Data Center management

Reasons to Renovate Your Data Centers

December 3, 2012 By DCT User

Most of the data centers have following features false floors, windowless rooms, lots of electrical outlets, limited walking space and sterile. Data Center renovations one of the best paths where managers can improve performance and improve the overall efficiency of the center. By renovating Data centers, managers can yield a lot of improvements in terms of space, performance, operating cost and many others. When do managers know it’s time to renovate data centers? These following points will give some idea.

One of the main goals of data centers is to maintain cool temperature. Whenever you traverse inside the data center, if you get any hot flashes or when temperature fluctuates greatly. Then it’s time to check and renovate the cooling system. CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) is one of the gauges which tell how to manage cooling systems in your data centers.

Each and every day technology keeps on upgrading. Have a look at technologies running in the current market and implement those in order to gain more efficiency. Implement new rack designs which provide a new level of savings in cost and energy and also improves the level of control over data center.

No room to add more servers? When you think of adding a new rack of sever to gain more power into your data center, you think of renovation. Carefully analyze servers and remove the servers which are not running, this might cause under utilization of resources and might directly affect your operations and maintenance cost.

A fan is one of the cheapest cooling agents in data centers. A fan is capable of redirecting hot air away from servers and allows cool air inside the servers; this can reduce hot air between servers the data centers.

When your data center looks like a room of cables. This means data center needs renovation and management team has to improve cabling. This might money and time and this leads to overall improvement of the data center.

Worrying about natural disasters? We are not sure when data center might be struck with a flood or earth quake and other emergencies. New data center designs concentrate more on disaster management and recovery, implementing any of these designs might help to overcome disasters.

Managers need to have a close look at data center Infrastructure management tools and these approaches might be worth of looking into. DCIM tools favor small data centers which are scalable.

Not getting expected efficiency from your data centers? If you think that you are not yielding expected efficiency from your data centers, then it’s time to renovate your data center. While renovating data centers look for alternative energy sources and alternative source for cooling your servers. Managers need to make a regular survey on servers and eliminate redundant hardware which might eat up a lot of energy.

Renovating a data center is far more complex than renovating a house. In data centers renovation is a continuous process. Renovation process is a critical issue which minimizes the risk of downtime and also enhances the overall efficiency of the plant.

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Filed Under: Articles, Data Center Management Tagged With: Data Center management, data centers

Ways to Reduce Water Consumption in Data Center

November 27, 2012 By DCT User

All data center management teams have been thinking about conserving renewable energies, but recently data centers are concentrating more on conserving water. Saving any amount of water saves money, because water in short as it’s mostly used in domestic purposes. Data centers require an enormous amount of water to cool cloud computing server farms. James Hamilton Data Center Designer and Researcher in Amazon estimates Data centers with a capacity of 15 Mega Watt can utilize up-to 360, 000 gallons of water per day. Hamilton added, “Water is tomorrow’s big problem, no one talks about water. The water consumption (in data centers) is super embarrassing. It just doesn’t feel responsible. We need designs that stop using water.”

Google and Microsoft are adopting new alternative methods to cool their massive data centers. Companies are using water from nearby rivers canals and also using recycled water. Microsoft recently added a new Data center in San Antonio because local water company can provide large quantity of recycled water; this would have less impact on city’s drinking water. In Belgium Google installed a new data center next to Industrial canal, data center can draw water to cool massive servers using industrial water and can draw water from wells and rain water. Google has designed a new cooling system and they have named it as “Hot Huts”. These Hot Huts are temporary homes for hot air which leaves main servers. Fans are installed on these huts will pull hot air from behind the servers and lead them to water cooled coil, these ambient hot air from the servers. These fans will help to cool the air by leading them to water cooled coils and thus completing the cooling cycle.

One of the best methods to conserve water is by re-cycling it. Google’s data center in Hamina, Finland uses sea water to cool servers without using any chillers. This data center is located in Gulf of Finland. Cooling systems pump cold water from sea and heat from servers are exchanged. This ambient hot water is cooled before returning to gulf. Another Google’s data center in Douglas County uses city waste water to cool its servers. In this data center large tanks are filled with this water and fin sand particles are filtered out and leaving clear water to cool its servers (this water is unsuitable for drinking purpose).

