Call for Proposals for Velocity 2009

After the success of its first Velocity conference in June, O’Reilly is expanding to a three-day format with Velocity 2009, which is scheduled for June 22-24th, 2009 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, CA. Here’s the description:

“The Velocity conference is where to learn how to build websites and services that are fast, scalable, efficient, and reliable. We’re bringing together people from around the world who are doing the best performance and operations work to improve the experience of web users worldwide. … The next cool startup will be able to scale more quickly and globally to serve a larger audience. Velocity is the key for crossing over from cool Web 2.0 features to sustainable websites.”

Conference chair Jesse Robbins has put out a call for proposals. If your expertise is in web scalability and performance, and have insight to share with your colleagues, check out the proposals page and the accompanying post on the O’Reilly Radar blog.

Web-Enabling Your Hot Tub

Here’s a remote monitoring challenge you don’t see every day. Buffalo, New York resident Eric Nagel is using the Pingdom monitoring service to alert him when his hot tub goes offline. “How does he do it? He uses a wireless temperature sensor that checks the status of (the hot tub) via his own server,” Pingdom writes on its blog. “A small script generates an online status page that contains either ‘OK’ or ‘Too cold.’ This status page is monitored with Pingdom, so Eric will get an alert via SMS if his hot tub is too cold.”

Nagel’s hot tub is outdoors, and “during the cold Buffalo winters, if there was a problem and the lines froze, I’d be S.O.L.,” he writes. “So through the miracle of modern technology, I’ll know if a problem is coming.”

That’s a different type of temperature management and monitoring challenge. Too bad they didn’t have that in place for the Celebrity Hot Tub Party.

Feel The Power: Eaton, Active Power, Peak 10

We’re feeling the power at DCK this morning, as there’s been a flurry of power-related news. Here’s a roundup:

• Eaton Corporation has launched Eaton Enterprise Power Manager (EPM) software and a full line of power cables to help measure and manage power at the rack and server levels. EPM software aggregates power management information for Eaton’s enclosure power distribution units (ePDUs) and midrange UPS units. “With the EPM software, you don’t have to surf hundreds of URL addresses to gain important visibility into your enclosure power distribution statistics,” said Michael Camesano, product manager, ePDUs and enclosures, Eaton. “If you do not have a high-end power or facilities management system, EPM provides essential visibility into power conditions at a very reasonable price.” EPM software is available for download from Eaton’s ePDU web site.
• Peak 10, Inc.has added generator capacity at its Raleigh data center, the company said this week. The company has added two 2.25 megawatt diesel generators, which will run in parallel with an existing 1.75 megawatt unit to give the facility a total of 6.25 megawatts of diesel generator backup. Peak 10 plans to add a third 2.25 megawatt genset and then upgrade the older generator with a fourth new 2.25 MW unit, giving Peak 10 Raleigh a total of 9 megawatts of generator backup. Peak 10 worked with Progress Energy and PowerSecure International on the project.
• Active Power, Inc. (ACPW) has announced two ordersfor a total of 16 of its 900kVA flywheel UPS units from Caterpillar (CAT). One order for 10 UPS systems is scheduled for delivery in first quarter 2009, witha  second order for six 900 kVA systems scheduled for late 2008. “These two orders exemplify the confidence the market is placing in flywheel technology and its inherent benefits of energy and space efficiency, high reliability and environmental sustainability,” said Jim Clishem, president and CEO, Active Power.

Cloudwashing and Sorting Out the Confusion

The explosion of cloud computing terminology and services has made it harder to differentiate between the many offerings and understand where the cloud begins and marketing ends. In this interview with Beet.tv, Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Frank Gillett discusses the trend toward “cloudwashing” and provides a broader context for understanding the proliferation of cloud-related offerings. This video runs about 3 minutes, 45 seconds.

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

Cost Savings as a Driver for Cloud Computing

There’s been active discussion in the industry about whether cloud computing will benefit from the economic crisis or face challenges due to failures among its startup-heavy customer base. Network World has an IT profile of Preferred Hotel Group, which makes the case for cloud computing as a powerful cost management tool in a down economy.

Preferred, which runs a chain of luxury hotels, has shifted its modest data center operation to The Enterprise Cloud, the cloud computing platform from Terremark (TMRK). The Enterprise Cloud will provide Prefered with 10 virtual servers, including seven on full-time duty and three in reserve for demand spikes. Each comes with a preset quota of disk space, memory, compute power and bandwidth. The setup costs $16,000 a month.

