SolidNode

High-density colocation provider CyrusOne has secured a new $150 million credit facility from a syndicate of banks, the company said today. The additional financing will accelerate growth in the company’s core Texas market, and allowed the Houston-based company to refinance its outstanding debt.

“Our decision to seek expansion funding was a result of a solid pipeline of customer requirements in Houston, Dallas and Austin,” said David Ferdman, President and CEO, CyrusOne. “With this new credit facility and a significant incremental equity commitment from ABRY Partners, we not only have significant resources to support and accelerate our growth to meet these requirements; but this also dramatically lowers our cost of capital.”

The Senior Secured Credit Facility was arranged through a syndicate comprised of several financial institutions including Toronto Dominion, Royal Bank of Canada, SunTrust Bank, Société Générale, CapitalSource Finance, Caterpillar Financial Services, and Webster Bank.

Cyrus One is owned by ABRY Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm that bought the company in 2007 and has backed the data center expansion program. In February the company leased an additional 81,000 square feet of space in Dallas and commissioned two new pods totaling 25,000 square feet in its existing 125,000 square foot Houston campus. In June it announced plans to build a new 94,000 square foot data center in West Houston, with an option to add a second 100,000 square foot facility on adjacent property, the company said today.

The expansion will eventually give the company more than 480,000 square feet of space in seven data centers in Texas, including three facilities in Houston, three in Dallas and one in Austin.

Original post:
CyrusOne Arranges $150 Million Financing

Popularity: unranked [?]

Today we are introducing Industry Perspectives, a new editorial content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. It provides industry professionals with the opportunity to contribute articles sharing their insight and expertise.

This new feature is part of our ongoing effort to make Data Center Knowledge your best independent source for news and information about the data center industry. We are also continuing to expand our daily news reporting and analysis, and have exciting plans for growth in 2010.

The launch of Industry Perspectives is a reflection of the growing effort to share best practices in the data center industry. This is an increasingly important discussion, and with DCK’s reach (more than 125,000 data center professionals read our site each month), we believe we can help extend the conversation to a wider audience. 

To help organize our content, we have introduced a new home page design for Data Center Knowledge that provides separate sections for our news coverage and the Industry Perspectives channels.    

It’s important to note that Industry Perspectives is an editorial product, and not an advertising program. The quality of a contributed article is the most important factor in whether it is published. To learn more, see our guidelines and criteria for Indutry Perspectives.

Original post:
New from DCK: Industry Perspectives

Popularity: unranked [?]

Fred Stack is vice president of marketing for Liebert Precision Cooling at Emerson Network Power. Stack is responsible for new product development roadmaps that reflect evolving market demands and incorporate new technology.

The recent expansion of data center temperature limits has raised various questions and concerns throughout the industry. Some data center and IT managers have voiced reservations about elevating the overall data center temperature and reducing their outage ride through time while others seek all possible efficiency gains.

FRED STACK
Emerson
Network Power

As a refresher, the purpose of the ASHRAE-recommended envelope is to give guidance on maintaining high reliability while efficiently operating data centers. The newest ASHRAE recommended environmental range for class one and two data centers is 18 to 27° C (64.4 to 80.6° F) (dry bulb temperature). The allowable envelope which broadens the range to 32° C (90° F) is where IT equipment manufacturers test product in order to verify that the unit will function with no damage for periods of times generally assumed to be counted in hours or a few days for emergency operation.

These higher temperature ranges are being promoted to emphasize to the industry that these are server input temperatures, not cooling unit return temperatures. The temperatures in the cold aisles can be significantly increased from the averages across the industry for a significant increase in the cooling capacity and efficiency of the cooling equipment.

The higher temperature ranges are also being used to increase the number of hours an air or water economizer can be used in a data center. Water economizers have minimal operational concerns, just some maintenance procedures, while air economizers require data center managers recognize the potential impact of energy to humidify dry air along with the potential impact of particulate and gaseous contamination.

One additional caution has been explained in the ASHRAE publications. That is the move from 25° C to 27° C (77° F to 80.6° F) can have a negative impact on the IT equipment’s power dissipation. Most IT manufacturers start to increase air moving device speed around 23° C (73° F) to improve component cooling and offset the increased ambient air temperature. Increases in the server intake temperature from 23° to 27°C will double the server fan energy consumption. A typical server fan consumes 10 percent of the total server energy at low temperatures.

