FEED Validator

for Atom and RSS and KML

Congratulations!

This is a valid RSS feed.

Recommendations

This feed is valid, but interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendations.

line 12, column 109: Self reference doesn't match document location [help]

... rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
                                             ^

line 31, column 0: content:encoded should not contain sizes attribute (4 occurrences) [help]
```
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_146681" style="width: 190p ...
```
line 203, column 3: content:encoded should not contain relative URL references: //www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/06/27/lenovos-bid-data-center-growth/ [help]
```
]]></content:encoded>
   ^
```
line 293, column 0: content:encoded should not contain iframe tag (3 occurrences) [help]
```
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundclou ...
```

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DataCenterKnowledge

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"
xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
>
<channel>
<title>Data Center Knowledge</title>
<atom:link href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/feed/?cat=-768" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com</link>
<description>Your Source for Data Center news and analysis. DCK has everything you need to know about datacenter companies, data centres white papers, infrastructure, jobs and important industry perspectives.</description>
<lastBuildDate>Wed, 30 Aug 2017 22:11:27 +0000</lastBuildDate>
<language>en-US</language>
<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
<generator>https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.2</generator>
<atom:link rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com"/><atom:link rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.superfeedr.com"/> <item>
<title>Report: After Amazon-Whole Foods Deal, Target Plans Move from AWS Cloud</title>
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/report-after-amazon-whole-foods-deal-target-plans-move-from-aws-cloud/</link>
<comments>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/report-after-amazon-whole-foods-deal-target-plans-move-from-aws-cloud/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Aug 2017 19:10:46 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Nicole Henderson]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Cloud]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com?p=156387&preview_id=156387</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Will AWS start to bleed retail clients as merchants begin to pull out of their cloud investments with the company? <a class="moretag" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/report-after-amazon-whole-foods-deal-target-plans-move-from-aws-cloud/">Read More</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_146681" style="width: 190px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ITPro-logo.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-146681" src="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ITPro-logo.jpg" alt="" width="180" height="84" srcset="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ITPro-logo.jpg 180w, http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ITPro-logo-72x34.jpg 72w" sizes="(max-width: 180px) 100vw, 180px" /></a>Brought to you by IT Pro</div>
Will Amazon Web Services (AWS) start to bleed retail clients as merchants begin to pull out of their cloud investments with the company?
With Amazon closing on its deal with Whole Foods this week, major retailers are taking a hard look at existing cloud investments and whether it makes sense to support <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/business/amazon-whole-foods-cheaper-prices.html?mcubz=0">Amazon as its lower prices</a> could hurt them. Some retailers – especially those with a grocery business – are being more proactive than others with plans to bite back.
Target is the latest major retailer to start shopping for an AWS alternative, according to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/target-is-moving-away-from-aws-after-amazon-bought-whole-foods.html">a report by CNBC</a> this week that cites sources familiar with the matter. Target will not comment specifically on the rumors, but told CNBC that it plans to continue to use multiple cloud providers.
Sources say that Microsoft Azure is among the top cloud providers that want to grab Target from AWS. The deal would be a major win for Azure, as Target plans to aggressively move its e-commerce, mobile development and operations from AWS throughout the rest of the year and into 2018.
Earlier this month <a href="https://corporate.target.com/article/2017/08/target-app-andy-weisbecker">Target merged its Target app and Cartwheel savings program</a> into one app. Target said that there are more changes to come, including mobile payment for REDcard holders, which could signal more computing demand.
In 2016, Target made two key hires to its technology team, including Tom Kadlec as senior vice president of infrastructure and operations, and Joel Crabb as vice president of architecture. Kadlec joined Target from U.K. grocer Tesco where he spent nearly 17 years.
Target is not the only retailer who plans to assert its buying power with AWS. In June it was reported that <a href="http://windowsitpro.com/cloud/report-openstack-superfan-walmart-tells-partners-avoid-aws-cloud">Walmart told partners</a> that their services should not run on AWS, and should consider Microsoft Azure instead.
In a <a href="https://enterprise.microsoft.com/en-us/articles/industries/retail-and-consumer-goods/rewrite-the-business-of-retail-with-the-power-of-the-cloud/">two-part</a> <a href="https://enterprise.microsoft.com/en-us/articles/industries/retail-and-consumer-goods/8-benefits-of-the-microsoft-cloud-for-retailers-and-brands/">pitch</a> to retailers last month, Microsoft said that Azure provides flexibility, scale, and security along with a ready-to-use IoT Suite that can help retailers monitor in-store traffic patterns and shelf stock levels.
According to a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.retailwire.com/discussion/should-retail-still-be-nervous-about-the-cloud/">survey by IHL Group</a> this year, brick-and-mortar retailers plan to spend 34 percent of their software budgets on the cloud in 2017, up from 26 percent in 2016.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/report-after-amazon-whole-foods-deal-target-plans-move-from-aws-cloud/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Dell Says EMC Merger Pays Off as Customers Seek `Fewer Partners’</title>
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/dell-says-emc-merger-pays-off-as-customers-seek-fewer-partners/</link>
<comments>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/dell-says-emc-merger-pays-off-as-customers-seek-fewer-partners/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Aug 2017 18:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bloomberg]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Dell]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com?p=156377&preview_id=156377</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Michael Dell: Corporate customers seek to buy more of their gear from a smaller number of vendors. <a class="moretag" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/dell-says-emc-merger-pays-off-as-customers-seek-fewer-partners/">Read More</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="author">