“Everyone is checking their budgets now,” said Chad Swartz, senior manager of IT operations for preferred. “If you go to the board, is it an easier sell to say we need to spend $200,000 in capital costs and $10,000 a month? Or just pay a $10,000 implementation cost and $16,000 per month? The cloud environment is going to explode, if just for the cost savings.”

A Closer Look at Google’s European Data Centers

An exterior view of the Google data center near Groningen in the Netherlands. (Photo taken by Erwin Boogert)

Google’s purchase of land in Austria for a possible data center highlights the global nature of the search giant’s infrastructure. Google’s existing European footprint includes several data centers in the Netherlands and one in Belgium, as well as peering centers in major European bandwidth hubs.

Erwin Boogert recently posted new photos of Google’s facility near Groningen in the Netherlands. Erwin originally shot pictures of the facility in 2004, but revisited in late October for a second look. Erwin is an IT journalist who has also put together a Google Maps mashup with more information about Google’s operations in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Sun MD Powers China’s Earthquake Readiness

The Sun Modular Data Center (Blackbox) container data center from Sun Microsystems.

A Sun Modular Datacenter (Sun MD) is helping Chinese officials develop an early warning system for earthquakes, hoping to minimize the impact of temblors like the one that devastated Sinchuan province earlier this year. Sun Microsystems (JAVA) donated a Sun MD data center container to the China National Disaster Reduction Center (CNDRC) to develop the system.

The Sun MD integrates the components of a modern data center into a 20-foot shipping container, including servers, storage and built-in cooling. The data center container is portable, and can travel by plane, train or truck. It also allows users to quickly add computing capacity.

The CNDRC has deployed a system of remote sensors that can provide early detection of earthquake activity, similar to systems used by the U.S. Geologic Survey. Chinese engineers are developing a satellite system to collect the data, which could reach hundreds of gigabytes of a day. The Sun MD will provide backup storage for the system, and can also be deployed to manage severe disasters and provide remote support for a disaster control command center.

TEAM to Build Data Center for Iowa Hospital

TEAM Companies and Iowa Health System will jointly own and operate a new data center in Waukee, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines. The facility will house the patient and employee records for Iowa Health System, and be managed by TEAM Companies, which is building a network of data centers in second-tier markets in the upper Midwest. TEAM has existing facilties in Cedar Falls, Iowa and Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

The 46,000 square foot data center in Waukee will be built in three phases, with a total investment of $45 million. The 16,000 square foot first phase is scheduled to open in the thrird quarter of 2009, and will cost $15 million to build. Iowa Health System will occupy half of phase, with the remaining space leased to other businesses.

Iowa Health System is the state’s largest health provider, employing more than 19,000 workers and treating one out of every four Iowans requiring medical care. The new facility will allow Iowa Health to store duplicate copies of patient health records 100 miles apart in TEAM facilities in Cedar Falls and Waukee.

Roundup: Level 3, Internap, HavenCo, The Planet

Here’s a roundup of some data center news announcements from today:

• The Moody’s Investor Service has downgraded its rating on Level 3 Communications (LVLT) after the company announced plans to raise $400 million in new debt to  refinance existing convertible debt. The credit ratings agency lowered Level 3’s probability of default rating by three notches to “Ca” from “Caa1″ and also placed the company’s debt ratings on review for a possible downgrade.
• Internap suffered power problems at its New York data center Sunday, leaving some customers offline for about two hours. The company informed customers that the downtime was related to a utility power outage that caused “a loss of connectivity to some equipment.”
• HavenCo, the offshore ”data haven” housed on a former World War II anti-aircraft military fortress in the North Sea, has apparently gone offline. The company started in 2000, offering hosting services from SeaLand, which declared itself a ”sovereign principality.” The company was briefly famous when it was featured on the cover of Wired magazine in 2001. See Slashdot for more discussion.
• The Planet said today that it has opened a 12,000 square feet of expansion space in its Dallas D6 data center. The Houston-based provider now has a data center footprint of 167,000 square feet.

I’m Just Saying

On Friday morning’s Data Center Investor update, I summarized the impact of the Wall Street selloff on stock prices and market capitalization for the data center sector. It concluded with this observation: “The numbers are sobering. Of course, we could soon see another of those rallies that carries the Dow 900 points higher.”

Sooner than I thought, as it turns out. In the two sessions since I wrote that, the Dow has gained 891 points.