content networks facing the Internet can make use of on-demand compute and storage capacity in close proximity to networks. Cloud 301 tells us that a distributed cloud gives great flexibility to both enterprise and Internet-facing content. The lesson plan for Cloud 401 is still being drafted.

Data Center 2010

Data center operators traditionally sell space based on cabinets, partial cabinets, cages, private suites, and in the case of carrier hotels, space in the main distribution frame. In the old days revenue was based on space and cross connects, today it is based on power consumed by equipment.

If the intent of data center consolidation is to relieve the enterprise or content provider of unnecessary CAPEX and OPEX burden, then the data center sales teams should be gearing up for a feeding frenzy of opportunity. Every public cloud service provider from Amazon down to the smallest cloud startup will be looking for quality data center space, preferably close to network interconnection points.

In fact, in the long run, if the vision of cloud computing and virtualization is true, then the existing model of data center should be seen as a three-dimensional set of objects within a resource grid, not entirely dissimilar to the idea set forth by Nicholas Carr in his book the “Big Switch.”

Facilities will return to their roots of concrete, power, and air-conditioning, adding cloud resources (or attracting cloud service providers to provide those resources), and the cabinets, cages, and private suites will start being dismantled to allow better use of electrical and cooling resources within the data center.

Rethinking the Data Center

Looking at 3tera‘s AppLogic utility it brings a strange vision to mind. If I can build a router, switch, server, and firewall into my profile via a drag and drop utility, then why would I want to consider buying my own hardware?

If storage becomes part of the layer 2 switch, then why would I consider installing my own SAN, NAS, or fiber channel infrastructure? Why not find a cloud service provider with adequate resources to run my business within their infrastructure, particularly if their network proximity and capacity is adequate to meet any traffic requirement my business demands?

In this case, if the technology behind AppLogic and other similar Platform as a Service (PaaS) is true to the marketing hype, then we can start throwing value back to the application. The network, connectivity, and the compute/storage resource becomes an assumed commodity – much like the freeway system, water, or the electrical grid.

Flowing the Profile to the User

Us old guys used to watch a SciFi sitcom called “Max Headroom.” Max Headroom was a fictional character who lived within the “Ether,” being able to move around though computers, electrical grids – and pop up wherever in the network he desired. Max could also absorb any of the information within computer systems or other electronic intelligence sources, andFrom the old SciFi series Max Headroom deliver his findings to news reporters who played the role of investigative journalists.

We are entering an electronic generation not too different from the world of Max Headroom. If we use social networking, or public utility applications such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo Mail, our profile flows to the network point closest to our last request for application access. There may be a permanent image of our data stored in a mother ship, but the most active part of our profile is parsed to a correlation database near our access point.

Thus, if I am a Gmail user, and live in Los Angeles, my correlated profile is available at the Google data cache with correlated Gmail someplace with proximity to Los Angeles. If I travel to HongKong, then Gmail thinks “Hmmm…, he is in HK, and we should parse his Gmail image to our HK cache, and hope he gets the best possible performance out of the Gmail product from that point.”

I, as the user, do not care which data center my Gmail profile is cached at, I only care that my end user experience is good and I can get my work done without unnecessary pain.

The data center becomes virtual. The application flows to the location needed to do the job and make me happy. XYZ.Com, who does my mail day-to-day, must understand their product will become less relevant and ineffective if their performance on a global scale does not meet international standards. Those standards are being set by companies who are using cloud computing on a global, distributed model, to do the job.

2010 is the Year Data Centers Evolve to Support the Cloud

The day of a 100sqft data center cage is rapidly becoming as senseless as buying a used DMS250. The cost in hardware, software, peopleware, and the operational expense of running a small data center presence simply does not make sense. Nearly everything that can be done in a 100sqft cage can be done in a cloud, forcing the services provider to concentrate on delivering end user value, and leaving the compute, storage, and network access to utility providers.