Brian Womack and Emily Chang (Bloomberg) — Michael Dell, whose namesake company merged with EMC Corp. almost a year ago to create one of the biggest providers of computers, storage and software, said the deal is paying off as corporate customers seek to buy more of their gear from a smaller number of vendors.”One of the things that we’ve seen in the combination is this idea that customers actually don’t want to have more partners — they want fewer partners,” Dell said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas. “We’ve seen really a fabulous response — revenue synergies greater than we thought, coming faster than we thought.”
Dell Technologies Inc., facing pressure from cloud providers such as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., merged with EMC last year to bring together two traditional hardware companies in one of the biggest corporate tie-ups in history, valued at about $67 billion when it was announced. As part of that deal, Michael Dell also picked up majority ownership in companies such as VMware, whose virtualization software lets businesses cram bigger workloads onto servers. VMworld is an annual event that features that company’s latest products.
“Dell, EMC, VMware go together like peanut butter and chocolate,” Dell said.
More VMworld coverage by DCK:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/28/you-can-now-spin-up-vmware-servers-in-amazon-data-centers/" title="Permalink to You Can Now Spin Up VMware Servers in Amazon Data Centers">You Can Now Spin Up VMware Servers in Amazon Data Centers</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/28/vmware-wants-to-be-cloud-switzerland/" title="Permalink to VMware Wants to Be ‘Cloud Switzerland’">VMware Wants to Be ‘Cloud Switzerland’</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/28/vmware-pitches-hyper-converged-infrastructure-for-edge-computing/" title="Permalink to VMware Pitches Hyper-Converged Infrastructure for Edge Computing">VMware Pitches Hyper-Converged Infrastructure for Edge Computing</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/hpe-and-vmware-team-up-on-composable-infrastructure-hybrid-cloud/" title="Permalink to HPE and VMware Team Up on Composable Infrastructure, Hybrid Cloud">HPE and VMware Team Up on Composable Infrastructure, Hybrid Cloud</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/dell-says-emc-merger-pays-off-as-customers-seek-fewer-partners/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>HPE and VMware Team Up on Composable Infrastructure, Hybrid Cloud</title>
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/hpe-and-vmware-team-up-on-composable-infrastructure-hybrid-cloud/</link>
<comments>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/hpe-and-vmware-team-up-on-composable-infrastructure-hybrid-cloud/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Aug 2017 17:43:44 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Christine Hall]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Cloud]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[DevOps]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hewlett Packard Enterprise]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[VMware]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/?p=156370</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Announce plans to integrate HPE Synergy with VMware Cloud Foundation <a class="moretag" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/hpe-and-vmware-team-up-on-composable-infrastructure-hybrid-cloud/">Read More</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Hewlett Packard Enterprise is joining forces with VMware to offer composable infrastructure based on HPE Synergy and VMware Cloud Foundation. The integration is called, simply enough, VMware Cloud Foundation on HPE Synergy, and HPE is touting it as the industry’s first composable platform using VMware’s software-defined data center (SDDC) platform. The companies made the announcement at VMworld in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
This is all about the hybrid cloud of course, which providers have come to see as the brass ring for attracting enterprise clients. The solution promises to simplify transformations to a hybrid infrastructure by enabling single-click deployment of traditional and private cloud workloads and allows infrastructure to be dynamically reallocated in minutes.
“In today’s competitive digital world, enterprises need technology that enables them to quickly introduce and scale new services,” Ric Lewis, senior VP and general manager of HPE’s Software-Defined and Cloud Group, said in a statement. “HPE Synergy with VMware Cloud Foundation will deliver a private cloud experience that empowers IT to be an internal service provider and enables rapid response to business needs with single-click DevOps delivery.”
More VMworld coverage:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/28/you-can-now-spin-up-vmware-servers-in-amazon-data-centers/" title="Permalink to You Can Now Spin Up VMware Servers in Amazon Data Centers">You Can Now Spin Up VMware Servers in Amazon Data Centers</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/28/vmware-wants-to-be-cloud-switzerland/" title="Permalink to VMware Wants to Be ‘Cloud Switzerland’">VMware Wants to Be ‘Cloud Switzerland’</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/28/vmware-pitches-hyper-converged-infrastructure-for-edge-computing/" title="Permalink to VMware Pitches Hyper-Converged Infrastructure for Edge Computing">VMware Pitches Hyper-Converged Infrastructure for Edge Computing</a></li>
</ul>
Although the announcement is short on details about how the integration will work in practice, on the surface at least, this would seem to be a natural pairing.
HPE Synergy is an all-in-one hardware solution introduced in 2015 that combines storage, compute, and network equipment in a single chassis and includes management software to automatically configure the hardware to provide only the resources needed to run an application. “HPE Synergy’s unique built-in software intelligence, auto discovery capabilities, and fluid resource pools enable customers to instantly boot up infrastructure ready to run physical, virtual, and containerized applications,” HPE explained at the time of the product’s unveiling.
VMware Cloud Foundation is VMware’s SDDC platform for the hybrid cloud and is based on VMware’s compute, storage, and network virtualization. It delivers a natively integrated software stack that can be used on premises for private cloud deployments or run as a service from the public cloud.
“HPE Synergy powered by Cloud Foundation will provide a powerful solution to consolidate traditional, private, and cloud native workloads onto a single integrated infrastructure platform that is simple to deploy and operate,” said John Gilmartin, VP and GM of VMware’s Integrated Systems Business Unit. “Customers will benefit from a highly dynamic, programmable infrastructure foundation that eliminates the operational overhead of traditional deployments thanks to new built-in lifecycle automation capabilities. We are excited about the value that HPE Synergy powered by Cloud Foundation will unlock to our mutual customers.”