Data centers must maintain their cooling systems regularly to avoid excess consumption of water. All Data centers must implement such alternative methods to cool its massive servers to reduce water consumption.

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Filed Under: Articles, Data Center Cooling, Data Center Management Tagged With: Data Center Design, Data Center management

Data Center Management – Solutions to Mitigate most Common Risks

June 28, 2012 By DCT User

Organizations today heavily depend on IT to support all their activities. This is why data centers have become a go-to facility for maintaining network and system functions. Customers too expect nothing but the best. This is why it is crucial to maintain a high performance service. Managing this infrastructure effectively is the key to enhanced operation rates. That is why data center managers should be able to track and assess the performance of individual sections of the data center effectively. Providing them with industry specific products should help them measure performance efficiently and mitigate potential risks. Let us look at these performance measurement products/tools and find out what they can do for the data center.

Availability of IT Equipment:

Downtime is data center manager’s worst nightmare. Generally customers expect system availability almost 100% of the time. Hence, IT personals need to access the reliability of the equipments of the data center so that that can reduce downtime considerably. The data obtained from assessing the equipments should also help them identify and alleviate issues.

Solution:

Technology has provided monitoring solutions which are based on the changing environmental factors and offers real time feedback about systems responding to factors like temperature, amperage draw, humidity, dew point, and physical security. These readings help the experts set thresholds for different atmospheric conditions. Additionally, this system also provides past information which can alert the personnel about the changing trends so that they are equipped with practices for that event.

Assessing Critical Services

Critical services means determining, classifying and rating the highest priority sites and facilities. Systems like the four tiered classification system which is based on factors like useable capacity, fault tolerance, maintainability and sustainability helps in the evaluation .After undergoing the process, the administrators should be able to employ suitable managements and control systems for these critical sites which will help them mitigate potential vulnerabilities.

Solution:

Management solutions like KVM or service processor aggregation appliances offer the IT administrators access to servers, devices and even to equipments which are available locally and remotely. These provide BIOS – level access and offer assistance to reduce downtime by allowing instant access to all failed resources and data center management. These solutions also provide analysis and audit logging which helps the personnel gain valuable insight to the daily occurrence of the various operations in the data center.

Measuring the Data Center’s Energy Consumption

The rising rate of energy consumption is a cause of concern for most organizations. This has been a prime concern since companies are employing high density server racks which consume significant amount of energy. Experts are always looking for methods and practices to reduce the energy usage and making the data centers much more efficient. Proposition of implementing PUE and the DCE metrics should enable the data center managers estimate the efficiency of that data center. As Per Gris Grid which is consortium of IT companies, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) = Total Facility Power/ IT Equipment Power; Datacenter Efficiency (DCE) = IT Equipment Power/ Total Facility Power. The PUE results are compared to different data centers to find out if the data center needs improvements to increase its efficiency.

Solution:

By using the results of PUE and DCE, administrators can evaluate the efficiency of their data center. Other than these, one can also use application specific data for evaluation. Performance rating tools like EPA energy star and Portfolio manager offers rating to the data center after comparing the results with other data centers. Switching to higher voltage power is also a practice which allows the IT equipment to operate much more efficiently. Regular audits of the facility including the racks and equipment will provide valuable insights like if the under the floor plan should be improved or if some servers should be discarded. Using blanking panels and cable management accessories in the rack can also assist in reducing the energy usage of the data center making them energy efficient.

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Filed Under: Articles, Data Center Management, Data Center Power, Data Center Solutions Tagged With: Data Center Design, Data Center management, Data Center Monitoring, Data Center Solutions

Stream Data Centers Builds Its New Data Center in Woodlands

June 28, 2012 By DCT User

Latest industry reports suggest that data center developer Stream data centers recently started construction of a private data centre in Woodlands, Texas. This data center will be spread across 73,320 sq.ft and also be able to withstand 146-mph winds and uplift. The data center will also incorporate sustainable design practice to achieve the LEED Gold Certification.