This small change in input temperature to 27°C (80.6°F) will increase the total server energy by 10 percent. A move to 29°C (84.2°F) increases the total server energy by 20 percent. These increases in server energy, while an improvement to your PUE metric, actually negate all the energy savings from the effort. For this reason it is usually recommended to only move above 24°C (75.2°F) when an economizer provides access to “free cooling.”

Ultimately, raising temperatures in data centers should be carried out in a systematic manner to best determine where hot spots may occur. Care should be taken to ensure that data centers are operating efficiently without risking infrastructure shutdown because of high temperatures or contamination.

Industry Perspectives is a new content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating in Industry Perspectives.

Original post:
Managing the Expanding Temperature Envelope

Popularity: unranked [?]

This is the one time during the year that online retailers need to ensure preparedness for the onslaught of holiday shoppers and it seems as though many businesses may have dropped the ball.  “Black Friday”, one of the busiest shopping days of the season, and the thirty days leading up to this day were heavy monitored by Uptrends, a remote-intelligence performance monitoring service.  The results put out by this web site monitoring company showed that many retail companies with sites online were less than prepared overall.

Companies monitored

Uptrends monitored one hundred of the more popular e-retailers throughout the month of November, up to and including “Black Friday.”  Of those companies monitored, a few came out on top with numerous page errors and long periods of down-time.

The biggest loser out of those monitored was Crutchfield Corporation, an electronics specialty retailer, with a total of sixty-one page errors and over five hours of web site down-time.  Following not too far behind was home electronics biggie, Fry’s.  This store managed to build up a total of forty-three page errors and over three and half hours of totaled down-time.

Out of all one hundred of the monitored web sites, nearly half experienced some amount of down-time.  Fifty-five were able to maintain a 100% up-time, twenty-four came in at 99.9% and twenty-one sported a 99.6% up-time.  Anything lower than 99.6% results in over three and a half hours of down-time in a thirty day period.

Of growing concern is that many of the companies monitored are considered to be household names.  The online public demographic is the same as the general public when it comes to shopping both online and off.  These shoppers expect a certain level of reliability of those in the retail business who have been around for quite some time.

Other affected web sites

It seems as though those companies monitored by Uptrend weren’t the only ones affected by the “Black Friday” holiday shopping rush.  Department store Sears’ online web site experienced multiple and total site crashes throughout the day.  Walmart, Kmart, Amazon, Target and Costco all experience significant web site slowdowns or other internet issues.

According to StorefrontBacktalk, numerous large and well-known retailers were affected in one way or another with the influx of shoppers on “Black Friday”.  Even non-retail product providers were showing as having issues.  Hallmark.com, while stating its web site issues were attributed to improvements, greeted customers with an unavailable message on this day.

Growing market

With more and more retailers joining the online retail crowd, it seems to be a growing concern over whether or not companies are putting in the time and research to improve upon overall reliability.  Day to day operations of an online retail store is not the proper litmus test for reliability.  It is days like “Black Friday” that should be the standard setters.  Perhaps the issues that cropped up on this traditional holiday shopping day should be assessed and scrutinized to better prepare e-retailers for next year’s holiday shopping menagerie.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Several stories from recent weeks highlight the vibrant data center industry in Europe. Here’s a roundup:

European data centre revenue set to double
A report published by Tariff Consultancy Ltd notes that European data centre revenue is “set to more than double over the five year period from 2010 to 2015, with net raised floor space to increase by 70%, driven primarily by price increases.” The report gives pricing and forecasts for 19 of the EU25 countries and analyzes pricing of a standard 19″ rack, a small cage space and a 50 KVA suite of space for each of the countries.  It also dives into trends impacting data centres such as raised floor capacity in markets, revenue per square meter forecasts, electricity pricing, pricing per rack and cage, and the most expensive data centre countries.

Savvis received EuroFIT award
Financial technology publication Waters published their innagural EuroFIT awards earlier in the month, to recognize Europe’s hottest financial IT products and services.  In the category of Best Datacenter Hosting Provider, Savvis (SVVS) took the award as a company capitalizing on the rising demand for data center services.  Equinix was listed as an honorable mention in the category. A little over a year ago Savvis marked the completion of a global data center expansion by opening a 37,500 square foot facility on the outskirts of London in Slough. The award also noted that Savvis services seven of the top ten Fortune 500 financial services and banking firms. Amazon (AMZN) won the Best Cloud Provider award as an “overwhelming leader in the field.”