HPE said that VMware Cloud Foundation on HPE Synergy is expected to be made available later this year. Customers will be able to take advantage of HPE Flexible Capacity, which offers on-demand capacity and a pay-as-you-go consumption model.
This wasn’t the only HPE/VMware collaboration brought to the table this week. HPE also announced Private Cloud Express with VMware vRealize, a new pre-integrated solution that includes VMware vRealize on HPE SimpliVity 380, a hyperconverged platform. “Private Cloud Express is ideal for remote and branch offices, offering best in class data services to simplify management and reduce costs, in addition to providing application assessment services to determine the best process for migrating applications,” the company said.
If nothing else, this week’s announcements proves that business makes strange bedfellows. Since last year, VMware has been owned by Dell Technologies, HPE’s main rival in the server market.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/hpe-and-vmware-team-up-on-composable-infrastructure-hybrid-cloud/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>How to Design a Data Center in a Norwegian Fjord</title>
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/how-to-design-a-data-center-in-a-norwegian-fjord/</link>
<comments>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/how-to-design-a-data-center-in-a-norwegian-fjord/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Branscombe]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Design]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com?p=156287&preview_id=156287</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Site of the future 1GW campus presents an unusual design challenge. <a class="moretag" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/how-to-design-a-data-center-in-a-norwegian-fjord/">Read More</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Neither the Arctic Circle nor the middle of a town sound like the first choice for building an enormous data center, but that’s the kind of location a company called Kolos found in the Norwegian town of Ballangen, a former mining community. The team envisions its future campus there to eventually reach 1 Gigawatt in capacity; if that vision comes to fruition, Kolos will be the operator of the world’s largest data center.
We spoke to Kolos co-CEOs Mark Robinson and Håvard Lillebo about the project, its design, and the modular approach the company is taking to fit a large data center into this unusual site. While unusual, it has most of the key characteristics of a suitable data center location, and the company is planning to use innovative design to work around its shortcomings.
Powered by a nearby hydroelectric system, with more than a gigawatt of renewable energy already available in the wider local area, including wind power, the site is ideal for a data center that’s expected to use a lot of power. It’s well placed for expansion too; the Nordic countries are adding a significant amount of additional renewable capacity, planning to go from 5TW to 27TW by 2030, which should keep energy rates low. Because the energy is generated locally, there are fewer transmission losses, which means better efficiency. Robinson described the location as “dead center in a triangle of power sources, so it’ll be easy to get access to more power when we need it.”
<h3>Not After Cloud Giants</h3>
Low energy rates should make the facility attractive to companies with compute-intensive loads. “Processing energy demands can be interesting,” says Lillebo.
Connectivity isn’t an issue, either, as rail links to Sweden have provided a route over the mountains for significant amounts of fiber. Lillebo notes that Ballangen will have access to seven different dark-fiber routes with a 32ms-to-34ms connection to the main European peering points in Amsterdam.
That should suit the types of customers Kolos is after. “This is mainly a colocation facility, so we’re not targeting the Googles, the Amazons, the Apples,” Lillebo says. “We aim to have the next 990 on the list.” It’s looking for customers beyond Europe too, companies that are looking for substantial compute power for batch jobs, where low cost is more important than low latency.
<h3>Designed to Blend In</h3>
Unlike most large-scale data centers, which tend to be in the middle of nowhere, Kolos’s facility will be a feature of the town. Built on reclaimed land, created with the tailings from a now closed mine in the mountains behind the town (the site was previously used for flood control and as a small airport), the data center will become part of a restoration of the town’s waterfront, blending into buildings and parkland that are being designed by the same architect, chosen because the town liked the plans for the data center so much, according to the company’s execs.
That’s because it isn’t the typical big box full of server racks. Site renderings show a series of oddly irregular buildings, hugging the long, narrow stretch of land and covered with living roofs for added sound insulation. The first two data centers connect to an administration building that also houses the secure entry and a spine for meeting rooms, equipment, and network operation centers that will be extended as pairs of new data centers are built. Despite being in the middle of the town, site security is also good: there’s water on three sides, a berm down both sides of the lot, and a security perimeter than runs from the corners of the admin building to the edge of the water.
<a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/kolos-rendering-data-center.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-156014" src="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/kolos-rendering-data-center.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="320" srcset="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/kolos-rendering-data-center.jpg 400w, http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/kolos-rendering-data-center-300x240.jpg 300w, http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/kolos-rendering-data-center-212x170.jpg 212w, http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/kolos-rendering-data-center-72x58.jpg 72w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /></a>
<h3>Stackable Modules, Potential for High Density</h3>
Each of the Kolos data centers will be shells that can be constructed in under 11 months; the first customers are due to move in in 2018, and Robinson predicts the first two buildings will be filled in 18 to 20 months, with construction of the next phase starting within six months. This phased buildout means the site can be up and running quickly, without massive capital investment upfront.
The data center design is quite flexible. To fit more compute power into the narrow strip of land the equipment is installed in stackable modules built off-site; there’s a built-in set of rails and gantry cranes to move them into place, stacking them four units high, and connecting power, network, and water. The modules will initially be fitted out with standard 19-inch racks, though Kolos can customize pods for individual customers.
