Modius Data Center Blog

While I've seen my share of some pristine new data centers over the past few years, as well as a huge number of large scale retro-fit projects where old centers are being turned into new usable data center space, I have also seen an alarming number of older 'house of cards' data centers that are up in modern production and appear to be 'hands-off'.

These data centers are typically chock full of older devices and interconnects that were passed down from generation to generation of IT managers, only to realize that what they inherited was unmanageable. While it is true that these data centers will ultimately find their way into extinction in a world focused on operational efficiency and pro-active management and best practices, we can all feel the pain involved when we encounter something like this.

Above is one of the most interesting centers I've seen, and would appear to have conflicting priorities as to what is required to move forward. While I don't have a comprehensive sequence of steps required to migrate to a highly supportable, efficient and monitored data center, let me suggest one step that will help tremendously... Find the YELLOW patch cord and disconnect it.

Seriously, when I saw this photo I had to laugh and take a second look. Was it some new thermal blanketing technology? Or a way to eliminate blanking panels? The reason I make light here is that there are countless data centers that are in similiar out-of-spec designs and would benefit from adopting new data center technologies, new power distribution, cooling and monitoring solutions, but are challenged by WHERE TO BEGIN and the magnitude of the task at hand.

In the monitoring world for instance where Modius delivers value, we regularly find data centers with NO VISIBILITY to their energy usage and easily can identify hundreds or thousands of points of monitorable data that would help get energy usage under control. We are ready willing and able to take on chaos and make sense of it.

Think back to the last time your purchased a new car. I would bet that within the first 30 minutes of actually looking at the brochures or sitting in the car, the attention turned to the Leather seats, body color, Stereo system and electronics package.

By inference, the consumer (you) had already assumed and agreed that the car foundation itself was as stated in the data sheet and their design engineers had done their job building a functional car. It had a chassis, it had an engine of a certain size, and it was as speedy and efficient as the TV commercial showed. No need to be concerned that the physical layer had any issues. Somehow the car would perform.

Instead, your attention was to the 'soft' details. There you are, buying a $30,000 car, and most of the sales configuration and cost discussion was about the $3000-$4000 worth of options. Most people don't even know how big the gas tank is when they drive home in the car!

The Data Center is much the same. The underpinnings for most data centers have for the most part been specified by the building design engineers of record, built per spec, and typically installed far away from view. The mechanical and electrical structures were designed and installed based upon equipment resource requirements and assumptions at the time, and at the end of the day, the IT organization ultimately 'inherited' what was installed. How many watts per square foot were really possible? What is the redundant Cooling capacity? None of these critical resource available capacities or real-time usage is actually well understood or even visible to the IT organization over time. (And UNTIL LATELY, not even much concern about it). This situation is compounded by the fact that all of the major IT vendors are now selling boxes that consume 2-4 times the amount of power in the same space as the units shipped just two years ago. It can be seen that the data center is a VERY dynamic system, and the most valueable on-going data center analysis and KPIs must be based upon it's real-time aspects.

While IT as a whole has focused for years on their own 'Fine Corinthian Leather", (like virtualization/operating systems, storage and networks), the real challenge at hand today is to better understand the real-time performance of the chassis. The amount of fuel in the gas tank and it's current efficiency, the engine performance, the available redundancy systems, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of Fine Corinthian Leather, but I think it's prudent to understand the bigger picture before claiming victory...

Just got back from the Uptime Institute's latest data Center conference held in New York City. In a nutshell, it was everything that is interesting in the data center, only in the year 2010 this really means the physical layer!

"Physical Layer" you say? Yes, the physical side of the data center is driving all of the column inches in the press these days. That is where the chaos and panic around power and cooling AND costs and carbon all come together. In 2010, THIS is where the challenges are. This is where the opportunities exist to demonstrate thought leadership once again, and based on what I saw, people are rising to the challenge!

Frankly, the data center has far too long been a 'mysterious black box' where Intel meets Microsoft meets Linux meets storage and networks. This logical stuff USED TO BE the hard part. Physical resources were ASSUMED to be under control. Those days are gone. Today, it is a GIVEN by the CIO that the technologists in the crowd will figure out how to string together all the logical data processing stuff since modern servers and routers and everything in between have the ability to provide a fairly similiar set of functions and compatibility today. It is the PHYSICAL LAYER which is driving everyone CRAZY!!!!

So in New York, we had over a thousand people, all gathered with more than a hundred vendors talking about cooling strategies, powering data centers with high voltage DC, monitoring practices and advances in Computational Fluid Dynamics. There were the cable managers, PDUs, batteries and floor tile systems. Layer-0 Physical Layer stuff is SO TANGIBLE and comes in a wide range of colors, TAN, GREY and BLACK!

All in all, a great use of time, a place to make or renew relationships across the industry, and a suitable challenge to each attendee's traditional ways of thinking about the challenges in building and operating the required data centers of today....