And when the 100sqft cage is absorbed into a more efficient resource, the cost – both in electrical/mechanical and cost (including environmental costs) will drop by a factor of nearly 50%, given the potential for better data center management using strict hot/cold aisle separation, hot or cold aisle containment, containers – all those things data center operators are scrambling to understand and implement.

Argue the point, but by the end of 2010, the ugly data center caterpillar will come out of its cocoon as a better, stronger, and very cloudy utility for the information technology and interconnected world to exploit.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Entrepreneurs, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Virtualization Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Questions Data Center Operators Don’t Want You to Ask

November 13, 2009 4 Comments

We live in a world of clouds, SaaS, outsourcing, and Everything over IP (EoIP). The challenges IT professionals face when trying to sort through the maze of technology, globalization, SOX, HIPPA, PUE, and on,… result in daunting confusion. Mix in a few Your Future Data centeroverzealous sales people, an inquiring CFO, incorrigible users within the organization, and you have all the pre-requisites for a world class, globalized, migraine headache.

Now let’s go out and consider throwing all this confusion into an outsourced data center. You know your company wants to save money, have better quality facilities, be close to network and Internet exchange points, be close to carriers who can support your national distributed office. So you do what anybody might consider doing – you call on a data center sales person.

Each company has a pitch. That pitch is refined based on what resources the company has to sell, and the thought leadership provided by the data center operator will most certainly promote their “unique” product or service. As the overzealous sales person goes into their pitch, several topics will no doubt emerge:

  • Their power stability
  • Mechanical and Electrical Systems (including maintenance)
  • Their remote hands, smart hands, on-site tech support, and “nutty” devotion to service
  • Completion of SAS70 audits
  • Facility structure
  • Security
  • And so on…

This article will walk through a few topics that are normally not well explained by data center operators, avoided, or simply misrepresented.

The Data Center Compromise, Mixed-Use Buildings

Any data center presents the potential tenant with a series of compromises. Very few commercial data centers are custom-built from the ground up, and most data centers are either built into mixed-use properties (those properties originally built as office space), and conversions (those properties built for another reason, such as a retail outlet <we built a large data center in a former WalMart property in Seoul a few years ago>, a warehouse <such as the original Equinix/Pihana site in Tokyo>, or factory <such as the original Level 3 gateway in Brussels>).

Data center operators choose mixed-use building primarily when they are in an attractive location, such as near a carrier hotel, major fiber optic terminal, or in a strategic central business district location. Mixed-use buildings are normally built for limited floor loading (how much weight you can actually place on a slab of concrete, where you can place the weight (such as over a structure beam), and with lower floor to ceiling separation (in the US, this is normally around 12.5 ft).

In addition, mixed-use buildings may have one or more of the following shortfalls:

  • Limited access to utility power
  • Limited “riser” space within the building (for telecom, power, and cooling infrastructure needing to transit the building from basement/ground level or from the rooftop)
  • Antiquated power distribution within the building (such as old buss ducts, switch gear, panels, etc)
  • Limited cooling capacity
  • Limited ability to either power or cool tenants with higher “watts/sqft” requirements (server farms)

Mixed-use buildings are best used by tenants with the following profile:

  • Telecom, routing, and switching carriers/networks
  • Members/participants in a carrier hotel meet-me-room
  • Tenants with limited requirement to support large server installations

While the mixed-use building may have the most technical limitations, they also tend to be the most expensive space. This is primarily due to the lower cost of telecom carrier and network interconnections, limited need for interconnection backhaul (if the property has an open meet-me-room or distribution frame), and in most cases simply legacy network effect. The Newby-ism “if you are a network, and not present in a carrier hotel, then you are paying somebody to be present in a carrier hotel” is still valid (Hunter Newby, CEO, Allied Fiber).