As designed, each building will have capacity of 30MW, with racks specified for 6.6KW initially, though the DC power modules have extra capacity, and the cooling is rated to 21kW per rack if a client needs a custom high-density rack.
<h3>Free Cooling to Assure Low PUE</h3>
The modules have been designed to handle the Norwegian climate, so they’re waterproof, but the climate is actually ideal for a data center. Temperatures in the steep-sided Norwegian fjords around Ballangen rarely rise above 10C, with an average annual temperature of just 3.5C and little variation from day to day, so chilled air is the main coolant for the data center. “We’ll be able to provide a very nice PUE, and you can’t do that in many places in the world,” Lillebo points out, joking that “if we get 14 days above 20C in the summer it’s an awesome summer”. For those two weeks, Kolos will use cold-water runoff used by the same hydroelectric plant that powers the site; it’s meltwater from up high in the mountains, so it’s already cold and needs very little treatment.
Despite being at sea level, Ballangen is far enough down the fjord that there’s little fog, so humidity (a key cause of equipment failure) won’t be an issue.
The town has lost nearly half its population since the mine closed, but it’s close to a NATO base and a large technical school, which could become a source for qualified staff. The location is also not far from an airfield and larger cities.
The combination of cheap power, cool weather, and good connectivity makes countries like Norway and its neighbors ideal locations for data centers. (Ask <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/inside-facebooks-lulea-data-center/">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/11/04/google-data-center-investment-in-finland-tops-1-billion-usd/">Google</a>, and <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2015/02/23/apple-spend-2b-two-massive-european-data-centers/">Apple</a>.) The reason there aren’t more in this area is the lack of suitable sites; with mountains rising almost directly out of the water, there’s very little flat land. Taking full advantage of this reclaimed land in a fjord meant choosing a very different design for the facility, but it could inspire other data center builders to make the same step away from boring warehouses.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/30/how-to-design-a-data-center-in-a-norwegian-fjord/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Five Challenges Companies Must Overcome to Make Use of All Their Data</title>
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/five-challenges-companies-must-overcome-make-use-data/</link>
<comments>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/five-challenges-companies-must-overcome-make-use-data/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Aug 2017 22:48:11 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Industry Perspectives]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Industry Perspectives]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/?p=156352</guid>
<description><![CDATA[There are five big challenges that companies must overcome in order to fully exploit their data along with partner data, and other external data sources. <a class="moretag" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/five-challenges-companies-must-overcome-make-use-data/">Read More</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Joe Pasqua is EVP of Products for MarkLogic.
Companies today know they need to fully and effectively leverage all data—including the increasing digitization of human communications and the data being generated by everything from light bulbs to smartphones. They know they must capture a wide variety of data, store it in a way that makes it accessible, and query it based on the rapidly changing needs of the business. They also know that they can’t get by with rigid, predetermined schemas . What they are finding, however, is that this is much easier said than done.
What’s standing in their way? Many things, unfortunately; but there are five big challenges that companies must overcome in order to fully exploit their data along with partner data, and other external data sources. 
1. Inability to make use of multiple data types and formats. Data today comes in all shapes, sizes, and forms that must be processed and analyzed basically in real time. This includes data that does not fit neatly into the rows and columns of legacy relational database systems. What’s more, those different forms and types of data need to be used together seamlessly. Richly structured data, graph data, geospatial data, and unstructured data may all figure into a single query or transaction.
2. Slow pace of innovation based on legacy systems. Technology and business requirements are changing almost daily, and organizations need to innovate to stay competitive and compliant. Many companies today can barely deal with the data they have on hand, let alone what will be coming in the future such as IoT-generated data. When investing in innovation, they are often frustrated because they need to deal with legacy systems, which hold many of the corporate data assets. These systems are an anchor that slow their progress and ability to effectively compete.
3. Proliferation of data silos in the enterprise. The rapid growth of all kinds of data and the growth in the number of services businesses provide to their customers, has created a proliferation of data silos in the enterprise. To better serve their customers, regulators, and themselves, businesses need to create a 360-degree view of their business objects such as customers, products, or patients. But creating this holistic view has been an arduous and wildly expensive task. All the while, more data silos are being created. What’s worse, the data quality and the governance of these views is often an afterthought leading to bad results, or even regulatory fines.
4. The use of ETL and schema-first systems. Relational databases are the de facto standard for storing data in most organizations. Once a relational schema is populated, it is simple to query using SQL. Sounds great, but—and this is a big but—companies have to create the schema that queries will be issued against. Integrating all existing schemas (and possibly mainframe data and text content) requires a tremendous amount of time and coordination among business units, subject matter experts and implementers. Then, once a model is finally settled on by various stakeholders, data must be extracted from source systems, transformed to fit the new schema and then loaded into the new schema—a process referred to as ETL. Critical understanding can be lost in all of this translation, and it simply takes too long ( average 6-18 months). Moreover, it never ends. Data sources change. New sources are added. Different questions are posed. ETL keeps on taking, not giving.
