Archive for February, 2010
02 - 25 - 10
Welcome to Darren Bonawitz’s podcast.
By: Darren Bonawitz
Hi, this is Darren Bonawitz, co-owner at 1102 GRAND, which if you’re not familiar with us, were one of the primary Internet hubs in the Midwest. Also, a collocation facility that offers cabinets, cages, private suites and raw space for customer build outs.
In this particular podcast I wanted to talk about the announcement Microsoft made regarding their collaboration with the U.S. National Science Foundation or the NSF. Essentially, researchers are going to be selected by the NSF and those that are so lucky will then have free access to Microsoft Windows Azure cloud computing platform, which is a nice perk. The interesting thing to me on this is the fact that the cloud-computing platform itself is still relatively young in its own infancy, but utilizing it for research in this manner is an interesting way to go about it.
02 - 22 - 10
By Darren Bonawitz
I want to provide some insight on why Kansas City is a good place to establish a data center or collocation presence.
- Second most affordable major market for data centers (Source: The Boyd Company)
- Geographically centered in the United States
- Located away from the coasts and hurricane threats
- Located outside of high risk earthquake zones
- Reliable and cost-effective electric utilities
- Highly educated talent pool
- Active technology community
- Robust telecommunications infrastructure
- Very competitive economic incentive programs
- Entreprenuer magazine named Kansas City the #1 place to start and grow a business in the Midwest
02 - 15 - 10
By: Greg Elliott
Hi, I’m Greg Elliott with 1102 GRAND, Kansas City’s Carrier Hotel and collocation facility. Thanks for taking the time to join me for another podcast, concerning what we’re seeing out there in the collocation industry. Today, I’m going to focus on healthcare IT, specifically the manage service companies that serve doctors offices and healthcare networks.
As healthcare entities start to become more and more engaged with health IT and electronic health records, 1102 GRAND is seeing a growing demand for space in our collocation facilities in a number of ways. One of the first things that we’re seeing, is our current customers are increasing their collocation footprint to accommodate for increased data storage back-ups. These manage service companies work with smaller healthcare offices and function as their IT department. This allows these offices to start complying with mandates set forth in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, without having to hire a full-time IT department or supplement their current IT department with the expertise that they receive from these manage service companies.
Another thing we’re seeing, hospitals and healthcare networks, their traditional data centers may have only access to two or three different carriers or providers. But at 1102 GRAND, being a carrier hotel we have 24 different carriers or providers, all the way from Tier 1 carriers to local wireless providers. So, as a business grows and changes, they have options for flexibility to choose which carriers or providers best fit their model. Plus, having all those carriers and providers in one place, it tends to keep pricing very competitive. Not to mention, the access or the loop charge goes away in most cases. It can provide quite a bit of cost savings for the organization.
Finally, another benefit that we’re seeing is healthcare networks or hospital data centers choosing an off-site data center facility, so that it frees up resources and space for them to focus on their core business, which of course, is healthcare. They can take advantage of 1102 GRAND’s SAS 70 certification, and we just completed a PCI, ISO and HIPAA (most important to healthcare is the HIPAA piece) readiness audit. We also have redundant power, redundant cooling systems, dual power grids, security and manage services. So, instead of the hospitals or the healthcare networks focusing on taking care of the data center, they leave that to us.
02 - 15 - 10
By Darren Bonawitz
I wanted to share some thoughts on an article written by Justin Lee from www.thewhir.com about the EPA finalizing energy star ratings for data centers.
I will be very interested in following how this plays out, and I think this will be adopted much more quickly by pubic data centers than private data centers. While many private corporate data centers will likely pursue the Energy Star data center label, it will largely be determined by company culture. For example, companies with senior management looking for ways to cut costs and those lead by progressive IT leaders will be much more likely to pursue it. For public data centers, however, this will be more than just about energy efficiency. While these facilities will be equally interested in cost savings through efficiency, the real value will be from a marketing standpoint. If a particular collocation or hosting data center is Energy Star “certified” they have a decided leg up on the competition that is not. The resulting competitive advantage will be far more valuable than the energy savings.
In addition, I would like to learn more about how the Energy Star program plans to consistently measure Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) which is a ratio of power in versus power out. In short, PUE = power as measured at the utility meter divided by the load associated with all of the IT equipment.
For more information about PUE, check out this link:
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid80_gci1307933,00.html#
Rather than going into a lot of details about my issues with PUE as it is defined today, I recommend checking out James Hamilton’s blog post at:
http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/06/15/PUEAndTotalPowerUsageEfficiencyTPUE.aspx
In short, the problem is that PUE itself needs to become a very clear and consistent standard throughout the industry or at least in Energy Star testing. Otherwise companies will use the most favorable definition of PUE as possible to improve their data center’s rating and chances of being Energy Star certified. In addition, I am curious who will be in charge of taking the measurements. Are there going to be neutral third parties that data center operators have to pay to come out and measure? Is the Energy Star program going to facilitate the measurements themselves? Surely they won’t allow data centers to self measure and submit results. There is far too much risk and incentive for miscalculation at best and fraud at the worst. I guess I’ll have to wait and see the details as they are released.
To read the original article by Justin Lee, click here.
02 - 08 - 10
By Darren Bonawitz
Attention data center relocation consultants and enterprise customers considering a new data center location, here is another reason why to look at the Midwest and specifically Kansas City.
Water Shortage to Put a Damper on Data Center Cooling?
From The Data Center Journal (datacenterjournal.com), Written by Jeffrey Clark
Recent droughts throughout the United States, along with a growing concern about water shortage (especially in the western US), could also be an increasing threat to data centers. To be sure, water is not the first topic that comes to mind when considering data center design and operation, but it is in many cases a paramount concern.
The vast majority of data centers rely to some extent on water as part of their cooling system for keeping equipment from overheating. Some estimates have places water usage at a typical 15-megawatt data center at 360,000 gallons of water per day. A Microsoft data center facility in Northlake, Illinois, uses about eight million gallons per month—the equivalent of almost 270,000 gallons per day. (read more)
02 - 04 - 10
By: Darren Bonawitz
I want to share this article from whir.com written by Justin Lee about IBM’s data center on display at Disney’s Epcot Center. It appears data centers are going mainstream, they are not just for nerds anymore.
IBM Data Center Shown at Disney’s Epcot Center
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — An energy-efficient data center is currently on display at Epcot theme park at Walt Disney World, as part of IBM’s SmarterPlanet (www.ibm.com/smarterplanet) exhibit, according to a report by Data Center Knowledge.
The attraction is intended to give visitors a greater understanding of the increasing role technology plays in their daily lives, helping to tackle challenges such as reducing traffic and crime, and improving food safety and local water supplies.
(read more)