Stream Private Data Center is expected to provide 3.375 MW of critical load with plenty of room to expand to 6.75 MW across 30,000 square feet of raised floor with all necessary conduit and pads. The facility will implement the 2N electrical /N+1 mechanical configuration which will provide dual feed power from two separate sub stations.

‘Stream data centers’ has chosen Woodlands as the location for the data center is because this location offers strict zoning and a controlled environment. The region also has zero proximity to industrial uses, rails lines and flight paths.

Stream Data Centers co-managing partner Rob Kennedy said, “The Stream Private Data Center in The Woodlands offers corporate users a wholesale data center option located within a master-planned setting.”

The new data center is designed in such a way that it can be controlled by either a single tenant or 3 fully independent private data center suites. Each data center suite delivers a significant critical load which is not only expandable but also supported by independent power and cooling infrastructure.

The new facility will be fully-commissioned and ready for occupancy 1 April, 2013.

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Filed Under: Data Center Institute, Data Center Project Management, Data Center Real Estate Tagged With: Data Center management, Data Center Real Estate, Data Center Solutions

Measure Green Factor of the Data Center

June 14, 2012 By DCT User

Managing a data center efficiently is a tough task. After taking the green plunge too, it is necessary that one measures the efficiency of those buildings. This is because, to be completely efficient one needs to know at what rate does the data center use up the resources provided, what type of byproducts it is generating and most importantly how green it actually is.

Why fix something that is not broken?

People might take all that poking and prodding to find out the efficiency rate to be an exhaustive process. But data center managers should remember that measuring certain parameters will help them understand their data center better. Based on these measurements, the managers can opt of upgrades and appropriate resources for the data center. It also helps them assess the success and growth rate accurately. It is shocking to find out that despite of its very important nature, many enterprises completely avoid the process. Surveys of more than 1,500 Data Center owners and operators at Datacenter Dynamics conferences in 2008 indicate that fewer than one in three were using Data Center efficiency metric and fewer than half definitely intended to use them in the future.

But what should we Measure?

Now that the importance of measuring the efficiency has bee established, one needs to measure the right parameters so that those can aid in quantifying the impact of the various upgrades which are incorporated to make the data center green. Let us look at those pointers and try to understand why measuring them is important:

Power:

The data center runs on power and that’s what makes it the most important resources which needs measuring. Doing so will answer all queries and will help one figure out the accurate rate of consumption of energy by the IT equipments, the lighting systems and the Cooling center.

It is pertinent to remember that power consumption is the most expensive operational cost of the data center. If one measures the exact usage rate of this resource, then they will be able to save energy and capital by making necessary improvements.

Footprint:

Here, it means the carbon footprint. As we all know, carbon traps heat and if this is left unchecked, then it can hamper the temperature balance of the data centers. Carbon emission is largely man-made. This factor needs to be checked out because it has a domino effect on the working of a data center. Think about it, increase in temperature means the cooling units would work harder to maintain the temperature of the data center by consuming more power thereby decreasing the overall efficiency.

Battery rooms:

The generators in the battery room which start up in case of a power failure emit a ton of pollutants including gases like nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide. Measuring and keeping a tab on the power consumption of the generators give a clear picture about the data center’s health report.

Hot air emission:

Hot air comes with the territory but a clear pathway is absolutely essential to make sure that it is disposed properly. This is crucial as this hot air if left unattended would be re-circulated in the data center thereby increasing the temperature. Measuring the efficiency rate of the cooling units will let one gain insights how effectively is the hot air disposed and also will help them make a better decision in case an upgrade is required.

Water intake:

Needless to say, cooling tower requires gallons of water on a monthly basis and the water used also needs to be replaces. This measurement has not been seriously considered, but it plays a pivotal role towards determining how green the data center is. Removing gallons of water from the local supplies has a huge impact on the environment on the whole and should not be ignored.

