All Blog Posts (907)

The Q2 Winners AND The Losers are Content Delivery Shops

Akamai has been an exciting force within the data center world for a good year now. At NetEvents 2009, they were awarded Most Innovative Company. Before that, they were steadily building a reputation.

This also shows in their results. As Data Center Knowledge points out, the application delivery company has shot up another 60 percent for the last uarter. That while the Dow… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 1, 2010 at 22:43 — No Comments

The Anniversary of an Odd, Enduring Marriage

Quick post today. The Register, while it sometimes overdoes it in half funny coverage of nonsensical news, has an interesting comment running this week.

It is a celebration of ten years of Linux on IBM Mainframes. While it may sound logical now that it is Linux that has saved Big Iron from catastrophe, it is actually kind of weird that two so different tech business philosophies are so well matched together.… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on June 29, 2010 at 20:39 — No Comments

Storage is Boring, and here is the Evidence

To paraphrase a former chief editor of mine: storage is boring. You have a disk, and you put stuff on it. Finito, there is no more to it than that. Nothing to see here, move along. Unfortunately, he does have a point. Not much is happening in terms of technological or even functional breakthroughs.

When I was an editor at IDG, there was very little news in terms of storage. Data warehousing maybe, SANs or NAS's. Too bad it was seldomly

ripe for a good article. Disks get bigger… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on June 28, 2010 at 22:51 — No Comments

Data Center Management must include continuous real-time monitoring.

I spend a great deal of time talking about data center efficiency and the technologies available to assist in driving efficiency up. Additionally a great deal of my time is spent discussing how to determine success in the process(es). What I find is that there is still a fundamental missing appreciation for the need for 'continuous' real-time monitoring to measure…

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Added by Robert Schmidt on June 28, 2010 at 16:31 — No Comments

About Dodgy Construction Firms

We all know that contracters and constructors can be slippery. Heck, I once had my roof fixed, and the invoice was about twice as high as was agreed beforehand! However, the rule is that the bigger the client, the dodgier the dealing can be.

That's exactly what happened in Chicago with the US's largest data center operator being the fat singing lady. Apparently, Digital Realty Trust play a key part in the downfall… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on June 25, 2010 at 23:41 — No Comments

Data Center Monitoring - MUST be Enterprise in Scale!

Over the course of meeting with perhaps 100 customers over the last 6 months, it has become painfully clear to me that there is widescale and growing confusion about Real-Time Data Center…

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Added by Robert Schmidt on June 25, 2010 at 16:08 — No Comments

Diagnosing Big Data

Structure 2010, a conference concerning internet infrastructure and cloud computing (and, consequently, data centers) is underway in San Francisco. Blogger Katie Fehrenbacher does some nice, regular blogposts from there.

One of them is a list of signs that you are really dealing with big data. What is big data? Well, that is exactly the problem. you really don't know that you have, say, malaria if you don't recognise the symptoms. You might misdiagnose it yourself as a simple… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on June 24, 2010 at 23:10 — No Comments

Comparing PUE is Great Fun, if not very Accurate

PUE may not be the best of instruments for handing out, let's say, world wide energy labels. But what PUE can offer is a view at how well you're operation is going, and it gives a quick answer to the question wheter there is any space for improvement.

Consequently, the data center space is locked in a friendly competition of 'who has the smallest', or more accurately: who comes closest to… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on June 23, 2010 at 22:58 — No Comments

This Post Will Solve All Your Problems

Forget the post I wrote yesterday, and the Network World article it pointed to. If you want to solve all your problems with your facility and don't mind for the rewards to come in a couple of months rather than a couple of weeks, Peter Judge of Green Data Center News has a very simple solution:

STOP BUYING NEW HARDWARE!

The funny thing is, this is not as preposterous as it first appears. If… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on June 22, 2010 at 22:29 — No Comments

No Vacation for you Data Center Managers!

If you're planning to do a data center project next year, than I have some very bad news for you: if you have not started it, than you're summer vacation is going to be a short one indeed. You need to have your budget ready by autumn to be able to do some serious shopping during the holiday period. That is hardly a relaxing thing to do, especially if it is actually the first large project in ages.…

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Added by Michiel van Blommestein on June 21, 2010 at 22:30 — No Comments