The Bunker selected by Cimar
The Bunker announced that it was selected by Cimar (UK) Limited to provide managed ultra secure hosting of its radiology image sharing web service. The Bunker delivered a scalable platform to Cimar built on Microsoft technology.  Howard Jenkinson, managing director of Cimar said “absolute information security is a pre-requisite for any digital service carrying sensitive patient information.”  Click here for a video of ‘The Bunker’ and details of a July 2009 130,000 square foot expansion.

Tata Communications London outage
Several reports came in late last week regarding an outage experienced at Tata Communications’ London data center.  Apparently a power cut followed by generator and UPS failures caused the two hour outage Thursday evening in the Stratford facility.  Grid power was restored around 7:30pm that day as servers came back online.  Colocation provider C4L posted a detailed timeline of the Stratford Tata outage. The Register also reported on the outage. They mention that a Tata spokeswoman was still looking into what caused the outage and the subsequent failure of backup power.

Node4 plans fourth data center
Data centre and communications specialists Node4 announced plans for their next data centre site, to be located in Northampton. Plans are being finalized for the facility and customers are expected to move in by the end of 2010.  The DC4 data centre will house up to 600 racks and will feature N+1 or N+N UPS, generators and climate controls. The DC3 facility in Wakefield opened in July 2009.

Investment Forum for Data Centres
Broad Group will host the 3rd annual International Finance and Investment forum for data centres December 3rd in King’s Place, London. In this forum financiers, investors, private equity firms and others will come together to discuss data centre geographic location choices, data storage infrastructure investment and other critical issues, as well as generate new ideas and opportunities for future development.

Original post:
European Data Center Revenue May Double

Popularity: 12% [?]

A diagram of an “air wand” indicating the location of cooling vents in the wand, a key feature of a patent application by Google data center engineers.

Google has revealed some of the secret technology inside its mighty data centers, but its engineers are busy cooking up new secrets.

An example: Google is seeking to patent an advanced data center cooling system that provides precision cooling inside racks of servers, automatically adjusting to temperature changes while dramatically reducing the energy required to run chillers.

The cooling design, which could help Google slash the power bill for its servers, reinforces Google’s focus on its data centers as a competitive advantage in its battle with Microsoft and other rivals for leadership in cloud computing. The company has customized much of the operation of its data centers, which serve as the engines powering its massive Internet business. Google builds its own servers and networking switches, and now appears to be customizing the racks that hold them.

Precision Cooling via ‘Air Wands’
The innovative rack cooling design features an adjustable piping system, including “air wands” that provide small amounts of cold air to components within a server tray. The chilled air enters the top of a rack through two vertical standpipes, which branch off into air wands – long, thin pipes lined with vents that release cold air.

The air wands can pivot to target cold air on specific components, or be swung to one side to allow equipment to be removed from the rack. Dampers on each standpipe can open and close to regulate the volume of air flowing into the pipe and air wands, while the vents on each individual air wand can be adjusted to point up or down, allowing for a highly configurable system. (See A Closer Look at Google’s New Cooling Design for a diagram).

Exaflop and Its History
It’s not clear whether Google is already using the cooling system. But the patent application was submitted by Exaflop LLC, whose 2008 patent for a UPS system integrating batteries with server power supplies helped Google achieve 99.9 percent UPS efficiency and record low Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) scores. The address for Exaflop is 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, Calif., which is Google’s headquarters. The inventors listed on the patent are Google employees Jimmy Clidaras and Winnie Leung.

The system designed by Clidaras and Leung addresses many of the most vexing challenges in data center energy efficiency. It allows Google to apply small amounts of cold air precisely where it is needed, rather than cooling an entire server room and seeking to steer the airflow into each rack and across the hot server components.

Going Beyond Containers
Google has used data center containers to isolate hot and cold air and gain greater control over airflow to its servers. The new design takes this concept to a more granular level of management. The air wands can apply cool air directly to the “hot spots” inside a server tray, meaning less air is wasted or misdirected in the server room or container. This could allow Google to use a smaller chiller plant in its data centers, saving energy in the process.

Chillers, which are used to refrigerate water for use in data center cooling systems, require a large amount of electricity to operate. With the growing focus on power costs, many data centers are trying to reduce their reliance on chillers.

This has boosted adoption of “free cooling,” the use of fresh air from outside the data center to support the cooling systems. This approach allows data centers to use outside air when the temperature is cool, while falling back on chillers on warmer days. The new design could be used as supplemental cooling in a data center using free cooling, or in facilities located in areas where fresh air cooling isn’t feasible.

