Just got back from the Uptime Institute's latest data Center conference held in New York City. In a nutshell, it was everything that is interesting in the data center, only in the year 2010 this really means the physical layer!

"Physical Layer" you say? Yes, the physical side of the data center is driving all of the column inches in the press these days. That is where the chaos and panic around power and cooling AND costs and carbon all come together. In 2010, THIS is where the challenges are. This is where the opportunities exist to demonstrate thought leadership once again, and based on what I saw, people are rising to the challenge!

Frankly, the data center has far too long been a 'mysterious black box' where Intel meets Microsoft meets Linux meets storage and networks. This logical stuff USED TO BE the hard part. Physical resources were ASSUMED to be under control. Those days are gone. Today, it is a GIVEN by the CIO that the technologists in the crowd will figure out how to string together all the logical data processing stuff since modern servers and routers and everything in between have the ability to provide a fairly similiar set of functions and compatibility today. It is the PHYSICAL LAYER which is driving everyone CRAZY!!!!

So in New York, we had over a thousand people, all gathered with more than a hundred vendors talking about cooling strategies, powering data centers with high voltage DC, monitoring practices and advances in Computational Fluid Dynamics. There were the cable managers, PDUs, batteries and floor tile systems. Layer-0 Physical Layer stuff is SO TANGIBLE and comes in a wide range of colors, TAN, GREY and BLACK!

All in all, a great use of time, a place to make or renew relationships across the industry, and a suitable challenge to each attendee's traditional ways of thinking about the challenges in building and operating the required data centers of today....