For those who are considering outsourcing into a mixed-use building, make sure you understand your requirement for long term growth, the power, cooling, structural, and telecom restrictions, and safety record of the building. MOST major electrical failures and events which have occurred in the data center industry over the past ten years have been in mixed-use buildings. Find out if your building has had failures, and if so, a very detailed accounting of how the data center owner has corrected the infrastructure problems which caused the problem.

Do not accept explanations that it (the failure) was human error. While probable many electrical failures in mixed-use buildings are caused by sloppy maintenance, the age of infrastructure should be considered more of a concern. To understand the infrastructure in a building, ask the data center operator to produce a recent, stamped (by certified electrical engineer), single line diagram showing not only the infrastructure, but also age of infrastructure. Only those with something to hide will refuse the request. Stay away from them…

Bring a qualified consultant with you to the sales meeting, and understand the burden is on the data center operator to answer your questions.

Conversion Buildings

In many cases the conversion building will meet all requirements for building out a high quality data center. If the conversion building is considered a shell, meeting all structural requirements such as near unlimited floor loading, high floor to ceiling clearance, very large floor plates (greater than 40,000sqft per plate), adequate for high capacity cooling systems (prefer chilled water), generator backup, fuel storage, and good proximity to multiple facility-based telecom carriers, then you can do a lot of good things with a conversation.

Things to keep in mind with conversions:

  • They are often built outside of the city center, limiting high concentrations of facility-based fiber and carrier diversity
  • They are often located in areas sensitive to natural disasters such as flooding
  • They are often located in industrial areas, presenting both physical security challenges to the property (vandalism), as well as physical danger to people who need 24×7 access to their equipment (assault)

With the conversion, just as with the mixed-use building, you will need to ensure you fully understand the electrical and mechanical source and distribution. You need to know the age of equipment, that existing single line diagrams are accurate and certified, as well as ensure the facility has infrastructure laid out for future growth – and the local utilities can support growth (will the power utility provide more power? Will the city allow additional generators and fuel storage?).

The conversion is often a very good choice for server farms, and large deployments. The cost of space is normally cheaper, power may be cheaper, and floor loading is normally not an issue. Many satellite data center cluster are popping up in locations such as El Segundo near Los Angeles, offering very high quality data center space developed from conversions.

Site Commissioning, SAS 70, and CMMS

We covered this pretty well in a previous article, and will not go into complete detail here. However the main theme cannot be avoided:

No company should consider collocation within a facility that cannot produce complete documentation that integration testing and commissioning was completed prior to facility operations – and that testing should be at NETA Level 5. In some cases, documentation of “retro” testing is acceptable, however potential tenants in a facility should be aware that is still a compromise, as it is almost impossible to complete a retro-commissioning test in a live facility.

Disaster ResponseThis is most critical in a mixed-use use building, where there have been numerous electrical failures due to lack of any commissioning, limited commissioning, or major infrastructure upgrades without any significant level of integration testing. The candidate data center should provide all historical information on the electric al system, as well as commissioning documentation – on demand, for the prospective tenant. Reticence or reluctance to provide the documentation probably indicates a major problem.

Understanding SAS70 Audits

One thing to keep in mind about SAS70 audits… The audit only reviews items the data center operator chooses to audit. Thus, a company may have a very nice and polished SAS70 audit documentation, however the contents may not include every item you need to ensure the data center operator has a comprehensive operations plan. You may consider finding an experienced consultant to review the SAS70 document, and provide any additional guidance on whether or not the audit actually includes all facility maintenance and management items needed to ensure continuing protection from mechanical, monitoring/management, electrical, security, or human staffing failures.

Comprehensive SAS70 audits will go into a fair level of detail. If your candidate data center offers a SAS70 audit of 5~10 pages, then you might find it lacking the level of detail needed to give you confidence your mission-critical equipment and applications are being facility-managed in data center that really “walks the talk.”

