Michiel van Blommestein's Blog

The Top Mistakes in Data Center Operations

Over at the Green Data Center Blog, Dave Ohara draws attention to a white paper by Lee Technologies that claims to point out the ten worst mistakes… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 23, 2010 at 23:23 — No Comments

Measuring Cooling, Step by Step

Short post today. Wesley Smith, Director of Operations for Tier IV facility FIBERWORLD, has written a short step-by-step guide on how to measure the effectiveness of your cooling. It is posted to Data Center Journal.

Frankly, it is kind of basic and most of it should be standard fare… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 22, 2010 at 22:56 — No Comments

Measuring Cooling Step by Step

Short post today. Wesley Smith, Director of Operations of Tier IV facility FIBERTOWN, has drawn up a little step-by-step list on determining how effective your cooling is. He did so for Data Center Journal.

Frankly, it is not very comprehensive while most of the points he mentions… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 22, 2010 at 22:52 — No Comments

A Small List of Fire Suppression Products

It is one of those systems that you hope you would never have any use for. And even if it shows its use, you curse the day that it was needed. I am, of course, writing about fire suppression systems.

If poorly chosen, the fire extinguisher can be more devastating than the fire itself. I mean, I would not like a sprinkler system hovering above my home pc, let alone that a manager would like one looming over his super critical servers.

Good thing there are lots of alternatives… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 21, 2010 at 23:04 — No Comments

Is the Crisis over for Data Centers? Survey Says...

...Not yet. That is basically what the annual Purchasing Survey Report conducted by TechTarget says. The survey is conducted last spring and has more than a thousand respondents, nearly all of them in the United States.

First the somewhat good news: even though a massive 20 percent of data center managers say they are facing budget cuts, that is down from 40 percent last year. 46 percent… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 20, 2010 at 23:19 — No Comments

OpenStack: The LAMP for the Cloud?

Today saw the official announcement of OpenStack, an open source cloud platform from Rackspace. It basically consists of two parts (for now that is): object storage and a compute pack.

For now, all we get is early code of the compute pack. But just in terms of potential impact, OpenStack could actually be quite significant as it is aimed at a very broad industry base and it is completely open. So my question would be: could OpenStack be for the cloud… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 20, 2010 at 0:19 — No Comments

Finally: A Standard Way to Measure PUE

They waited for the hottest months of the season (that is, on the northern hemisphere), but a taskforce led by The Green Grid has finally laid out plans to come to a standard way to measure PUE. They have published their proposal in this white paper. As things stand, this is the proposal for stand alone data centers, not computer rooms… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 16, 2010 at 22:40 — No Comments

Colt's Modular Build

Ever since Microsoft popularised the concept, modular (or: containerised) data centers are very popular. While they might not be as efficient in the long run as a fully customised data center, the time saved makes it well worth it.

Beside Microsoft, more and more vendors are championing this design principle. IBM, HP and Google join the Redmond giant in embracing this idea, in which modules are just chucked inside an unused facility. They even claim nowadays that they can sport PUE's… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 15, 2010 at 22:30 — No Comments

THIS is What You Need to Earn an Energy Star

We have a winner. A month after the program came into effect, the first Energy Star has been granted to a facility. NetApp's RTP datacenter in North Carolina is the first that can slap the logo behind the reception desk.

This particular data center was opened a year ago, and is used by the storage vendor for R & D

The facility scored 99/100 points. Here are some of… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 14, 2010 at 22:00 — 1 Comment

Kyoto Wheeling, or no Dealing?

Quick post today. The Kyoto Wheel has been around since 2007, so it is fair to assess this technology in cooling data centers as a 'mature' concept. Those of you who are already using it know the answer already: Yes, amazingly this somewhat cumbersome brute is actually quite effective in using outside air to cool your data centers.

Techtarget have written a sort of review of the Kyoto Wheel,… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 13, 2010 at 21:24 — No Comments

An Interesting Dutch Cooling Concept

(Well, to be honest: Spain did play better. Ok, back to business now, as the World Cup is over and we will have to wait four years)

Sometimes, one can come across a cooling concept which on the one hand seems too simple to be true, while on the other hand it is so simple it borders to elegance.

DatacenterWorks is reporting on the deployment of a data center that is based on a Dutch principle called DataCenterKoeling (translated: data center cooling). Apparently, it is… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 12, 2010 at 22:40 — No Comments

Hah! I was Right!

Now, I was at the Imagine Cup that took place in Warsaw this week. I have to say I am knackered.

Earlier, I posted a blog that some of the idea (especially in the embedded sphere) sounded very familiar. I mean, energy management on the level of devices, remote power down etc. etc.

Well, that was just a hunch. Yesterday, I got to talk to one of the team members from the Romanian squad. They had a smart solution that maps all the devices within a home or small office, tracks… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 9, 2010 at 22:00 — No Comments

VDI is a Useless Toy

That is not my opinion. It is the opinion of these two gentleman: Don Jones and Greg Shields, of Concentrated Technology.

They argue, in four bulletpoints, that VDI does not offer any value for any business whatsoever. It is a gimmick: It is not cost effective,… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 9, 2010 at 2:06 — 1 Comment

What Data Centers mean for the World

Right now, I am attending the Imagine Cup competition in Warsaw. For those that don't know, the Imagine Cup is a Microsoft sponsored competition in which teams of students present software projects (based on Microsoft kits, of course) which aim for a better world. Specifically, they have to tackle one of the Millenium Goals of the United Nations. Today the six finalists from each categorie (I attended embedded and software design) got a… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 8, 2010 at 0:55 — No Comments

Something Wet Leaks from Google

(as you might notice: the further the Dutch football team gets in the World Cup, the shorter my posts. The next match for the Orange Army is on sunday, so no worries there) Do you remember when Google disclosed their server technolody to the world? They did so on 1 April 2009, making everyone think it was some kind of prank. That was also helped by the fact that the Google servers seemed... duct… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 7, 2010 at 0:09 — No Comments

The Big Red Button that IT is NOT

This week's issue of the Economist (a newspaper that I hold in high regard for its ability of both analysis and opinionating comments) features a cover story about what it calls 'the war in the fifth domain': Cyberspace.

For some reason, even the most prestigious newspapers make amusing slip ups when it comes to technology. While the Economist article has some passages that will make you chuckle ("Computer bugs bring down military e-mail systems". With 'bugs', they probably mean… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 5, 2010 at 22:58 — No Comments

IT is the real James Bond

First of all, let me express my absolute astonishment on the match of today. Holland played so-so in the first half, but what a second half. I am not a chauvinist, but it was a thrilling match and a great result. So good actually, that the Dutch actually proved again that the Twitter data centers are far from reliable enough. I haven't seen so many fail whales in quite some time. What will happen if China starts to play football well???

But I digress. All I wanted to do was point to… Continue

Added by Michiel van Blommestein on July 2, 2010 at 23:32 — No Comments

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

The Data Center Professionals Network

Michiel van Blommestein's Blog (68)