5. Lack of context. Perhaps the biggest problem companies have today is thinking they know what they don’t know. Data without context is useless. What does this data mean? How does it relate to other data? What is the provenance of the data? In what circumstances and with whom am I allowed to share it? In most cases the answers to these questions aren’t captured in the database. It might be in a developer’s head, or a design document, or an ETL script, or worse, all those places, but not consistently. Traditional databases aren’t focused on storing, managing, and querying this contextual metadata and typical ETL processes usually drop this information on the floor. Giving up on context means giving up on getting the most value from your data.
So, what’s a company to do? Increasingly, companies are turning to multi-model databases. With a multi-model database, they can capture data’s context and store it with the data, providing maximum data agility and auditability – and essentially future-proofing the database system against any new type of data, shift in data paradigm or regulatory requirement that will inevitably come down the pike.
Companies considering a multi-model database platform should look for:
· Native storage of multiple structures (structure-aware)
· The ability to load data as-is (no schema required prior to loading data)
· Ability to index these different models efficiently
· Ability to use all the models together seamlessly – composability
· Enterprise-class security and availability
Of course, no shift in database technology is made lightly—many IT professionals have gone their entire careers in one technology. But if there was ever a time for companies to ensure that they can effectively collect, analyze, and leverage the data at their disposal, it’s now. 
Opinions expressed in the article above do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Data Center Knowledge and Informa.
Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/industry-perspectives-thought-leadership/">guidelines and submission process</a> for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/category/perspectives/">Knowledge Library</a>.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/five-challenges-companies-must-overcome-make-use-data/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>How Google’s Custom Security Chip Secures Servers at Boot</title>
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/how-googles-custom-security-chip-secures-servers-at-boot/</link>
<comments>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/how-googles-custom-security-chip-secures-servers-at-boot/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Aug 2017 20:05:06 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Christine Hall]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Design]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hardware]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Security]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/?p=156357</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Software security tools are increasingly augmented with dedicated security processors <a class="moretag" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/how-googles-custom-security-chip-secures-servers-at-boot/">Read More</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Data centers these days are busy replacing expensive hardware solutions with “software-defined” everything, but the trend is the opposite when it comes to security. While software still prevails in keeping servers secure, hardware is often being added to the mix as another layer of protection, especially during the boot process, when a computer is vulnerable to dangers such as maliciously modified firmware.
This trend started when UEFI — and Secure Boot — replaced BIOS on computers, and was carried a step further when Google began including an additional custom designed hardware security chip on all servers and peripherals in its data centers. In June, Hewlett Packard Enterprise followed suit and announced it was joining the secured-by-hardware crowd by <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/06/12/hpes-gen10-servers-will-have-security-drilled-into-silicon/">including its own custom chip</a> on its Gen10 servers. Lenovo also includes a <a href="//www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/06/27/lenovos-bid-data-center-growth/">degree of security-on-a-chip technology</a> on its line of servers, through XClarity Controller.
There are several advantages to having security protections contained in chipsets that are separate from a server’s CPUs. Being isolated from the server’s main components, they are more difficult for an outside hacker who manages to get through a system’s defenses to find and penetrate. In addition, they can utilize read-only memory that can be difficult or impossible to modify.
See also: <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/01/13/paper-details-google-data-center-security-design/">Here’s How Google Secures Its Cloud</a>
At its Cloud Next event in March, Google unveiled a custom security chip called Titan, which was likely the “official unveiling” of the <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/01/13/paper-details-google-data-center-security-design/">security hardware we discussed</a> on Data Center Knowledge in January. On Thursday, some Google Cloud Platform engineers posted a blog <a href="https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/08/Titan-in-depth-security-in-plaintext.html">detailing how Titan works</a> to make its data centers more secure.
Titan consists of a secure application processor, a cryptographic co-processor, a hardware random number generator, a sophisticated key hierarchy, embedded static RAM (SRAM), embedded flash and a read-only memory block. According to Google, its main purpose is “to ensure that a machine boots from a known good state using verifiable code and establishes the hardware root of trust for cryptographic operations in our data centers.”
This type of protection has grown increasingly important, not only to stop traditional black hats motivated by profit, but to repel governments — both foreign and domestic — that have been successfully devising methods to exploit firmware vulnerabilities, sometimes in ways that can survive re-installation of an operating system.
See also: <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/04/10/google-shares-new-details-about-its-tpu-machine-learning-chips/" title="Google Shares New Details About its TPU Machine Learning Chips">Google Shares New Details About its TPU Machine Learning Chips</a>
Interestingly, the GCP engineers said that before verifying the validity of code on the host server, Titan runs something of a self-diagnostic to make sure it hasn’t been compromised:
<blockquote>“Titan’s application processor immediately executes code from its embedded read-only memory when its host machine is powered up. The fabrication process lays down immutable code, known as the boot ROM, that is trusted implicitly and validated at every chip reset. Titan runs a Memory Built-In Self-Test every time the chip boots to ensure that all memory (including ROM) has not been tampered with. The next step is to load Titan’s firmware. Even though this firmware is embedded in the on-chip flash, the Titan boot ROM does not trust it blindly. Instead, the boot ROM verifies Titan’s firmware using public key cryptography, and mixes the identity of this verified code into Titan’s key hierarchy. Then, the boot ROM loads the verified firmware.”</blockquote>
