How Deep Can Green Get? Ask Capgemini
By Rakesh Dogra, DATACENTER Journal
Posted on Tue, 31 Aug 2010
In February of this year, Douglas Farquahar, Head of Sustainable Outsourcing at Capgemini U.K., wrote on how "intelligent IT can help save the planet, lowland gorillas, and money." The company has quite literally put money down for each of these reasons.
Capgemini, a consulting, technology, and outsourcing company, operates out of Paris and has clients in more than 30 countries.
The statistics on how much a data center contributes to the world's carbon footprint are well known. As much as 2% of global carbon emissions are courtesy of the data center industry. With demand for data processing and storage increasing steadily and swiftly, the IT industry is set to rank alongside the oil industry as a "major polluter."
Tags:
None
Infected USB flash drive led to worst U.S. military breach in history
By Paul Mah, FierceCIO TechWatch
Posted on Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Malware loaded into USB flash drives resulted in the successful infiltration of the U.S. military's Central Command in 2008, says a new report by The Washington Post. In what was deemed as the U.S. military's "most significant breach," Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III confirmed that the malicious code was placed in the drive by a foreign intelligence, and managed to spread undetected onto classified systems.
Tags:
None
Today's Facility Engineer: Jack of All Data Center Trades
By Jeffrey Clark, DATACENTER Journal
Posted on Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Despite the faltering economy, demand for IT services continues to rise. Correspondingly, the need for resources provided by data centers is increasing, which is good news for IT professionals seeking employment in an overall dismal job market. For data center facility engineer positions, the question that many such IT professionals must ask themselves is whether they have the skill set that employers are looking for.
Today's data center facility engineer must wear a number of hats. Although specialization is the key to success in many jobs, most companies require their facility engineers to perform a number of different types of tasks. Naturally, then, the engineer must have a broad skill set. To get an idea of what companies are looking for, simply scan the job advertisements on any job board, or use an Internet search engine. The job descriptions are often nearly identical.
Tags:
None
Hurricane Earl may test IT teleworkers
By Patrick Thibodeau, ComputerWorld
Posted on Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Power outages in the U.S. increase this year even before hurricane season.
If Hurricane Earl, now a major hurricane, hits the East Coast of the U.S. later this week, the top concern for IT executives may not be data center outages but loss of Internet access for telecommuting workers.
Forecasters say the storm could possibly hit land somewhere between the Carolinas and New England sometime before the start of Labor Day weekend.
Critical data centers, with backup generators, facilities and fuel supplies, are now
built to continue operating during storms. The same can't be said for the computing setups that telecommuters maintain in their homes, and they may be put to the test this year.
Last year, a lack of hurricanes made it a good one for telecommuters.
Tags:
None
Purdue builds app that slows servers when cooling fails
By Joab Jackson, ComputerWorld
Posted on Tue, 31 Aug 2010
While chip manufacturers
continue to make their processors ever more powerful, at least one customer has found it useful to slow these chips down, at least long enough to keep them running when the data center air conditioning falters.
Patrick Finnegan, a systems administrator at Purdue University, has developed software that slows the clock speed of server processors, a throttling that reduces the heat they produce.
"Previously our only options were to put in a few large fans and hope that was enough, or start turning servers off," said Mike Shuey, who oversees Purdue's supercomputers. "This software gives us a middle ground that gets us by many outages."
Tags:
None
The Rise Of Virtualized IT
By Sixto Ortiz Jr., Processor.com
Posted on Tue, 31 Aug 2010
From Humble Beginnings In Mainframe Computers, Virtualization Is Now A Force To Be Reckoned With
Key Points
Computing has come full circle, from centralized mainframes to decentralized client-server computing back to a centralized computing model enabled by virtualization.
As virtualization evolves to embrace other hardware elements, new challenges in terms of policies, security, and management will inevitably arise.
The evolution of cloud computing and virtualization go hand in hand; virtualization is the engine that drives cloud computing.
Today, virtualization is helping companies realize capital and operational expense savings by enabling the most efficient use of current data center hardware. The technology is also having a tremendous influence on all meaningful areas of IT, namely servers, storage, and networking.