Limitations of Free Cooling
Google is operating a chiller-less data center in Belgium, where the climate allows nearly year-round use of free cooling. But this strategy will only work in cooler regions, and Google’s global ambitions may eventually require data centers in hotter climates unsuitable for free cooling.

Google can gain additional control over its cooling system through automated monitoring and management, as the system is designed to respond to changes within the rack as temperatures fluctuate. “The temperature sensor output can be fed to a computer program that triggers air distribution in the event of the board temperature crossing a threshold,” the patent reads. “Each temperature sensor may be connected to a PID control loop with a damper, so the corresponding damper is opened … with an increase in temperature sensed for a particular area.”

Some Secrets Revealed, While Others Incubate
Google’s data center designs were kept secret for many years, consistent with the company’s belief that its data center innovations gave it a competitive advantage. In April Google discussed its data center operations for the first time, joining a growing industry conversation about best practices for energy efficiency.

The company revealed its data center containers, custom server design and on-board UPS, among other innovations. But some industry observers concluded that there was more in the pipeline that Google wasn’t discussing.

“Both the board and the data center designs shown in detail where not Google’s very newest but all were excellent and well worth seeing,” James Hamilton noted at the time. “I like the approach of showing the previous generation technology to the industry while pushing ahead with newer work. This technique allows a company to reap the potential competitive advantages of its R&D investment while at the same time being more open with the previous generation.”

RELATED STORIES:

• Google’s Custom Web Server Revealed
• Google Claims ‘World’s Most Efficient Data Centers
• Efficient UPS Aids Google’s Extreme PUE
• Google Unveils its Data Center Containers
• Google’s Chiller-Less Data Center

Original post:
Google Patent Reveals Data Center Innovations

Popularity: unranked [?]

Data center energy costs as a percent of total revenue are at an all time high. In fact, energy costs are emerging as the second highest operating cost in the IT organization, behind labor. A typical one-megawatt data center consumes 16 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year—roughly equivalent to the energy consumed by 1400 average U.S. households.

This white paper looks at two key ways that data center managers can improve end­-to-­end energy efficiency: by changing the voltage of power distribution and by taking advantage of new, high-efficiency, multi-mode uninterruptible power systems (UPSs).

This analysis shows that 400V AC power distribution offers a high degree of energy efficiency for modern data centers, significantly reducing capital and operational expenditures and total cost of ownership, compared to 600V AC and traditional 480V AC power systems. Recent developments in UPS technology—including the introduction of transformer­less UPSs with new energy management features— further enhance a 400V AC power distribution system to maximize energy efficiency.

The bottom line is new technology options and power distribution strategies can dramatically reduce the cost and carbon footprint of your data center. Down load this white paper from Eaton to learn more.

Original post:
Is Your Data Center Draining Your Bottom Line?

Popularity: unranked [?]

I’m hosting another Chiller Side Chat with Michael Manos of Digital Realty Trust on Monday, Dec. 7 from 12 noon to 1 p.m. Central time. Mike is the Senior Vice President of Technical Services for Digital Realty and one of the leading voices in the data center industry. His previous Chiller Side Chats on his Loose Bolts blog have shared his insights on issues ranging from data center design to impending regulation that will affect the data center.

The webinar format of the Chiller Side Chat offers you the opportunity to ask questions and share your thoughts and opinions on key data center issues with Mike, who in his previous post was responsible for the construction and operations of Microsoft’s data center facilities. To get a feel for the format, you can listen to a podcast of the first event on Sept. 14.

Be sure to register for this event to learn more about the changes facing the data center industry and share information and perspectives from Mike and your fellow data center professionals.

Original post:
Reminder: Chiller Side Chat on Dec. 7

Popularity: 48% [?]

Sometimes Google makes changes that are announced and other times they make remarkably silent changes.  In the case of Google Webmaster Tools, both types of changes have occurred – outdated software alerts and PageRank.  The recent changes are a reflection on how the company is constantly striving to keep up with its customers’ needs and desires.

Update alerts

In the case of the former, Google is going to incorporate a service that alerts webmasters of web site software updates and releases when these programs become outdated.  The reasoning behind this new service is that many web site owners are unaware of new updates.  Not applying them in a timely manner can lead to a hacked web site.  In fact, the company started out with merely sending alerts to web site owners of potential security issues and when this was well-received, Google decided to take it a step further.

The alerts are not limited to just software updates.  Google has set it so that web site owners will be notified of new modules or plugins belonging to existing programs (such as new Drupal modules or Joomla extensions).