At this point, Titan verifies the contents of the host’s boot firmware using public key cryptography:
<blockquote>“Holding the machine in reset while Titan cryptographically verifies the boot firmware provides us the first-instruction integrity property: we know what boot firmware and OS booted on our machine from the very first instruction. In fact, we even know which microcode patches may have been fetched before the boot firmware’s first instruction. Finally, the Google-verified boot firmware configures the machine and loads the boot loader, which subsequently verifies and loads the operating system.”</blockquote>
Google also explains how Titan gives each machine its own cryptographic identity:
<blockquote>“The Titan chip manufacturing process generates unique keying material for each chip, and securely stores this material … into a registry database. The contents of this database are cryptographically protected using keys maintained in an offline quorum-based Titan Certification Authority (CA). Individual Titan chips can generate Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs) directed at the Titan CA, which … can verify the authenticity of the CSRs using the information in the registry database before issuing identity certificates.”</blockquote>
According to Google, this process not only verifies the identity of the chips generating the CSRs, but verifies the firmware running on the chips as well.
<blockquote>“This property enables remediation and allows us to fix bugs in Titan firmware, and issue certificates that can only be wielded by patched Titan chips.”</blockquote>
As security issues continue to grow, it would probably be good to bet that hardware solutions such as this will soon become the norm.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/how-googles-custom-security-chip-secures-servers-at-boot/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>A Type of Computing: NYTimes Crossword Moves from AWS to Google App Engine</title>
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/a-type-of-computing-nytimes-crossword-moves-from-aws-to-google-app-engine/</link>
<comments>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/a-type-of-computing-nytimes-crossword-moves-from-aws-to-google-app-engine/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Aug 2017 15:30:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Nicole Henderson]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Cloud]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com?p=156349&preview_id=156349</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The New York Times has moved its games platform from AWS to Google to deal with daily user spikes. <a class="moretag" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/a-type-of-computing-nytimes-crossword-moves-from-aws-to-google-app-engine/">Read More</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_146681" style="width: 190px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ITPro-logo.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-146681" src="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ITPro-logo.jpg" alt="" width="180" height="84" srcset="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ITPro-logo.jpg 180w, http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ITPro-logo-72x34.jpg 72w" sizes="(max-width: 180px) 100vw, 180px" /></a>Brought to you by IT Pro</div>
Online games can be compute-intensive, particularly first-person shooters or games with heavy graphics that require a lot of power. But apparently a crossword puzzle can put a strain on cloud architecture, too.
The New York Times crossword – first introduced in print in 1942 – has grown into a suite of mobile apps and an interactive website with other 300,000 paid subscribers, and has outgrown its infrastructure hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
According to a <a href="https://open.nytimes.com/moving-the-new-york-times-games-platform-to-google-app-engine-e9337f2c9444">blog post</a> by NYTimes principal software engineer JP Robinson, the crossword’s backend systems were running on AWS with a LAMP-like architecture, but when it introduced the free daily mini crossword three years ago, the larger daily audience put a lot of strain on its architecture.
See also: <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/04/18/how-new-york-times-handled-unprecedented-election-night-traffic-spike/">How the New York Times Handled an Unprecedented Election-Night Traffic Spike</a>
“As the crossword grew in popularity, our architecture started to hit its scaling limitations for handling game traffic. Due to the inelastic architecture of our AWS system, we needed to have the systems scaled up to handle our peak traffic at 10PM when the daily puzzle is published,” he said. “The system is generally at that peak traffic for only a few minutes a day, so this setup was very costly for the New York Times Games team. Luckily, we at The Times recently decided to move all product development to the Google Cloud Platform where a variety of tools awaited to help us move faster and save money.”
“After shopping the Google product suite, we decided to rebuild our systems using Go, Google App Engine, Datastore, BigQuery, PubSub and Container Engine. I’ll discuss the architecture in greater detail in future posts but for now, I’m going to concentrate on App Engine, which is the core of our system.”
While the blog post reads a bit like a Google advertisement, it is interesting to see the factors that go into a company making a decision to decide to migrate from one cloud to another. You can read the full technical breakdown in the <a target="_blank" href="http://open.nytimes.com/moving-the-new-york-times-games-platform-to-google-app-engine-e9337f2c9444">blog post</a>.
<a target="_blank" href="http://windowsitpro.com/google/google-cloud-offers-cost-break-users-not-picky-performance">Google Cloud Platform introduced new network tiers</a> last week for enterprise users to optimize around performance or price.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/a-type-of-computing-nytimes-crossword-moves-from-aws-to-google-app-engine/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Hurricane Harvey: Delivering Managed IT Services During a Catastrophe</title>
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/hurricane-harvey-delivering-managed-it-services-during-a-catastrophe/</link>
