Archive for the ‘Data Center Security’ Category
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 - 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)
01 - 26 - 10
Posted By Darren Bonawitz
Here is an article I want to share from Web Hosting Industry Review written by Justin Lee about Facebook beginning construction of its own data centers.
FaceBook Begins Constructing Data Centers
UPDATE: Facebook confirmed via its blog that it has broken ground on a 117,000 square foot data center in Prineville.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Social network Facebook (www.facebook.com) is building its own data centers, and may reveal the details of its first data center as early as Friday, according to a report by Data Center Knowledge.
The massive social network has previously housed its servers at wholesale data center providers, but is now at the point where it would be more cost-effective to invest in a custom-built infrastructure.
(read more)
01 - 22 - 10
Welcome to Darren Bonawitz’s weekly podcast.
By: Darren Bonawitz
Hi. This is Darren Bonawitz again, with 1102 GRAND. I’m one of the owners of the facility. For those of you not familiar with 1102 GRAND, we are one of the Midwest’s major Internet hubs and co-location facilities. This series of podcasts talks about different industry trends and topics that I find interesting as I stay up on the news and discussion with people in the industry.
Today I want to talk about what I call “low-power consumption and high heat servers.” These are the servers that are coming out that use less power and cooling in a data center. Generally, the ones I’ve been seeing are based on AMD’s Opteron and Intel’s Atom Processor lines. The reason I want to talk about them today is because I think they are a solid first step, as data centers are looking for ways to cut their carbon-footprint, or become more energy efficient. In the past, the metric that really mattered in the “server world,” was Total Processing Power. No matter what, that’s seemed to matter. Every new series of servers that came out really had to deal with how much processing-power it had, but if you look, especially as things with personalization evolved, one of the things that makes virtualization so interesting is that CPU usage on the server is generally low. So, what I think is interesting with these processors is that they are still powerful processors that use lower power, but at the same time, they’re going at it from a different angle. Really, what they are trying to do is figure out a way to increase performance per watt of power used. So, I think it’s really something that’s really relevant in today’s world, with “green” being such a big topic in datacenters. The thing I wanted to make people know is that while these servers are a great first step, just keep in mind that there is not going to be a single “silver bullet” that’s going to solve the issue of controlling heat in the datacenter. With that said, processor temperatures are definitely one of the big targets, and they are certainly one of the major culprits of the heat-generation. This is a solid first step. There are also new technologies that may be more “liable.” I guess that is what I would call it. That has to do with technologies that I would call “fail-in-place servers.” I’m not going to go into that today, but if you have time, go on and Google it. Check “fail-in-place server platform,” and read-up, and that’s something that I’ll be doing in the meantime as well, and we’ll be talking about how to do this. See when it makes sense and when it doesn’t make sense to use these servers.
The one thing that comes to mind for me today are legacy-datacenters that don’t have the ability to handle high-density heat loads. These servers, because of their cost and their price-point, make it so you can actually divide these servers and span them across the series of cabinets, and spread your heat-load and prevent heat-spots. I think that’s definitely something that folks that are battling cooling issues, but still have some floor space, can use as a possible avenue to combat this. If you have other ideas, or if you’ve been using these servers and could give some feedback, please let us know. As always, we welcome your feedback and future ideas for topics to discuss at podcast@1102Grand.com Thanks a lot, and have a good day.
01 - 18 - 10
Posted By: Darren Bonawitz
Earlier this month, I was featured in an article by pacificra.com about five things to know about data center temperature. I really appreciate the feature. Here is a link to the article.
5 Things To Know About Data Center Temperature
Temperature is a critical factor in the modern data center, and it is only becoming more so. Increased processor speeds, smaller server form factors, and higher server rack densities have all contributed to tremendous challenges for data center administrators in the areas of cooling and air movement.
These physical challenges, and management’s mandate to maintain asset availability at all times, means data center administrators must strive to make environmental factors such as temperature and humidity priority No. 1.
But how can data center administrators start making the right decisions in terms of temperature and humidity? Where should the appropriate limits be set? What technologies are available to tackle these issues?
(read more)
01 - 18 - 10
Posted By: Darren Bonawitz
Here’s an announcement that should prove beneficial to all parties involved by putting together two forward thinking groups that will hopefully serve as an example of how collaboration breeds progress. The Green Grid is working towards increased data center efficiency along with standardized measurements that are adopted by the industry, and Data Center Pulse is the industry’s users. In less than a year and a half, Data Center Pulse has done an amazing job of pulling together data center professionals who influence decisions within data centers and trends in the industry as a whole. They work hard to enforce their “no vendor” rule which helps keep discussions as unbiased as possible so people interact without hidden agendas, and they clearly understand the value of peers helping peers and shaping an industry together. Here is the article written by Justin Lee form Web Host Industry Review.
Data Center Pulse Partners with The Green Grid
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Data Center Pulse (http://datacenterpulse.org) announced on Friday it has entered into an agreement with The Green Grid (www.thegreengrid.org) to further enhance its ability to influence the industry via collaboration on data center challenges.
The Green Grid is an international organization of IT companies that work toward advancing energy efficiency for data centers and business computing systems, with over 175 members.
Data Center Pulse is a global end user community of data center owners and operators focused on impacting the industry through the customer’s perspective, with 1350 members.
(read more)
01 - 14 - 10
Welcome to Darren Bonawitz’s weekly podcast.
By Darren Bonawitz
Hi this is Darren Bonawitz co-owner with 1102 GRAND Kansas City, Midwestern Internet hub and collocation facility, welcome back to another series on our podcast talking about trends and things that were seeing going on from a higher level within our industry. One of the things I have been following had to do with U.S. lawmakers and their talking about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, enacted in 2002, and it is coming under review. Right now there’s a lot of discussion and a lot of heated information going back and forth between both sides of the folks that want to leave it as is and the folks that really want to see some changes. So I just wanted to talk through it because this is something that can be important to public data centers as well as our collocation customers that are in these data centers.
