SolidNode

At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from SteelVault Data Centers, which is seeking a Hosting/Colocation Sales Executive with industry experience and a technical understanding of colo, web hosting, cloud computing and disaster recovery. Click  here for more information or to apply.

Are you hiring for your data center? You can list your company’s job openings on the Data Center Jobs Board, and also track new openings via our RSS feed.

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Data Center Jobs: SteelVault Data Centers

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There are many ways a server can expire, taking your precious data with it. Most of these failures don’t provide the visual evidence of catastrophe that would be useful in, say, marketing videos for data protection providers. The folks at KeepGoing.biz, a business continuity firm in the Dallas area, wanted to give customers a visceral sense of what a catastrophic data loss might look like. Since it’s hard to simulate a meteor strike for a YouTube video, they opted to have a group of heavily-armed guys shoot the dickens out a server cabinet. Whatever this server’s sins may be, we’re certain it’s quite dead in the opening moments of this encounter. These guys continue killing it anyway. Here’s two minutes of infotainment for a Friday afternoon.

For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

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SWAT Team 1, Servers 0

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It takes a lot of processing power to keep the digital economy humming. That’s why Visa Inc. (V) has opened a large new data center in the eastern United States, which the company called a “key milestone” in strengthening the disaster recovery capabilities for a global credit card operation that processes $4.3 trillion in transactions each year.

The new data center is a 370,000 square foot facility with more than 140,000 square feet of raised floor space. Visa did not disclose the location of the data center, which contains authorization engines that can process hundreds of millions of transactions daily at speeds of up to 10,000 transaction messages per second.

Visa’s new facility completes a global network of four data centers on three continents connecting more than 16,000 financial institutions. It also provides Visa with two “synchronized, secure and reliable data centers” in North America, which the company says are each capable of carrying Visa’s entire global payments volume in the event of a natural disaster or systems outage. The failover from one data center to another will be instant, the company says.

The additional capacity is driven by the growing worldwide migration away from cash and checks and towards electronic payments, which now account for 33 percent of global consumer spending. Visa said it expects the volume and complexity of transactions to continue to grow, particularly as mobile payments become more popular.

“Visa’s commitment to continuous technology upgrades differentiates us from competitors and helps Visa play a key role in facilitating the migration to electronic payments,” said Mike Dreyer, Chief Information Officer, Visa Inc. “As we activate our second new data center in four years and complete a transition to the latest information technology, we are laying the foundation for the future of Visa payments and related services.”

Visa is also implementing a new operating system for its transaction processing netrwork, known as VisaNet. The z Transaction Processing Facility (z/TPF), is a 64-bit operating system developed with IBM that allows more information to be manipulated at once and perform more complex processing functions in milliseconds.

Before launching the new data center, Visa conducted network “stress testing” designed to simulate extremely heavy transaction loads. The stress test, conducted in an IBM facility configured to match an operational Visa data center, found that VisaNet’s new configuration has sufficient capacity and processing power to support the busiest hour of the busiest day projected for the year, even if an entire data center was to go offline.

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Visa Opens Large East Coast Data Center

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This NASA diagram depicts solar radiation storms interacting with the magnetic fields surrounding the earth, which can disrupt power grids and communications.

What does 2012 hold in store? Will the supposed end of the Mayan calendar trigger a global apocalypse? Or perhaps something slightly tamer, like huge storms on the surface of the sun sending waves of “solar wind” hurtling towards earth to disrupt our communications and power grids?

This week Hollywood hopes the first scenario will sell a lot of movie tickets to its disaster film “2012″ starring John Cusack. The second scenario, however, isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. In fact, there’s enough science involved that data center operators are being encouraged to educate themselves about the issue.

The year 2012 will bring the next peak of an 11-year cycle of solar activity, which can produce sunspots and solar flares that can interfere with satellite and radio communications on earth. The most significant potential impact is to power grids, which are susceptible to disruptions during these magnetic storms.

A Real Threat to Power Grids
A solar storm during the 1989 caused the entire Hydro-Quebec power grid to fail, leaving millions of residents of northeastern Canada without power for up to nine hours. The event also caused a transformer failure at a nuclear power plant in New Jersey.

Is space weather a threat to your data center? Eric Gallant of Lee Technologies has been working to raise awareness of the 2012 sunspot cycle, so data center operators can assess the risk and determine whether additional steps are needed to protect their power and communications infrastructure.

Similar to Hurricane Prep
Contingencies for space weather are “really similar to things you do for hurricane or other disaster,” Gallant says. That includes ensuring that you have well-maintained backup generators, an adequate supply of diesel fuel, and fuel supply agreements in place to cover an extended outage.

Data center operators may also want to assess their surge suppression systems or consider switchgear that can manage transient power surges. Gallant also suggested monitoring web sites like the NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center to be aware of problematic solar activity.

“You need to keep track of space weather just as you keep track of the regular weather,” he said.

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2012: No Apocalypse, but Space Weather Threat?

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