Virtualization's influence will only grow as more and more companies embrace the technology's promise to enhance the efficiency of their IT operations. Read on to learn more about virtualization's evolution, its status today, and where experts expect it to go in the future.
Tags:
None
Effort to integrate security into heart of computing overdue
By Caron Carlson, FierceCIO
Posted on Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Intel's (
NASDAQ: INTC) move to
acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion last week caught many industry observers by surprise, and left many others--particularly financial analysts--unsure of the real purpose behind the acquisition. (We posted a
brief run down of some of the initial reaction.)As the dust settled around the news, though, the possible implications for improved network security started to become clearer.
While some analysts and pundits saw the purchase ofthe security software vendor as an effort by Intel to make inroads in the mobile device market, others took it more at face value: A much-needed move to integrate security into the heart of computing.As threats grow in volume and sophistication, enterprises need much more powerful security technology integrated into their systems,but there hasn't been anyone in the security market with the size, scope and reach to accomplish this.
Tags:
None
U.S. Cyber-security Leads Week in Security News
By Brian Prince, eWeek.com
Posted on Tue, 31 Aug 2010
A recap of some of the major IT security news of the past week: Leading the way is a Pentagon official's discussion of America's cyber-security strategy and a 2008 incident he called the "most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever."
U.S. cyber-security was in the spotlight this past week when a senior Pentagon official confirmed an infected flash drive caused the "most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever."
Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III
discussed the 2008 incident in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine.
"That code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to
servers under foreign control," Lynn writes. "It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary."
Tags:
None
Meeting Future Storage Needs
By Dan Heilman, Processor.com
Posted on Tue, 31 Aug 2010
There Are Several Technologies To Consider As You Look Ahead
Key Points
Make scalability your watchword. Data continues to grow unabated, and its rate of growth is often proportional to the growth of the organization.
Technologies such as iSCSI, storage tiering, thin provisioning, and virtualization can make it easier for an SME to scale its storage and meet growing needs.
Avoid one-size-fits-all solutions and instead consider varying vendors. Locking into one can lead to unnecessary expense and fluctuations in quality.
Moore's Law famously states that the capacity of computing hardware doubles about every two years, and that rule of thumb hasn't gone wrong yet. For your data center, though, that can mean a headache about every two years: You need to not only meet your enterprise's current needs, but make sure the storage setup you create lasts well into the future.
Tags:
None
Stupid data center tricks
By Cara Garretson, ComputerWorld
Posted on Tue, 17 Aug 2010
HTML clipboardSure, technology causes its share of headaches, but human error accounts forroughly 70% of all data-center problems.
A university network brought to its knees when someone inadvertently pluggedtwo network cables into the wrong hub. An employee injured after an ill-timedentry into a data center. Overheated systems shut down after a worker changes adata center thermostat setting from Fahrenheit to Celsius.
These are just a few of the data center disasters that have been caused not bytechnological malfunctions or natural catastrophes, but by human error.
According to the Uptime Institute,a New York-based research and consulting organization that focuses ondata-center performance, human error causes roughly 70% of the problems thatplague data centers today. The group analyzed 4,500 data-center incidents,including 400 full downtime events, says Julian Kudritzki, a vice president atthe Uptime Institute, which recently publisheda set of guidelines for operational sustainability of data centers.
Tags:
None
Efficient Equipment Setup and Installation
By Chris A. MacKinnon, Processor.com
Posted on Tue, 17 Aug 2010
Track & Manage Equipment Before & After It's Installed
Key Points
Data centers operate more efficiently when IT and data center managersunderstand how the current data center is being run in order to determine thebest location for new equipment.
Data center managers should have the environment professionally cleaned beforeturning on any equipment in a new or expanded data center space.
It is a good idea to use management tools and performance metrics to ensurethat new equipment is properly installed and monitored in order to meetefficiency objectives and comply with SLAs.
There's a way around mountains of cable, dust, and data center clutter. Verbssuch as tracking, measuring, establishing, and ensuring are the key to awell-organized data center. When you get down to the foundation of such a datacenter, you find equipment setup and installation among the main pillars. Butbeing set up, installed, and organized all at the same time has its challenges.Here are a few tips to help you achieve your organizational goals.