<comments>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/hurricane-harvey-delivering-managed-it-services-during-a-catastrophe/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Aug 2017 15:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Aldrin Brown]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Manage]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[North America]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Uptime]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com?p=156345&preview_id=156345</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It’s being described as a “500-year storm,” and Houston, Texas-based Elevated Technologies is among the MSPs who find themselves smack in the middle of it. <a class="moretag" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/hurricane-harvey-delivering-managed-it-services-during-a-catastrophe/">Read More</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_147609" style="width: 358px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MSPmentor-logo.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-147609" src="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MSPmentor-logo.jpg" alt="" width="348" height="74" srcset="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MSPmentor-logo.jpg 348w, http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MSPmentor-logo-300x64.jpg 300w, http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MSPmentor-logo-212x45.jpg 212w, http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MSPmentor-logo-72x15.jpg 72w" sizes="(max-width: 348px) 100vw, 348px" /></a>Brought to you by MSPmentor</div>
It’s being called a 500-year storm and Houston, Texas-based Elevated Technologies finds itself smack in the middle of it.
As early as the middle of last week, the managed services provider (MSP) began reaching out to clients, preparing the organizations as much as humanly possible for the fury of Hurricane Harvey.
But despite the best-laid plans, the extent of damage to the state’s Gulf Coast still came as a shock.
“No one really anticipated this,” Jason Rorie, founder of Elevated Technologies, told MSPmentor Monday.
“I don’t think anyone really anticipated the kind of flooding that Houston would be subject to,” he added. “The city is basically underwater.”
Task number one for the MSPs five-member team was ensuring customers’ data would survive.
“We started talking really on Wednesday when they projected where it would hit,” Rorie said. “First thing we did is make sure that all of our clients, all of their offsite backups were running successfully. We use Veeam and StorageCraft.”
As the storm neared landfall on Friday afternoon, the MSP began instructing clients to shut down on-premises servers before those employees left for the day.
“The flooding causes power outages and once your UPS (uninterruptible power supply) batteries drain and your servers crash, that’s when problems really start,” Rorie said.
The hope is that once the storm passes, many of those servers can quickly be powered up and the businesses can get up and running.
That’s assuming, of course, that the flooding is manageable and the boxes stay dry.
“Most of our clients, even in a single story building, the servers are elevated,” Rorie said. “We don’t anticipate any servers being flooded.”
But for some customers with 24/7/365 requirements, shutting down servers until the storm passes represents an unacceptable interruption to their businesses.
One of Elevated Technology’s customers is the Houston branch of a Dubai-based private jet-booking outfit that arranges global travel for top executives of major companies, like Nike.
“They were going to try to work through the storm,” Rorie said.
“They said, ‘we get what you’re trying to do for us but we’ll take a chance,’” the client said. “’We’re going to roll the dice because we want to turn out as much work as we possibly could.’”
A great many of the support tickets the MSP has received since the storm began involve folks seeking to solve VPN access problems so they can work from home.
It’s a problem with which Elevated Technology can empathize.
Despite being located on the fourth floor of an office building on the western side of the city, Rorie and all of his employees have still been forced to work remotely.
“I can get even get out of my own neighborhood,” he said. “I’m talking to you from my garage, looking at the water rising in the driveway.”
The company’s manpower took a further hit when one of the five employees lost power at his residence.
Some reports suggest that as many as 40 percent of small businesses in the Harvey’s path might never recover.
That could have long-lasting consequences for the revenues of firms like Elevated Technologies.
“That is a valid concern,” Rorie said.
But by far his greatest worry stems from uncertainty about how much longer the storm will last, and how much more damage it’ll wreak on his customers before it’s all over.
“There is so much more potential to do damage than has already been done,” Rorie said “Until the flooding subsides and clients get back to work, we won’t know the full extent. “My biggest fear is it doing much more damage (because) we’re going to have our hands full when everyone returns next week.”
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/hurricane-harvey-delivering-managed-it-services-during-a-catastrophe/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Will Edge Computing Help the Server Market Bounce Back to Growth?</title>
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/will-edge-computing-help-the-server-market-bounce-back-to-growth/</link>
<comments>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/will-edge-computing-help-the-server-market-bounce-back-to-growth/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Yevgeniy Sverdlik]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Dell]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Data Center Podcast]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com?p=156290&preview_id=156290</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Ravi Pendekanti, of Dell EMC, on The Data Center Podcast <a class="moretag" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/will-edge-computing-help-the-server-market-bounce-back-to-growth/">Read More</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[If you follow the dynamics of the server market at all, you probably know that the size of the global market has been steadily shrinking in terms of revenue. For five consecutive quarters now, overall revenue from server sales has been slowly sliding down, a few percentage points at a time, according to Gartner.
The analysts attribute this to growing use of cloud services, noting that the large-enterprise and small and medium business segments have not been growing for server vendors, while the hyper-scale data center segment has. Perhaps this is why server shipments have been growing while the amount of revenue vendors are getting from those shipments has been shrinking. Hyper-scale operators buy undifferentiated commodity hardware at high volumes, paying much less per unit than a typical enterprise user would buying off-the-shelf servers.
But a few broader technology trends make some hopeful that the market will return to growth. Ravi Pendekanti, who is currently senior VP for server solutions product management and marketing at Dell EMC, and who previously spent many years in senior product and marketing roles at Sun Microsystems, SGI, Juniper, and Oracle, says the next generation of technologies, such as self-driving cars and the Internet of Things, as well as commoditization of data center network hardware driven by software-defined networking, will drive that next wave of growth in the server market.
Pendekanti joined me for the latest edition of The Data Center Podcast to talk about these and other trends in the market (available on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud):
