Data Center

Hyperconvergence, Disaggregation, and Cloud: The Foggy Future of Network Engineering

The world of networking tends to be bistable: we either centralize everything, or we decentralize everything. We started with mainframes, passed through Lotus 123 hidden in corners, then to mini's and middleware, then to laptops, and now to the cloud, to be followed by fog. This particular cycle of centralization/decentralization, however, has produced a series of overlapping changes that are difficult to decipher. You can somehow hear someone arguing about disaggregation and hyperconvergence through the fog -- but just barely. more

Pulling the Trump Card on Cloud and SDN

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) have been picking up the pace as of late. A high percentage of communication service providers and large data centers have either added these technologies on their roadmaps, or are already doing small-scale Proof-of-Concepts (PoC) in their testbed environments. more

How Open Cloud Could Have Saved Sidekick Users’ Skins

The cloud computing scandal of the week is looking like being the catastrophic loss of millions of Sidekick users' data. This is an unfortunate and completely avoidable event that Microsoft's Danger subsidiary and T-Mobile (along with the rest of the cloud computing community) will surely very soon come to regret. There's plenty of theories as to what went wrong -- the most credible being that a SAN upgrade was botched, possibly by a large outsourcing contractor, and that no backups were taken... more

Microsoft’s Datacenter in Wyoming Powered Entirely by Wind Energy

Microsoft has announced the purchase of its largest wind energy to date -- 237 megawatts of wind energy -- which will in turn allow its datacenter in Cheyenne, Wyoming to be powered entirely by wind power. more

Microsoft Reveals Gen 4 Modular Data Center Strategy, Calls it Most Revolutionary in 30 Years

In a blog post today, Microsoft has provided details of its Generation 4 Modular Data Center plan, which the company believes to be the foundation for its cloud data center infrastructure in the next five years. Michael Manos, Microsoft's General Manager of Global Foundation Services, responsible for the global data center design writes: "We believe it is one of the most revolutionary changes to happen to data centers in the last 30 years..." more

Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Spend Grew 9.2% to $32.6 Billion in 2016, Reports IDC

Vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 9.2% year over year to $32.6 billion in 2016, with vendor revenue for the fourth quarter (4Q16) growing at 7.3% to $9.2 billion. more

Photos of Google’s Latest $600 Million Data Center

Earlier this month, Google officially opened its new data center in South Carolina which was first reported during April of 2007 when the company announced its plans to invest $600 million in the project. This data center is one of the four new data center projects announced by Google last year with other locations being Lenoir, North Carolina; Council Bluffs, Iowa and Pryor, Oklahoma. more

Web Application Delivery: The Challenge of Managing Thousands of Web Applications in the Cloud

Cloud Computing is a hot topic. Some say it is already here, most agree that it will be much bigger in the coming years. It is pushed forward by the economic benefits of virtualization and consolidation. Take a heterogeneous data center, full of many kinds of servers, running a myriad of applications and consolidate it into a uniform farm of virtual machines, where each application is services by one or more VMs and you have a cloud, what is called a private cloud. more

BP and Incident Response: How Well Do Oil and Security Mix?

BP and the Oil Industry are taking a lot of heat these days - much of it rightly so. Moving beyond the drama and evaluating the overall response of BP and others reinforces much of what is taught in incident response training and preparation... by showing the outcomes when one does not respond well. This is probably the most important incident that the responders involved will deal with in their professional lives. For those of us working to protect Internet Infrastructure and resources there are useful lessons as we consider what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and their response effort. more

Critical Role for R&E Networks+Commercial Clouds in US Government “Big Data” Initiative

It is great to see US and European governments undertake initiatives to promote the development of research into Big Data utilizing commercial clouds. Many cloud providers are offering free resources to support these initiatives. R&E networks will play a critical role in linking researchers to the commercial clouds and developing collaboration platforms and portals. more

How IT and Internet Saved Lives in Haiti

Stéphane Bruno writes: "In the first few hours that followed the earthquake, mobile service was completely disrupted. It was almost impossible to place a call, due to the combination of the damages on the cellular networks and the spike in phone calls. However, on some networks, SMS service was still available. People stuck under rubbles started texting to their friends and family (in Haiti and abroad) to tell them they were still alive and needed help. Those friends and family, not knowing what to do, started posting these SOS messages on their social networks, mainly on Facebook." more

Google Spent $7.3 Billion on Data Centers in 2013, Double Its 2012 Spending

Rich Miller reporting in Data Center Knowledge: "Google continues to pump big bucks into its data center operations, investing a massive $7.35 billion in capital expenditures in its Internet infrastructure during 2013. The spending is driven by a massive expansion of Google's global data center network, which represents perhaps the largest construction effort in the history of the data center industry." According to company's reported capital expenditure, total spending adds up to $7.35 billion - more than double the $3.27 billion in CapEx the company reported in 2012. more

China Closing the Door to New Technologies

2013 may be a promising year for global trade in technology with the kick-off of the International Technology Agreement expansion discussions, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and as the Trade in Services Agreement gets going. But China calls its own tune, and is now threatening to restrict its market for Internet-enabled technologies through a clever device that could cost its trading partners billions. more

Data Tsunami and the Looming Broadband Capacity Crisis

There is such a huge volume of genomics (DNA related data) and bio-informatics data being produced that it cannot be transferred over commercial Internet networks, and instead organizations are using FedX and other sneaker nets to ship the data. The same crisis in data volumes is also occurring in the climate modelling and other fields as well. Research and Education (R&E) networks for many years have been warning about this coming data tsunami. more

Google Reports Artificial Intelligence Has Reduced Data Center Energy Usage by 40%, Plans to Expand

DeepMind AI reduces energy used for cooling Google data centers by 40%, was announced today in a blog post by Google's Rich Evans, Research Engineer, DeepMind and Jim Gao, Data Center Engineer. more