Tags:
None
Supercomputing in the cloud gains momentum
By Todd R. Weiss, ComputerWorld
Posted on Tue, 17 Aug 2010
HTML clipboardIn a flagging economy, companies are slowly turning to on-demand services toget high-performance compute cycles without having to pay for high-end hardware.
An economy that continues to stagnate could prove a boon to an increasingnumber of providers of on-demandsupercomputing capacity.
The market for such services has so far grown slowly, said Charles King, ananalyst at Pund-IT Inc. "But a weak, rocky economy makes on-demand services alot more affordable than purchasing and maintaining a dedicated supercomputingcluster," he added.
Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., saidon-demand supercomputer services can prove particularly useful to smallerbusinesses that need powerful processing but can't afford to buyhigh-performance computing systems.
More than 25 such businesses nationwide have directly participated in the OhioSupercomputer Center's (OSC) Blue Collar Computing initiative, which sellssupercomputing services to companies that have never used such high-endhardware. More than 250 additional companies have also used the services byaccessing them through OSC partners, like the Edison Welding Institute (EWI),said Ashok Krishnamurthy, interim co-director of the Columbus, Ohio-basedcenter.
Tags:
None
Advanced Threats Are A Growing Problem
By Patrick Kean, Processor.com
Posted on Tue, 17 Aug 2010
The institute surveyed 591 IT security managers in the United States and foundthat 83% of respondents believe their organizations have recently been thetargets of advanced threats, with 71% saying they have seen an increase in suchthreats over the past year.
Mike Spinney, senior privacy analyst at Ponemon, cites several reasons for theincrease in threats, including the possibility of carelessness on the part ofemployees when it comes to using portable media, using their workplace assets inan unprotected environment, or downloading applications to a computer at work.
Tags:
None
Top Tips For Energy Conservation
By Bruce Gain, Processor.com
Posted on Tue, 17 Aug 2010
Key Points
Tracking and monitoring data center temperatures, power consumption, serverloads, and other metrics can lead to power reductions by knowing how to moreefficiently allocate resources.
ASHRAE has significantly raised recommended server temperatures, so if thethermostat is constantly set at 70 degrees Fahrenheit, you are probably wastinga lot of energy.
Data center lights don't need to be on during most hours of the day, and usingmotion sensors to turn them on and off can translate into significantelectricity cost savings.
The power-consumption problem is well known in the IT industry: Server loads areincreasing on an industry-wide scale, and the energy needed to cool and operatethe infrastructure is rising at an exponential rate. However, there is no reasonto be overwhelmed or to accept that rising energy costs come with the territory.Technologies and power management processes exist that will help you not onlyreduce data center energy consumption but also slash costs. A few things you canput in place do not even require a major investment, but they offer majorreturns.
Tags:
None
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD): Wise Investment or Unnecessary Expense?
By Jeffrey Clark, DATACENTER Journal
Posted on Tue, 17 Aug 2010
The answer to this question may vary from company to company and data center todata center. A small data center with a limited budget may not be able to gainthe types of returns in operational expenses to justify the cost of a CFDanalysis; a large multi-million-dollar data center, on the other hand, mightbenefit greatly from a detailed CFD analysis, despite the initial associatedcosts. Thus, the process of determining whether CFD is needed for a particularcompany's data center may boil down to an analysis of the pros and cons of CFD.
Tags:
None
Cable Organization and Management
By Robyn Weisman, Processor.com
Posted on Tue, 17 Aug 2010
Though Easily Overlooked, Cables Are Integral To A Well-Organized Data Center
Key Points Determine where your cables originate and where they run to.
Provide detailed labels for each cable and color code groups of cable.
A good wire management scheme keeps cables neat and out of the way of yourequipment.
Cables in the data center lend themselves to a variety of fairly unflatteringanalogies. "The stuff piles up like books on a coffee table," says Rudy Rangel,sales manager at IT equipment vendor Rackmount Solutions (
www.rackmountsolutions.net)."It takes discipline to organize them, but it's easier said than done."