How is Google managing to identify which web sites and programs need to be targeted?  The company parses the source code of each and every web page it crawls.  Normally, within the source code of these pages one will find software generated meta tags that indicate the program version number.  When a version number is lower than the currently updated program version, an alert is sent out to the web site owner. For the moment, update alerts depend upon software creators ensuring their version numbers are listed within the meta tags.

There has not been a specific time set for this newest feature to be rolled out, though Google indicates it will be soon.

PageRank

The other change that Google has made recently to its Webmaster Tool area is that of PageRank.  The removal of this particular feature was not announced – just silently passed off.  In the past, Google consistently informed web site owners that too much focus was being placed on PageRank when, in reality, it was not considered to be a tremendously valuable metric to follow.

The odd thing is, though PageRank has been removed from the Google Webmaster Tool area, it remains within the Google Toolbar.  Apparently it is considered to be too solid of a piece of the branding for Google to have it removed.

Though removed from the tools and left in the toolbar, Google has indicated the PageRank can still be considered useful.  It can indicate to the user how the web site is behaving within Google’s index.  If “green,” all is well.  If any other color, an investigation is warranted.

Google does wish to point its users to an FAQ page dedicated to Google and SEO – this area covers crawling, ranking, and indexing.  The fact is, PageRank is one of a couple hundred signals that can affect a web site’s ranking.

Whether silently removed or publicly preannounced, it seems Google is keeping up with its customers’ ongoing web site needs.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Will the data center of the future have no central UPS units, and be filled with servers with on-board batteries? The data center team at Facebook believes it should, and is pledging to share its best practices - and perhaps wield some of its clout with vendors and data center operators - as it presses its case for change.   

Facebook recently disclosed its plans to adopt a novel power distribution design pioneered by Google that removes uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and power distribution units (PDUs) from the data center. The new design shifts the UPS and battery backup functions from the data center into the cabinet by adding a 12 volt battery to each server power supply.

While many best practices shared by Google, Microsoft and Facebook can help other data center operators save energy and money, other customizations are impractical.   

Big Companies, Big Innovation 
“A lot of the innovation in the field is being driven by companies with thousands of servers who really care about the efficiency of these things,” said Facebook’s Amir Michael, who previously worked on Google’s data center team. “We have capital to be able to afford engineers to solve these problems. It’s not really benefiting the rest of the industry. Smaller companies who might deploy fewer servers can’t go and design their own systems.”

In discussing Facebook’s plans for on-board batteries, Michael discussed ways these innovations might become more widely available.

“It’s a chicken and the egg problem,” said Michael. “No one really makes a data center without a UPS, and no one makes server with a battery on board. Server manufacturers aren’t going to build a server with a battery on board, because no one has a place to deploy that.”

Facebook’s buying power gives it some influence with hardware vendors. Michael noted that Facebook is working with vendors on power supply customizations, and has gotten little pushback from server vendors on its modifications to motherboards.

“Volumes are large enough that server vendors are helping us with that rather than opposing us,” he said. “We’re actually being supported quite well.”

Not all equipment vendors would endorse an industry shift to servers with on-board batteries, however. Makers of UPS equipment and power distribution units (PDUs) are significant players in discussions of industry best practices, and would be unlikely to advocate designs that reduce demand for those products.

Is there a transition that could lead to more options for innovation in power distribution? Michael suggested potential changes in wholesale data center leasing models.

“One example could be to build a data center where you have a portion that has no UPS,” he said. ”The data center operator can charge customers a lower rate to deploy their servers in a part of the facility that doesn’t have a UPS. The customer, if they’re savvy, can go and purchase a server which has a battery on board. They’ll pay a little more up front, but in the long run they’ll save money because they’re paying less to operate that server over a period of time.

“We hope to see the industry move to a model like this,” said Michael. ”As a customer that leases space in data centers, I would welcome a change like this.”

Facebook is one of the largest customers in the market for turn-key data center space, and leases space from leading providers like Digital Realty Trust, DuPont Fabros Technology and Fortune Data Centers. 

Are these cutting-edge energy efficiency strategies only appropriate for large-scale operations like Google and Facebook? Or would enterprises and smaller companies adopt these practices if they had access to them? Facebook says it will be more active in the growing industry conversation about best practices, which it hopes will reveal the answer.  

“It’s no longer okay just to be secretive,” said Michael. “There’s too much at stake.  Smaller companies might use too much of their resources and too much of their capital on their data center infrastructure. They should be allowed to benefit from the same type of optimizations that we’re making here at Facebook.”

Original post:
Should Servers Come With Batteries?

Popularity: 48% [?]