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Report from the 7x24Exchange
7x24Exchange's Fall Event is proving to be top-flight this year. The organization has chosen to salute the increased levels of cooperation within the industry, choosing, for example, Ken Brill of the Uptime Institute as its day two keynote speaker. In turn, Brill recognized the contributions of Datacenter Dynamics and AFCOM, among many others to the exchange of information.
 Other highlights from day one and day two include a virtual tour of Comcast's data center (complete with musical highlights) and frank, detailed reports from Sun's Dean Nelson and Microsoft's Mike Manos and Christian Belady. I credited all of these speakers and groups for their increased levels of cooperation in my editorial in our recently published Fall 2008 issuel.
7x24Exchange organizers also shared the stage with Susan Scanlon of Marist's IDCP , who took a few moments to describe the momentum building behind their data center education program. Gilbane's Dennis Cronin and I also took a few moments to describe the results of a survey we conducted as part of our Open Forum webinar last week. You can view and participate in this event and all our webinars for up to a year after the initial broadcast. This information is already finding additional uses, as I will be posting these questions on my Open Forum blog on our homepage, in the Mission Critical Magazine Open Forum Group on LinkedIn and with Dean Nelson and Mark Thiele at their Data Center Pulse Linkedin Group.
Kevin Heslin
Editor, Mission Critical
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Gartner Says Companies Can Save 1 Million Kilowatt Hours by Implementing 11 Best Practices
In a conventional data center, 35 percent to as much as 50 percent of the electrical energy consumed is for cooling versus 15 percent in best-practice "green" data centers, according to Gartner, Inc.
"Virtually all data centers waste enormous amounts of electricity using inefficient cooling designs and systems," said Paul McGuckin, research vice president at Gartner. "Even in a small data center, this wasted electricity amounts to more than 1 million kilowatt hours annually that could be saved with the implementation of some best practices."
The overriding reason for the waste in conventional data center cooling is the unconstrained mixing of cold supply air with hot exhaust air. "This mixing increases the load on the cooling system and energy used to provide that cooling, and reduces the efficiency of the cooling system by reducing the delta-T (the difference between the hot return temperatures and the cold supply temperature). A high delta-T is a principle in cooling," McGuckin said.
Gartner has identified 11 best practices which, if implemented, could save millions of kilowatt hours annually.
• Plug Holes in the Raised Floor
• Install Blanking
• Coordinate CRAC Units
• Improve Underfloor Airflow
• Implement Hot Aisles and Cold Aisles
• Install Sensors
• Implement Cold-Aisle or Hot-Aisle Containment
• Raise the Temperature in the Data Center
• Install Variable Speed Fans and Pumps
• Exploit "Free Cooling"
• Design New Data Centers Using Modular Cooling
"Although most users will not be able to immediately implement all 11 best practices, all userswill find at least three or four that can be immediately implemented in their current data centers," said McGuckin. This report can be found on Gartner's web site.
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News Briefs
The Energy Star Team has scheduled a second session of the update meeting on Thursday, November 20 at 3 pm EST. At this newly added session, the team will present the same findings from its initial analysis of the data from approximately 100 participating data centers. The first session filled quickly and a few spots remain in the second session at 3 pm, To attend this session, you must register in advance. If you have any questions regarding registration, please contact Energy Star.
CRG West added the International Derivatives Clearing Group (IDCG) to its growing customer base in Chicago, IL. IDCG has deployed the world's first over-the-counter interest rate swap exchange at the data center and peering provider's location in the heart of Chicago's downtown financial district. CRG West's Chicago data center is SAS 70-certified and is adjacent to Chicago's primary fiber routes, providing a low-latency environment. Security features of the data center include 24-hour secure-site access, mantraps, and biometric scanners.
Power Plus! , the parent company of JT Packard completed a service partnership with Mitsubishi Electric Power Products, Inc. As a "Power Partner" with Mitsubishi, Power Plus! has become a factory authorized service provider for UPS systems. This service announcement comes just weeks after Power Plus! announced a distribution partnership with Mitsubishi Electric Power Products, Inc.
Packet inspection chipmaker cPacket Networks and SMC Networks , a leading provider of high-performance networking solutions, announced that they have collaborated on developing "smart" plug-in modules for SMC's 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching solutions that will offer real-time, wire-speed network visibility and management at an unprecedented 10 gigabits per second. The cost-effective modules, which are designed around cPacket's unique "complete packet inspection" chip, will plug into SMC's products via the available XAUI interface. The cPacket chip is capable of inspecting 100% of the header and data bits in 10 gigabit traffic, and monitoring, filtering, and providing alerts based on triggering events, at full wire
speeds, under any traffic loads.