Tags:
None
Government Googled
By Rakesh Dogra, DATACENTER Journal
Posted on Tue, 03 Aug 2010
The Google Apps for Government announcement came at a press event at Googleheadquarters after the company received FISMA (Federal Information SecurityManagement Act) certification. To be precise, it has received the FISMA-Moderaterating, which implies that Google now has authority to store unclassified butsensitive data, which means up to 80% of government data. As Kripa Krishnan,Technical Program Manager at Google Apps for Government, clarifies, the FISMAreview and certification makes for easier comparison between Google's securityfeatures and those of Federal agencies. The company also goes on to say thatmost agencies have found Google's security at least equal to their own, thusbolstering the government's confidence in moving to the cloud. Google Apps wasdesigned with the framework provided by Federal agencies and is a suite of cloudofferings for word processing, special email, and collaboration applications.The cloud bundle consists of Gmail, Calendar, Google Sites, Groups, Postini,Video, and Google Docs.
Tags:
None
6 cool innovations for the data center
By John Brandon, ComputerWorld
Posted on Tue, 03 Aug 2010
Some of these new technologies are already on the market, and some have yetto hit -- but they all promise to make your data center operation run moresmoothly.
Sure, consumer gadgets are getting most of the attention these days, but datacenters are getting some love too. These new products and technologies promiseto solve real data center problems or are already working to makeenterpriseoperations run more smoothly. How many are on your wish list?
Tags:
None
The Real Story Behind Storage Costs
By Christian Perry, Processor.com
Posted on Tue, 03 Aug 2010
HTML clipboardShelling Out For Storage Requires More Than A Passing Glance At ThePrice Tag Key Points Storage costs can spiral well beyond the initial acquisition as power,support, space, and maintenance add significantly to the long-term bottom line.
Notoriously high maintenance costs for storage arrays have led many ITmanagers to vigilantly seek long warranties and other service options that helpjustify the cost of hardware.
When negotiating with storage vendors, it's crucial to obtain long-termestimations that provide an accurate glimpse of costs across all storage-relatedfactors.
As hard drive costs continue their plummet to all-time lows, buying more storageto solve capacity problems has become a common practice for many enterprises.Although the low upfront cost of drives and other storage hardware might seeminsignificant in the big picture, hidden costs such as power, support, space,and maintenance can easily turn the tables on what initially seemed like a smartsolution.
"These factors-operational expense over time-form the majority of cost ofstorage, as much as 70 to 80%, according to some analysts. Therefore, theseelements are a very important factor. In fact, they should be given higherweight than cost of acquisition," says Rob Peglar, vice president of technologyat Xiotech (
www.xiotech.com).
Tags:
None
Greening Data Center Cabling
By Bridget Mintz Testa, Processor.com
Posted on Tue, 03 Aug 2010
Key Points
The key to green cabling in the data center is planning enough space forproper airflow for both data and power cables, eliminating excess airflow, andlaying cable properly.
In purchasing the cable plant, think long term and get the longest-lived cablepossible. Not only will this save the cost of frequent complete cable plantchange-outs, but it also reduces energy use and thereby minimizes heat in theair.
Recycling cable goes beyond copper and includes finding proper homes for oldcable jackets.
A data center is crucial to the enterprise, so running it as efficiently aspossible can only benefit the enterprise. Although going "green" sometimes seemsto involve spending a great deal of money with few business benefits, greeningthe cable plant is different.
A green cabling infrastructure can make a data center more efficient. That savesmoney on power and cooling, which are, of course, directly related. But, ifplanned properly, green cabling also helps save capital expenditures for thelifetime of the facility. And when cable must at last be replaced, some expensescan be recouped from recycling. Of course, at the same time, using less energy,keeping air temperatures cooler, and keeping toxic materials out of landfillsall benefit the environment.
For both power and data cables, going green in the beginning is about physicallymaximizing airflow and air space, as well as getting the most robust cabling youcan with the longest possible life cycle. As for recycling, don't just thinkcopper. It's possible to do a lot more.
Tags:
None