Monthly Archives: June 2011

Are Corporate Initiatives Driving Emission Controls?

Posted on by gregl

Corporate social responsibility initiatives might be the biggest influence on the amount of attention paid to carbon emissions in today’s data centers. (We know it’s true for EasyStreet.)

In a recent survey of data center owners and operators conducted by Uptime Institute, 45 percent of respondents said carbon footprint data was important to them. The same percentage said their companies have adopted social-responsibility initiatives related to energy efficiency.

The survey stopped short, however, of drawing a direct correlation between the levels of concern and the presence of corporate initiatives related to data center energy efficiency.

Water usage in data centers was important to only 33 percent of respondents, while 38 percent said the amount of water their data centers consumed was unimportant to them.

At EasyStreet, we buy Water Restoration Certificates™ through the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to cover 100 percent of our city water usage — the first and only data center services provider in the nation to do so. An estimated 70 percent of the water used for our Indirect Evaporative Coolers is captured and filtered rainwater.  

The survey encompassed 525 data center owners and operators, 71 percent in North America and the rest from Europe and Asia.

A New Leaf Seen in EasyStreet’s Parking Lot

Posted on by Karen Karger

Earlier this week, representatives from Portland General Electric (PGE) and Energy Trust of Oregon were generous enough to attend an EasyStreet Green Team meeting and give interested employees an overview of Electric Vehicles, including the various models available and the various ways in which they can be charged. To sweeten the story, PGE brought along their Nissan Leaf and plugged it into EasyStreet’s EV charging station for all to see.

The ‘Cloud’ Can Mean IT Security in U.S.

Posted on by gregl

Doomsayers can see the growth of cloud computing as a serious blow to IT growth in the U.S., with more of the action shifting – as it did in recent decades with manufacturing – to places like India and China.

Unlikely, says Mark Henricks, an IT industry commenter for places like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

“If nothing else, the truly fantastic — as in incredibly extreme — growth in data is likely to sustain U.S. IT opportunity and employment for the foreseeable future,” he predicts on bnet.com. “One estimate holds that the quantity of data generated worldwide has climbed from 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) in 2005 to 1,200 exabytes in 2010. That trend shows every sign of speeding up, too. So, domestic IT entrepreneurs, opportunity isn’t going to go away.”

Henricks says his reasoning is based upon a few key facts. One is the Internet’s finite capacity and connectivity, another is the wisdom of keeping both data and computing power close by. “Third, as people and organizations create escalating quantities of sensitive information in digital format, IT security becomes more important,” he says.

Click here to read Henricks’ entire article.

Beaverton 4 Business Award

Posted on by Karen Karger

EasyStreet is the proud recipient of a 2011 Beaverton 4 Business™ award from the City of Beaverton. EasyStreet CEO Rich Bader accepted the award at a ceremony during a City Council meeting on June 21, 2011.

Said Jim Rauh, Business Relations for the Office of the Mayor, “A model for emulation, committed to sustainability leadership within the Beaverton business community, EasyStreet Online Services utilizes breakthrough technologies as a means to reduce energy consumption and boost sustainability for the company and its customers. Further, EasyStreet shares what they know with Energy Trust of Oregon and the Oregon Department of Energy so that other data centers around the state might also learn and benefit.”

Shown left to right in the photo are: Wendi Eiland, Chair of the Board, Beaverton Chamber of Commerce, Rich Bader, President & CEO, EasyStreet Online Services, and Denny Doyle, Mayor, City of Beaverton.

Data Center Survey Shows Top ‘Green’ Strategies

Posted on by gregl

When the Uptime Institute recently surveyed 525 data center owners and operators, most of them in North America, one of the questions was: “Which of the following power-saving strategies have you already implemented, or will you implement in 2011?”

Five strategies are far and away the most popular:

  1. Server virtualization, 82%
  2. Hot aisle/cold aisle containment, 77%
  3. Power monitoring, benchmarking, 67%
  4. Raise inlet air temperatures, 57%
  5. VFDs on chillers, CRAM or pumps, 46%

Another clump of strategies — such as modular data center design, water-side economizers, and DC power — all ranked below 35 percent.