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Filed Under: Data Center Management, Data Center Resources Tagged With: Data Center Efficiency, Data Center management

DataBank Holdings Spills the Beans on its New Data Center Project

June 14, 2012 By DCT User

DataBank Holdings, Ltd, a leading data center and colocation provider who also specializes in offering custom data center recently stated the details of their new data center. The facility is going to be located in north Dallas. The construction is to be completed in four phases and is going to be available to the customers by the winter 2012.

The facility will also have a dedicated power house for constant power delivery via dual 10MW utility feeds in a 2(N) configuration. Originally what was meant to be a 50,000 sq.ft data center, it has now been expanded to contain an additional 10,000 sq,ft of space.

“We could not be more pleased with the new facility’s location,” said Tim Moore, CEO of DataBank. “To construct a facility that meets DataBank standards we needed a unique site combining ultra-high power availability and a dense concentration of fiber providers. Our partners at Digital Realty were able to provide us with a unique and premium property in a stellar data center park setting.” Moore continued, “DataBank’s product is anchored on a 100% uptime availability SLA for enterprise, hosting and cloud providers that make up the bulk of our client base. Also, this location allows us to duplicate our product in North Dallas.”

“DataBank approached Digital Realty looking for a solution that would give it complete control over its business and technical operations,” said David Caron, Senior Vice President, Portfolio Management at Digital Realty. “Our Powered Base Building data center solution supported DataBank’s vision to expand its business, how, when and where it was needed.”

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Filed Under: Data Center Management, Data Center Project Management, Data Center Real Estate Tagged With: data center expansion project, Data Center management

TELEHOUSE Group’s Data Center Expansion Project in Full Swing

June 12, 2012 By DCT User

TELEHOUSE Group ,the leading global provider of dedicated data centers, international Internet exchanges, and managed IT services, recently announced that its parent company KDDI Corporation is all set to invest approximately $140.6 million (11 billion Japanese yen) to expand its data center business in the Greater China market including China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The expansion plan includes construction of new data center in Beijing, China. This data center is set to offer all the standard TELEHOUSE services in Dec 2012. In the mean time, they are also planning to move forwards with the expansion of the colocation space in TELEHOUSE HONG KONG CCC.

KDDI is currently in charge of operations of four data centers, which are located in the Greater China Region, including Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The Beijing data center will be the newest addition, with a total floor area of 67,000 square meters (m2) in the region.

“KDDI and TELEHOUSE America recognize Greater China as one of the most important growing markets, and leading the whole Asian economy,” comments Satoshi Adachi, VP of TELEHOUSE America. “Additionally, active entry of Japanese, European and American companies requires world quality standards with high reliability services. In response, the KDDI group will support its customers’ business expansions by providing premier data center services and a high quality global network, using TELEHOUSE as its core, backed by the service advantages KDDI has in China with CD Networks (CDN) and DMX Technology.”

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Filed Under: Data Center Institute, Data Center Project Management, Data Center Real Estate, Featured News, News Tagged With: Data Center management, Data Center Real Estate, data center service provider

Webhost “DreamHost” Becomes a Tenant in RagingWire Data Center

June 6, 2012 By DCT User

DreamHost, a full-service web hosting company operating across the globe has become an anchor tenant in RagingWire Data Centers’ new Northern Virginia campus known as “The Bolt.” The state-of-the-art facility will enhance DreamHost’s hosting and cloud services dramatically. This move will ensure the improvement of their performance for the East Coast and European clients.

DreamHost offers a wide range of advanced systems and services to the industry. Their products include hosting, virtual private servers, and dedicated servers — plus cloud storage and compute services in beta testing. All these services can be configured as per the customer’s requirement and also are recognized for their proactive customer communications.

“DreamHost is expanding rapidly worldwide with our unique mix of smart and creative software development, flexible infrastructure, and passionate support for open source platforms and applications including Linux, OpenStack, WordPress and Ceph,” said Simon Anderson, DreamHost’s CEO. “We chose RagingWire for our Virginia data center partner because they have cleverly innovated their power, cooling and physical infrastructure to deliver ultimate reliability for our web and cloud hosting network and servers. And the people at RagingWire are pretty cool as well!”

