IBM Boulder will participate in the 3,900 server reduction to 30 Z-series mainframes. The announcement also revealed additional glimpses into IBM’s data center efforts. Since 1977, the company has reduced the number of worldwide data centers from 155 to 7 while still currently managing over 8 million square feet of space.
Part of Project Big Green, the server reduction is estimated to save up to 80% in energy costs for IBM. Coupled with reduced administration, software, and support costs, the savings are expected over a 5 year period. No doubt the consolidation will fuel the revenue side for IBM as it seeks to help their customers by leveraging their own compelling consolidation story.
DataCenters
The Wall Street Journal reported IBM is announcing plans for a service business designed to help customers reduce energy costs in the data center. Look for more information about IBM’s Data Center Stored Cooling solution as well as software and services to identify thermal hot spots.
It’s hard to miss all the Green announcements (see DataCenterKnowledge) and IBM, as the self-proclaimed world’s largest operator of data centers, will disclose their plans to reduce their own energy consumption at a press event in New York tomorrow.
With the Data Center Arm’s Race well underway, IBM’s re-entry into an area it knows quite a bit about should attract quite a bit of attention from customers and competitors.
DataCenters
Dick Pacific, one of the largest contractors in Hawaii, announced that it won the Navy award for the construction of the Hawaii Regional Security Operations Center (HRSOC) at the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station in Wahiawa. Of note is the two-story Operations and Data Center. Scheduled for completion in 2010, the project is scheduled to start early this summer. Full press release can be found here.
DataCenters
DataCenterKnowledge poses an interesting question about data centers - Should Power Usage Be a Secret? The argument by data center operators is that information about their power and water usage could damage them competitively. It is true that knowing how much power is used is a crude measure of the current capacity of the data center presuming you know anything about the efficiencies under which they operate.
The recently formed Green Grid admits that there is no general agreement on what differentiates an efficient data center from an ineffecient one.
Rich Miller may very well be right about power usage being added to the Data Center Fight Club circle of secrecy. With the EPA’s January announcement that they will begin to study data center power consumption, many worry that regulation can’t be far behind.
DataCenters
Rich Miller did a great piece on the trend of small towns getting in the data center business. Wheatland, Wyoming is no stranger to a very large construction project. Benefiting from significant improvements in schools, roads, and services the Town swelled during the 1977 to 1980 construction of the $1.6 Billion Laramie River Station (LRS) power plant on 665 acres.
Consistently ranked as the most cost-efficient, this 3 unit power plant has a total capacity of 550 megawatts per unit. That’s enough energy to run 110 of Google’s large data centers. Wyoming consistently ranks as having one of the lowest electricity costs across all sectors. It’s even lower than Oklahoma, the latest winner of a Google Data Center site selection.
Wheatland is an hour north of Cheyenne (also a recent data center winner of the $60M NCAR project) with reasonable housing, vast available land, cheap power, and outstanding outdoor recreation. It’s impossible to know if Google’s Lloyd Taylor and his site selection team have looked at Wheatland, but someone will stumble on this town and come to the same conclusion.
The gravy? Fiber runs down Interstate 25 right next to the Town making the perfect recipe for a data center project.
DataCenters, General
Progress is evident on the eleven acre American Honda Data Center site in Longmont. A review of the City’s permits show The Crosby Group, Inc. filed the application consisting of one building totalling 60,700 square feet on the site to include office space and data center space. The Crosby Group is a Colorado-based architectural firm that also specializes in technical architecture including data centers with an impressive list of clients.
DataCenters, Welcome
When we move data centers we often run into mistakes that should have been caught in the design phase of the project. Read about some of these easy to avoid issues on our datacentermoving site.
DataCenters
Ed Kohler’s pitch to Google illustrates that even the most sophisticated site selection process could miss a unique local opportunity like the Ford Plant in the Twin Cities. It’s already well known that cheap power, cheap land, available bandwidth, and low labor costs are a great recipie for landing a data center project. Tax incentives don’t hurt either.
Don’t underestimate the value of local knowledge. Even Google sends advance teams to the candidate sites.
The ideal place to locate a data center depends on your use of the data center in the first place. Define that first.
DataCenters
Google’s 4th quarter earnings call included the disclosure that in 2006 they spent $1.9 Billion on infrastructure with an expectation that 2007 will bring more of the same.
Here’s one way to look at these staggering numbers. Google’s Adsense revenue for just the 4th quarter was $1.2 billion. They can almost fund their capital expenditures for the whole year using just one quarter’s worth of Adsense revenue.
In addition to building data centers, they have also been securing fiber rights. Those trends will obviously continue. Google speculation is a full time activity on the Net, but a read of their conference call will ground you in what they have actually done.
DataCenters
In 2003, APC published a well written white paper challenging the suitability of raised floor for the data center. Has raised floor diminished in use in the intervening time period? I haven’t found hard evidence either way. Anecdotally, I’d have to say any progress in this area is measured using a glacial scale.
Raised floor isn’t dead yet and doesn’t even appear to be wounded. When standards appear for bringing chilled water back to the data center, there may yet be another use for raised floor afterall.
DataCenters