The SAS70 audit should include all the following sections:

Security

  • Security Company profile
  • Key inventories
  • Access management
  • Badges
  • Biometrics
  • Staff selection criteria
  • Materials control
  • Confirmation each security guard has completed a background check
  • Security equipment is routinely inspected/tested
  • Security “rounds” are recorded and confirmed
  • Security camera images and access logs are kept for a minimum 60 days, longer is preferred

Maintenance/CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System)

  • Comprehensive preventive maintenance/testing schedule for ALL mechanical and electrical equipment
  • UPS
  • Emergency generators
  • Rectifiers/DC Plant
  • ATS
  • Switchgear
  • Complete semi-annual (or more frequent) infrared scan
  • Breaker audit for NEC compliance (or automated view via current transformers)
  • Service level agreements
  • Emergency call out for all critical M&E equipment
  • Diesel refueling during emergencies or extended operation

Human Resources

  • Staffing process
  • Background checks
  • Certifications
  • Termination management

NOTE: While all of us have examples and stories of people who became super routing engineers, electrical staff, and field ops professionals, having a high number of network, cabling (BICSI), or electrical certifications does give you a level of confidence that the data center company knowledge and experience level is capable of performing at the desired or marketed service level.

Operations

  • Recurring training
  • Recurring staff meetings
  • Business continuity and disaster recovery plans
  • Daily site verifications
  • Escalation process

Again, the more detailed an audit, the greater your confidence the data center is being managed and operated to the level you can confidently bring your business into their environment for outsourcing.

The SAS70 Type 1 audit is a paper audit, and the Type 2 audit actually includes measurement and compliance of each control or observation.

Final Recommendation

The bottom line is each that your business, whether it is in a cabinet, a 1000ft cage, or a private suite, depends on the data center operator for supporting mission-critical applications and function essential to your business. If you do not believe you have the knowledge, or ability to drive a hard factual line of due-diligence in your data center search, find a consultant who can provide that guidance and ensure you are getting exactly what you are paying to receive.

If the data center operator is reluctant to support your requests for audit or compliance, then the chances are that data center operator is either treating your company with a high level of contempt, they have problems which may make a potential tenant reluctant to use that facility, or even worse, they simply do not have the needed documentation.

John Savageau, Long Beach

Filed under Internet and Telecom Tagged with , , , ,

Selecting Your Data Center Part 3 – Understanding Facility Clusters

November 1, 2009 Leave a Comment

Now that we have determined the best geographic location for our data center, it is time to evaluate local facility options. The business concept of Splicing Fiber Optic Cableindustry clustering is valid in the data center industry. In most locations supporting carrier hotels and Internet Exchange Points you will normally see a large number of data centers within a very close proximity, offering a variety of options, and a maze of confusing pitches from aggressive sales people.

The idea of industry clustering says that whenever a certain industry, such as an automobile manufacturer selects a location to build a factory or assembly plant, others in the industry will eventually locate nearby. This is due to a number of factors including the availability of skilled workers within that industry, favorable city support for zoning, access to utilities, and proximity to supporting infrastructure such as ocean ports, rail, population centers, and communications.

The data center industry has evolved in a similar model. When you look at locations supporting large carrier hotels, such as Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, London, and New York, you will also see there are many options for data centers in the local area. For example in Los Angeles, the One Wilshire Building is a large carrier hotel with collocation space within the building, however there are at many options within a very close proximity to One Wilshire, such as Carrier Center (600 W. 7th), 818 W.7th St., the Garland Building, 530 W. 6th, the Quinby Building, and several others.

The bay area has similar clusters stretching between Palo Alto and San Jose, and Northern Virginia (Ashburn, Reston, Herndon, Sterling, Vienna) has a high density of facilities in proximity to the large Equinix Exchange Point in Ashburn.

When you have data center clusters, you will also find each facility is either fully meshed with commercial dark fiber interconnecting the buildings, or has several options of network providers offering competitive “lit” services between buildings. 

Note the attached picture of downtown Los Angeles, showing all the major colocation facilities and physical interconnection between the facilties with high capacity fiber (Wilshire Connection).