RagingWire is known in the market for designing and operating data centers. Its solutions are unique operated by in-house data center experts and operators. They also offer excellent service with 100% availability and zero downtime even during maintenance.

“DreamHost offers exceptional hosting products and superior customer service for the individual blogger and web designer all the way up to enterprise applications,” said George Macricostas, RagingWire’s chairman, CEO, president, and co-founder. “We share their commitment to enterprise-level reliability and are proud to have been selected as their data center platform in Ashburn, Virginia.”

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Filed Under: Data Center Management, Data Center Project Management, Data Center Tools, Featured News, News Tagged With: Data Center management, data center tenant, designing data center

New Building Automation Platform Promises to Make Data Centers More Efficient

December 12, 2011 By David.Hamilton

TracerXT Data Center management solution

As data centers increasingly strive for lower energy consumption, improved building operations and optimized system management, Tracer XT has been launched as a platform based on GE software technology that improves the performance and efficiency of data centers.

Indoor comfort systems and services provider Trane unveiled the solution at the DatacenterDynamics trade show in Toronto, Canada, on Monday.

According to its Monday announcement and white paper (pdf), Tracer XT combines Trane industry-leading Tracer building controls and heating, ventilation air conditioning expertise with GE Intelligent Platforms’ Proficy Software platform for visualization, advanced analysis and modeling, remote monitoring and diagnostics.

Tracer XT is the first cooperative solution between Trane parent company Ingersoll Rand and GE to combine GE’s industrial solutions and Trane’s HVAC expertise. Tracer XT is based on the Proficy Software platform, which GE’s ecomagination certified for improving overall process efficiency, reducing waste and defects, and reducing energy usage.

According to a global industry survey from DatacenterDynamics, the world’s data centers are expected to consume 19 per cent more energy between September 2011 and 2012, compared to the 12-months prior. This rate greatly outpaces the general growth rate of energy use worldwide, which is around 5 per cent annually. This means that energy reduction is more important than ever.

“Leaders of data centers and other critical indoor environments need fast, integrated information to most effectively manage their facilities,” says Trane system controls global portfolio manager Joel Lehman. “By collecting real-time data and providing actionable information at incredible speeds, Tracer XT integrates with existing Tracer controls to allow for faster decision making about management of data center functions, including critical systems.”

The application includes a high-speed, time-stamped database to record more than 200,000 events per second. Tracer XT also enables a high level of availability by combining redundant equipment, controls and workstation strategies.

Tracer XT uses Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition technology, more than 100 common communications protocols, and industrial language to integrate real-time data from applications including security, fire, safety, HVAC, and power distribution and monitoring.

GE and Trane had previously worked together to reduce the water and energy use of GE’s 29,000-square-foot Ohio data center. With raised floor area equivalent to six professional basketball courts, and more than 3,800 IT systems, GE updated the data center with nearly 30 products from nine different GE businesses including power quality, chilled water, electrical, security and IT services equipment. Combined with Trane’s integrated systems with equipment and controls, the data center reduced its annual energy consumption by more than 11 percent and water usage by 20 percent.

“With the spotlight on data center power consumption, GE’s goal is to optimize operational efficiency and reduce power consumption across our entire data center portfolio,” says GE Corporate Global Infrastructure Services data center technologies principal technologist Steve Doublett. “Supervisory control and data acquisition systems can monitor, control and optimize the variety of critical systems present in an enterprise-class data center. These are keys to meeting our data center goals of efficiency, reliability and availability, which is demanded by our business.”

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Data Center management, GE, Tracer XT, Trane

Reasons to Renovate Your Data Centers

Ways to Reduce Water Consumption in Data Center

Data Center Management – Solutions to Mitigate most Common Risks

Stream Data Centers Builds Its New Data Center in Woodlands

Measure Green Factor of the Data Center

DataBank Holdings Spills the Beans on its New Data Center Project

TELEHOUSE Group’s Data Center Expansion Project in Full Swing

Webhost “DreamHost” Becomes a Tenant in RagingWire Data Center

New Building Automation Platform Promises to Make Data Centers More Efficient

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