Apple’s Data Center is Cool, Too

Posted on by Karen Karger

Data Center Knowledge’s Rich Miller noted some of the data-center-design principles that Apple has employed in its new iCloud data center, including, “a slab floor and a cooling system in which cold air enters the equipment area from overhead. Apple is using containment systems to separate the cold supply air for the servers from the exhaust heat, a strategy which dramatically improves the efficiency of data center cooling systems.”

That sounds remarkably similar to the cooling system strategy EasyStreet incorporated in its new Data Center 2. EasyStreet’s containment systems are chimney cabinets and connective ducts. The cold supply air floods the area via huge overhead fabric diffusers – a design that is, indeed, much more efficient than outmoded raised floors.

Here is one of many articles about Apple’s intriguing new facilities.

IT Budget Dollars Rising in Most Mid-size Companies

Posted on by gregl

Improved economic health in mid-size companies – those with between 100 and 1,000 employees – is being reflected in increased IT spending, according to a recent IBM survey entitled “Inside the Midmarket: A 2011 Perspective.”

The Q4 2010 survey of 2,000 companies in 20 countries reveals that 53 percent of respondents see their IT budgets growing in 2011, while 31 percent see them remaining at current levels and 16 percent are either unsure or are expecting further IT budget cuts.

“Midsize firms are increasing their investment in IT, striking a balance between solutions that drive short-term cost savings and those that enable revenue growth and stronger customer relationships,” according to the IBM report. “Globally, managing costs, improving efficiencies, driving up productivity, and focusing on superior customer service are all cited as critical business priorities.”

A comparative IBM survey in 2009 revealed major emphasis on cost-control among 53 percent of respondents. This year, only 21 percent say that’s their primary focus. Nearly 80 percent of CEOs in the newest study list their top priorities as customer focus, innovation and growth.

Looking specifically at IT budgets, some 75 percent of respondents said they intend to improve their IT infrastructures to “ensure flexible resilient, scalable, and secure IT systems.” Seventy percent see additional IT budget dollars going to improving employee productivity and “better focus on the customer.”

Older Data Centers Facing New Growth Challenges

Posted on by gregl

As the old adage says, something’s got to give. A recent IDC survey found that the average age of data centers in the United States is 12 years, with many built before the dot-com era.

Meanwhile, businesses are facing increasing demand for IT capacity in their data centers to support business growth. IBM predicts that the installed base of servers has continued to multiply by a factor of six between 2000 and 2010, and storage is expected to grow by a factor of 69 in the coming years.

“In our experience, servers account for 50 to 75 percent of a typical data center’s total floor space, but we’ve seen the average utilization rate for those assets at only between 10 and 15 percent,” according to IBM sources. “Their requirements for physical space, power and cooling preempt the deployment of new capacity. And the inefficiencies of older data centers make it difficult to respond quickly to the opportunities and demands created by new information technologies.”

One evident solution is ongoing virtualization of the server base, yet businesses are also under increasing cost pressures, which can preclude many equipment purchases. In a recent survey of nearly 500 North American and Western European senior IT professionals, Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found: “Cost reduction — and cost avoidance — rule the day for business and IT decision makers.”

Cloud and Virtualization Put Stress on the Network

Posted on by gregl

With so much IT focus in the past two years on cloud computing and virtualization, it’s time to turn attention again to the network itself.

“In the last couple years it does seem a lot of other areas have surged ahead and networking has fallen behind,” Lenny Heymann, general manager of the big tech conference Interop, recently told Network World. “We need to look at how networks respond to some of these changes that have really swept through the market. Changes in the data center around cloud computing and virtualization have put pressure on networks.”

Virtualization technologies mean virtual machines can move around the data center at warp speed, but the ability to manage the network and servers “is lagging the speed at which the VMs can be moved from one machine to another,” Heymann says. “Management of the network has to be speedier, more efficient and automated to keep up.”