Discriminating Features Among Data Centers

The Uptime Institute, founded in 1993 (and recently acquired by the 451 Group) has long been a thought leader in codifying and classifying data center infrastructure and quality standards. While many may argue the Uptime Institute is focused on enterprise data center modeling, the same standards set by the Uptime Institute are a convenient metric to use when negotiating data center space in a commercial or public data center.

As mentioned in Part one of this series, there are four major components to the data center:

  • Concrete (space for cabinets, cages, and suites)
  • Power
  • Air-conditioning
  • Access to telecom and connectivity

Each data center in the cluster will offer all the above, at some level of quality scale that differs from others in the cluster. This article will focus on facility considerations. We will look at the Uptime Institute’s “tiered” system of data center classification in a later post.

Wilshire Connection Los AngelesConcrete. Data centers and carrier hotels supporting major interconnection points or industry cluster “hubs” will generally draw higher prices for their space. The carrier hotel will draw the highest prices, as the value of being colocated with the telecom hub brings more value to either space within the meet-me-room, or adjacent space within the same building. Space within the carrier hotel facility is also normally limited (there are exceptions, such as the NAP of the Americas in Miami), restricting individual tenants to a few cabinets or small cages.

The attraction of being in or near the carrier hotel meet-me-room is not necessarily in the high cost cabinet or cage, it is the availability of multiple carriers and networks available normally with a simple cross connect or jumper cable, rather than forcing networks and content providers to purchase/lease expensive backhaul to allow interconnection with other carriers or networks collocated in a different facility.

Meet-me-rooms at the NAP of the Americas, 60 Hudson, the Westin Building, and One Wilshire in the US, and Telehouse in London offer meet-me-room interconnections with several hundred potential interconnection partners or carrier within the same main distribution frame. Thus the expensive meet-me-room cabinets and cages make up their value through access to other carriers with inexpensive cross connects.

NOTE: One thing to keep in mind about carrier hotels and meet-me-rooms; most of the buildings supporting these facilities were not designed as data centers, they are office conversions. Thus the electrical systems, air-conditioning systems, floor loading, and security infrastructure are not as robust as you might find in a nearby facility constructed as a data center or telecom central office.

Facilities near the carrier hotel will generally have slightly lower cost space. As industry concerns over security within the carrier hotel increase, and the presence and quality of adjacent buildings exceeds that of the carrier hotel, many companies are reconsidering their need to locate within the legacy carrier hotel. In addition, many nearby collocation centers and data centers are building alternative meet-me-rooms and distribution frames within their building to accommodate both their own tenants, as well as offering the local community a backup or alternative interconnection point to the legacy carrier hotel.

This includes the development of alternative and competitive Internet Exchange Points.

This new age of competitive or alternate meet-me-rooms, multiple Internet Exchange Points, and data center industry clusters gives the industry more flexibility in their facility selection. In the past, Hunter Newby of Allied Fiber claimed “if you are not present in a facility such as 60 Hudson or the Westin Building, you are paying somebody else to be in the building.” This has gradually changed, as in cities such as New York a company can get near identical interconnection or peering support at 111 W. 8th St or 32 Ave of the Americas as available within 60 Hudson.

As the clusters continue to develop, and interconnections between tenants within the buildings become easier, then the requirement to physically locate within the carrier hotel becomes less acute. If you are in Carrier Center in Los Angeles, the cost and difficulty to complete a cross-connection with a tenant within One Wilshire has become almost the same as if you were a tenant within the One Wilshire Building. Ditto for other facilities within the industry cluster. In fact, the entire metro areas of New York, the bay area in Northern California, Northern Virginia, and Los Angeles have all become virtual extensions of the original meet-me-room in the legacy carrier hotel.