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ravi-pendekanti-dell-emc-will-edge-computing-bring/id1244303528?i=1000391602925&mt=2">Download or stream on iTunes</a>
<a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-760920229/ravi-pendekanti-dell-emc-will-edge-computing-bring-back-server-market-growth">Download or stream on SoundCloud</a>
Stream right here:
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/339946130&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe>
Listen on Stitcher:
<iframe style="border: solid 1px #dedede;" src="http://app.stitcher.com/splayer/f/140858/51275809" width="220" height="150" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/29/will-edge-computing-help-the-server-market-bounce-back-to-growth/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Four Providers’ Houston Data Centers Online, but Access Roads Flooded</title>
<link>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/28/four-providers-houston-data-centers-online-access-roads-flooded/</link>
<comments>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/28/four-providers-houston-data-centers-online-access-roads-flooded/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Aug 2017 19:50:15 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Yevgeniy Sverdlik]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Colocation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Manage]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Uptime]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/?p=156339</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Companies report their staff are safe and accounted for; customers cannot access most facilities <a class="moretag" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/28/four-providers-houston-data-centers-online-access-roads-flooded/">Read More</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Houston data centers operated by four providers have remained online since Hurricane Harvey made landfall Friday evening, but streets surrounding at least most of the facilities are flooded, cutting off customer access.
The hurricane (which experts have referred to as unprecedented) and subsequent flooding have left <a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-weather/hurricaneharvey/article/Houston-still-has-power-power-loss-for-hundreds-11968986.php">more than 100,000 residents and businesses</a> without electricity as of Monday morning, but Equinix, CyrusOne, Data Foundry, and Digital Realty Trust data centers in Houston have not lost utility power. Staff at the facilities are safe, according to sources.
But forecasters say a lot more rain is coming, so more flooding and more power outages are likely.
“This is a landmark event for Texas,” <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/28/us/harvey-houston-texas-louisiana/index.html">CNN</a> quoted FEMA Administrator Brock Long as saying. “Texas has never seen an event like this.”
While customers may or may not have to access the data centers before the streets are dry and cleared (and techs living in Houston probably have other things to take care of at this time), the flooding may complicate fuel deliveries in the event of a prolonged power outage that would require running on backup generators.
Many data center operators have national fuel-delivery contracts that put them second in line behind hospitals, first responders, and other public-safety organizations, to receive fuel supplies.
See also: <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/25/harvey-hurricane-preparation-tips-for-data-center-managers/" title="Permalink to Harvey: Hurricane Preparation Tips for Data Center Managers">Hurricane Preparation Tips for Data Center Managers</a>
As of Monday morning, HO1 IBX, the Houston data center Redwood City, California-based Equinix acquired from Verizon earlier this year, had not experienced any interruption, an Equinix spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Data Center Knowledge. “The IBX remains open and staffed by Equinix, however, the streets surrounding the HO1 IBX have been closed due to flooding, and the site is not accessible to customers at this time.”
The facility’s staff are monitoring and assessing the situation “aggressively,” and Equinix representatives have contacted all of its customers to update them on the status, the spokesperson said. Because of the event’s unprecedented, unpredictable nature, the company is “working with customers to ensure they have disaster-recovery plans in place, should the situation change.”
All Equinix employees in Houston and the surrounding areas are “safe and accounted for.”
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PFmA5QtxIXE" width="470" height="264" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
A Digital Realty spokesperson could not comment due to the company’s media blackout period associated with its pending acquisition of DuPont Fabros Technology. But according to an industry source, the San Francisco-based company’s Houston data center had not lost utility power as of Monday morning. Access roads to the facility are flooded, they said.
Neither of Austin-based Data Foundry’s two Houston data centers lost utility power, and “no flood waters have reached either of the facilities,” a company spokesperson said. “We have not had to fail over to generator power. Our underground fuel tanks remain full.”
While all transportation in the area is impacted by road closures, fuel deliveries can reach Data Foundry’s sites if needed, according to the spokesperson.
In an emailed statement, Kevin Timmons, CTO of Dallas-based CyrusOne, which operates three data centers in Houston, said neither of the facilities have lost utility power.
“In all Texas data centers, the CyrusOne emergency management and response plan was activated on Friday morning and remains in effect,” he said. “Houston data centers are staffed around the clock, and we are grateful for our dedicated employees, many of whom have been away from their families during this trying time.”
He did not say whether or not the facilities could be accessed by transport.
While the company’s current priority is maintaining availability as the storm continues, CyrusOne is looking for the best ways to support relief efforts. “We plan to make a substantial commitment to helping people in Southeast Texas get back on their feet in the days, weeks, and months ahead,” Timmons said.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/08/28/four-providers-houston-data-centers-online-access-roads-flooded/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

If you would like to create a banner that links to this page (i.e. this validation result), do the following:

Download the "valid RSS" banner.
Upload the image to your own server. (This step is important. Please do not link directly to the image on this server.)
Add this HTML to your page (change the image src attribute if necessary):

<a href="http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A//feeds.feedburner.com/DataCenterKnowledge"><img src="valid-rss-rogers.png" alt="[Valid RSS]" title="Validate my RSS feed" /></a>

If you would like to create a text link instead, here is the URL you can use:

http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A//feeds.feedburner.com/DataCenterKnowledge

Home · About · News · Docs · Terms