MTU Onsite Energy Corporation has been awarded an ISO 14001 environmental management system certification from LGA InterCert Gmbh, a third-party auditor of quality and environmental systems. MTU Onsite Energy is the latest member of the Tognum Group companies to achieve ISO 14001 certification. In developing its environmental management system, MTU Onsite Energy was required to create a comprehensive list of environmental aspects associated with its production activities and to identify those that can cause the most significant impacts to the environment.
Upsite Technologies released a new Best Practices Guide entitled Optimize your data center for greater energy efficiency in four practical steps. It is available for download at their website.
Gartner has scheduled its 26th Annual Data Center Conference for December 2-5 in Las Vegas, NV. The conference schedule includes presentations about servers and storage, including
virtualization, consolidation, workload management, procurement, and
major platforms. Gartner analysts will also make several keynote presentations.
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 Repsol YPF, a globally-integrated energy company based in Spain with extensive operations in Latin America, has selected CyrusOne , a leading colocated data services provider, to host and support its groundbreaking Kaleidoscope Project system architecture. This architecture is designed with Repsol's Kaleidoscope Supercomputer at its core - an IBM-powered, ultra high-performance computing platform with far-reaching capabilities for energy exploration. Opting to colocate rather than retrofit or build a new data center, Repsol recently completed installation of its 120-teraflop Kaleidoscope Supercomputer within CyrusOne's ultra high-density data center in Houston.
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New Products
Emerson Network Power reported that ASCO Power Technologies debuted the world's most intelligent and advanced multiple-engine power control system. ASCO is a division of Emerson Network Power. The low-voltage 7000 Series Generator Paralleling Control Switchgear is suited  for prime power, emergency, and automatic standby power, and utility paralleling. This cutting-edge system is designed to be the "brain" for any organization's on-site power switching and controls equipment. It provides sophisticated engine control, load demand and bus load optimization controls, and communications capabilities, including unsurpassed power system monitoring and protection. The heart of this system is the ASCO Digital Paralleling Controller. This high-tech controller offers a wide range of capabilities, such as complete generator control logic, data trending up to 16 parameters and peer-to-peer networking. It also provides a 12-in. touch screen for easy viewing and
navigation. The PCS switchgear design supports reliable operation. Dependable master controls bring generators to life and provide load management. Other design elements include master PLC redundancy, two manual paralleling provisions, best battery circuitry, priority load control, manual load shed bypass, multiple (Master OIP type) touch screens and firewalled communications.
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Tate introduced AirArrest, a through-wall wire sealing solution for data centers, office buildings, and other structures that feature raised access floors with underfloor air distribution (UFAD). Designed to seal cable and wire access holes, AirArrest uses patent-pending brush technology to prevent leakage of pressurized air around power and data cables that pass from room to room via through-wall cut-outs.
AirArrest takes underfloor air distribution to new levels of flexibility while still maintaining plenum integrity. This unique sealing solution leverages the use of thousands of polygonal shaped filaments that nest together with little or no interstitial space. The edges of the filaments prevent them from moving past one another, thereby eliminating gaps that allow air leakage.
Constructed of an anodized aluminum frame and patent-pending Dyna-Seal brush technology, AirArrest accommodates wall cut-out sizes ranging from 4-in. and 6-in. diameter round holes to a larger 6 by 14-in. rectangular hole.
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Falcon Electric, Inc. introduced its internal USHA SNMP/HTTP Agent that supports TCP/IP based remote Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) monitoring and management agent. Supporting HTTP and a security-improved Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) v3 together with the latest Internet Protocol (IP) v6, Falcon's new agent is the most secure system available for the remote monitoring and management of UPSs. Falcon Electric's internal USHA SNMP/HTTP agent facilitates remote UPS monitoring and management over any Ethernet LAN, Enterprise Network or the Internet. Users can quickly install the agent board into the communications option slot of any Falcon SG, SSG or FN Series UPS and connect it to any
Ethernet LAN. If a DHCP server is present, an IP address will automatically be assigned.
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BNP Media
2401 W. Big Beaver Road, Ste. 700
Troy, Michigan, 48084-3333
U.S.A. |
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