The Discriminating Factor

Now as potential data center tenants, we have a somewhat level playing field of data center operators to choose from. This has eliminated much of the interconnection part of our equation, and allows us to drill into each facility based on our requirements for:

  1. Cost/budget
  2. Available services
  3. Space for expansion or future growth
  4. Quality of power and air conditioning

Part four of this series will focus on cost.

As always, your experiences and comments are welcome

John Savageau, Long Beach

Prior articles in this series:

Wilshire Connection photo courtesy of Eric Bender at www.wilshireconnection.com

Filed under Internet and Telecom Tagged with , , , , , ,

Selecting Your Data Center Part 2 – Geography and Location

October 30, 2009 4 Comments

Data center selection is an exercise in compromise. Everybody would like to have the best of all worlds, with a highly connected facility offering 24×7 smart Selecting the Data Center Locationhands support, impenetrable security, protection from all natural and man-made disasters, in addition to service level agreements offering 5-Nines power availability at $.03/kW. Not likely we will be able to hit all those desired features in any single facility.

Data center operators price their facilities and colocation based on several factors:

  • Cost of real estate in their market
  • Cost of power and utilities in their market
  • Competition in their market
  • Level of service offered (including power, interconnections, etc)
  • Quality of facility (security, power density, infrastructure, etc)

Networks, Content Providers, Enterprises, and Eyeballs

The basic idea of an Internet-enabled world is that eyeballs (human beings) need to access content, content needs access to eyeballs, eyeballs and content need access to networks (yes, eyeballs do need to communicate directly with other eyeballs), and networks need access to content and eyeballs. Take one of the above out of the equation, and the Internet is less effective. We can also logically add applications to the above model, as applications are now communicating directly with applications, allowing us to swap eyeballs for apps to complete the high level model.

Organizations using the Internet fall into a category of either a person, an application (including enterprise, content, and entertainment applications), or a network (including access, regional, and global networks).

Each potential organization considering outsourcing some or all of their operations into a data center needs to ask themselves a few basic questions:

  1. Is the organization heavily dependent on massive storage requirements?
  2. Is the organization highly transaction-oriented? (such as a high volume eCommerce site)
  3. Is the organization a content delivery network/CDN, requiring high bandwidth access to eyeballs?
  4. Are your target applications or eyeballs local, regional, global?
  5. Is the company a network service provider highly dependent on network interconnections?

Storage and servers = high density power requirements. The more servers, the higher the operational expenses on both space and power. This would logically drive a potential collocation customer to a location with the cheapest power – Data Center Elementshowever that might be a location outside of central business districts, and possibly outside of an area well connected with domestic and international telecom carriers, network service providers, and access networks (including the cable TV networks serving individual subscribers).

Thus the cost of power and real estate might be favorable if you are located in Iowa, however bringing your content to the rest of the world may limit you to one or two network providers, which with limited competition will likely raise the price of bandwidth.

Locating your business in a city center such as New York or Los Angeles will give you great access to bandwidth through either a colocated carrier hotel or carrier hotel proximity. However, the cost of real estate and power in the city center will be a multiple of that you may find in areas like Oregon or Washington State.

In a perfect telecom world, all networks and customers would have access to dark fiber from facility-based carriers serving the location they are either located or doing business. Allied Fiber’s Hunter Newby believes that facility-based carriers should be in the business of providing the basic “interstate highway” of communications capacity, allowing any company who can afford the cost to acquire high capacity interconnections to bring their operation closer to the interconnection points.

If you follow the carrier world you will know that at least in the United States, carriers are reluctant to sell dark fiber resources, preferring to multiplex their fiber into “lit” circuits managed and provisioned by the carrier. Clearly that provides a lot more potential revenue than selling “wholesale” infrastructure. Also makes it a lot more expensive for a company considering collocation to locate their facility in a geography separated from the major interconnection sites.

The Business Case and Evaluation

Again, selecting your desired location or locations to outsource your business is a compromise. In the United States Virginia is a good location for power, and an expensive location for interconnecting and collocating. Los Angeles is among the lowest cost areas for interconnections, mid way up the power scale, but more expensive for space.

