This month we are running three different application stories. We usually like to include a mix of application and technical articles, but these three stories were compelling and not only presented different challenges, but unique solutions as well. The cover story focuses on challenges faced by the mission critical team in charge of bringing Time Warner Cable’s new Manhattan-based Tier 4 data center online in the face of increased demand and expensive real estate. The University of Utah wanted to ensure that its new data center had backup power that was not only quiet, but scalable for future growth. And finally, CoreSight’s new data center in Chicago had to ensure it had the necessary backup power to keep its operations running, which meant maneuvering large gensets through crowded city streets. These stories demonstrate the resourcefulness of the data center professional.                                                                        

The article on data center endpoint security by Lawrence Garvin, head geek at Solarwinds, is a little off the beaten path for Mission Critical. It was inspired by a recent webinar, which is archived on our website at www.missioncriticalmagazine.com, we hosted on the topic. While not all data center professionals will be familiar with the concepts presented in the article, it is helpful to have an overview of endpoint security measures to be “an empowered and collective decision maker,” as Pat Lynch, who is profiled in this month’s “Talent Matters” column, says.

TRENDS

What constitutes a trend? Everything is coming up Scandinavia for me.

I recently attended the Uptime Symposium and sat in on two different sessions about data center cooling in Sweden and Finland. The first session, which was presented by Lex Coors, vice president, data center technology and engineering group and CEO of Interxion, detailed the project, in which Interxion designed and implemented a seawater cooling system for its Stockholm data center campus. The project was a 2013 Green Enterprise IT Award Winner in the Facility Retrofit category. Matti Roto, chairman of Qvantel Oy, presented the Finland project at a Technology Innovation Presentation. According to Roto, approximately 70% of the energy used in Helsinki data centers can be re-used to heat homes and for domestic hot water in the city’s district heating network. Doing so can result in a PUE of 0.47.

And not to be outdone, this month, Shawn Conaway, assistant editor for Mission Critical, writes, in his “Site Selection” column, about taking advantage of colder climates to save money on cooling, mentioning Iceland’s low energy costs. And, as we were going to press, I received an email from BroadGroup Consulting and Landsvirkjun, Iceland’s national power company, on an independent study that showed Iceland is poised to become an international data center hub.

What does all of this mean? It means it is worth looking at this region when planning your next data center project or if that is not possible, taking a look at the ways these data centers are saving on energy costs to see if they can be implemented closer to home.