Consider the possibility of moving to a great location in Idaho, with low cost power, and low cost real estate. You build a 500,000sqft facility, with more than 300 watts/sqft power capability. Your first project supports more than 20,000 servers delivering Internet streaming media content. Your facility costs are low, but your network costs become very high. You cannot buy dark fiber from a facility-based carrier, and the cost of leasing 10G wavelengths is nearly $10,000/month per wavelength. You probably have 500GB of data to push into the Internet. Is the power cost vs. connectivity and bandwidth compromise in your favor?

Here is another exercise. Let’s say for argument, in a Los Angeles carrier hotel static costs may run:

  1. $1000/month for a cabinet in the carrier hotel, $500/month for a cabinet in nearby facility.
  2. $12/breakered amp (breakered amps are still the norm, moving to usage-based models)
  3. $200/month for a cross connection within the carrier hotel building
  4. $1000/month for a fiber cross connect to a nearby or adjacent building
  5. $1000/month for an Internet Exchange Point/IXP connection (if you are a network service provider)

NOTE: Los Angeles has several large carrier hotels in the downtown area, as does New York, with buildings such as 60 Hudson and 111 W. 8th offering potential tenants multiple options. Other cities such as Seattle, Miami, and Chicago have more limited options, with a single dominant carrier hotel.

If you are a medium sized network service provider, you may consider getting a couple cabinets in a nearby facility and acquire a couple fiber cross connections to one or more nearby carrier hotels. Get a cabinet within the carrier hotel, add high capacity switching or routing equipment in the cabinet, and then try to maximize the number of local cross connects with other networks and content providers, and connect to a local Internet Exchange Point for additional peering flexibility.

Then take your same requirement for both cabinet space and interconnections, and try the evaluation in several different cities and markets. Fit the cost into one of the above squares in the Data Center Basic Elements chart, and determine the cost for each component.

If your business requirement is more dependent on space, and that is the highest potential operational expense, then you need to consider which location will minimize cost increases in the other three quadrants while you evaluate the best location for meeting your space budget. If your requirement spans several different geographies, add the cost of interconnection between locations to your interconnection costs. Does the location give you adequate access to the target applications or eyeballs?

If you find that a location in Omaha, Nebraska, meets all your requirements, but your target audience also includes a high percentage in India or China, then the cost of getting to your eyeballs in both OPEX and performance may make the Nebraska site untenable – even though it meets your high level budget.

Enter the Cloud

Nearly all businesses and organizations now have an additional alternative. The virtualized commercial cloud service provider. Virtualization products have come a long way over the past couple years, and are maturing very quickly. CSPs such as Google, Amazon, Rackspace, and Layered technologies are providing very powerful applications support for small and medium business, and have become a very visible debate at the national level as governments and large corporations deal with questions of:

  • Focusing on their core competencies, rather than internal IT organizations
  • Building more efficiency into the IT infrastructure (heavy on energy efficiency)
  • Recovering space used by IT and computer rooms
  • Reducing OPEX spent on large IT support staff
  • Better technologies such as netboooks
  • And more…

Thus the physical data center now has competition from an unlikely source – the cloud. All new IT and content-related projects should consider cloud computing or software as a service (SaaS) models as a potential alternative to bricks and mortar data center space.

Many venture capital companies are now requiring their potential investments to consider a hosted or SaaS solution to outsource their office automation, web presence, and eCommerce applications. This is easily done through a commercial web service or cloud hosting company, with the additional option of on-demand or elastic expansion of their hosting resources. This may be the biggest potential competitor to the traditional data center. The venture community simply does not want to get stuck with stranded equipment or collocation contracts if their investment fails.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

One final note on selecting your location for outsourcing. Most companies need some level of geographic diversity to fulfill a business need for offsite disaster recovery apps and storage, load balancing, proximity (to eyeballs and applications), and interconnections. Thus your planning should include some level of geographic diversity, including the cost of interconnecting facilities to mirror, parse, or back up files. The same rules apply, except that in the case of backup the urgency for high density interconnections is lower than the primary operating location.

This does raise the potential of using facilities in remote locations, or locations offering low cost collocation and power pricing for backups.

Links to Data Center Resources

Here are a couple links to magazines and eZines supporting the data center industry.

Part 3 will explore the topic of understanding the hidden world of data center tiers, mechanical and electrical infrastructure, and site structure.

John Savageau, Long Beach

Prior articles in this series:

28Oct09

Selecting Your Data Center Part 1 – Understanding the Market

Filed under Cloud Computing, Energy, Internet and Telecom, Virtualization Tagged with , , ,

Selecting Your Data Center Part 1 – Understanding the Market

October 28, 2009 2 Comments

The data center industry continues to evolve with mergers, acquisitions, and a healthy crop of emerging companies. New data center products and services Old Data Centerare hitting the street, an aggressive debate on the model of selling space vs. power, and alternatives to physical data center space in the cloud are giving us a confusing maze of alternatives to meet our outsourcing needs.

The data center market is not unique. For example, in Southern California we have a wide variety of supermarkets and grocery stores including VONs, Ralphs, Albertsons, Jons, Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and lots of others. All grocery stores basically sell the same kinds of products, with very few exceptions.

What makes you go to VONs, rather than Whole Foods? Is it location? Prices? Image? A social issue?

The data center industry is not significantly different. In a city such as Los Angeles you have Equinix, Switch and Data, Savvis, BT Infonet, CoreSite, US Colo, Digital Realty, Level 3 – just to name a few. What makes one facility more attractive than another to fulfill your collocation needs?

Data centers, at the most common denominator, have traditionally offered:

  • Concrete (space for cabinets, racks, cages, suites, etc)
  • Power
  • Air conditioning
  • Interconnections

If all data centers offer the basic components listed above, then what discriminates the data centers from one another?

Now we can add additional alternatives to the basic data center model – the public cloud services provider/CSP and Software as a Service/SaaS.

As a potential data center tenant (this includes “virtual” data center tenants living in a CSP infrastructure) we have to evaluate all the above components, and determine which collocation or data center provider will best meet our facility, budget, and connectivity needs.

The Sense of Urgency

The CIO of the United States, Vivek Kundra, recently pressed the case for data center consolidation within the US government, as well as offering a strong recommendation that the US data industry strongly consider moving their operations into either consolidated data centers or virtualize within a cloud provider.

It is clear that data centers used by small and medium companies, as well as most content delivery companies, find better efficiencies in bringing their eCommerce and Internet-facing parts of their business into the data center, and locally interconnect with the Internet service provider community.

The cost of building a data center, providing staffing to manage the data center, and ensuring the efficiency of power and cooling usage is beyond the core competence of most companies. The need for disaster recovery plans, offsite storage, and other business continuity planning are just a few of the long list of items we need to consider as part of an overall information technology/IT or general business plan.

The potential waste of operational expenses, capital budgets, and resulting market “opportunity cost” justifies all companies at least consider outsourcing all or some of their IT operations – particularly as data center and CSPs increase their capabilities.

With the availability of netbooks, online applications (SaaS), and server-based office automation products, all companies should put this on their annual review list. Even the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) recently announced their decision to outsource the email to Google. This model does not appear to be going away anytime soon.

The “Selecting Your Data Center” Series

This series will walk through the process of identifying the need for outsourcing, identifying the best location for your data center, discriminating between the alternatives, and finally getting to your decision.

We welcome all comments, experiences, and discussions related to the data center community that would provide productive feedback for a potential data center or CSP tenant.

John Savageau, Long Beach

Filed under Cloud Computing, Internet and Telecom, Virtualization Tagged with , , , , , ,

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