Ericsson launches Data Center Service and OpenStack Solution

Ericsson has launched a Data Center Service leveraging its mobile network.

Ericsson launches Data Center Build and Optimization offering

February 26, 2012, 14:09 (CET) Download: 

• Ericsson enters the market for data centers, enables telecom operators to offer cloud services for their enterprise customers
• Operators ideally positioned to offer high quality, high security and high availability cloud services to enterprises
• With an optimized cloud strategy, a telco enterprise customer can lower its IT operating expenditure

Ericsson is reaching out its installed base.

Paolo Colella, Head of Consulting and Systems Integration at Ericsson, says: "Operators are ideally positioned to offer high quality, high security and high availability cloud services to enterprises. We bring telecom-grade thinking to the cloud space, focusing both on availability and security of the services, as well as cost and efficiency gains for enterprise customers. And, in addition, cloud services bring new business opportunities for the telecom operators.

And, they have joined the OpenStack initiative.

Ericsson joins OpenStack, demonstrates unique virtual data center manager

February 28, 2012, 10:00 (CET) Download: 

• Ericsson to demonstrate cloud-management solution based on OpenStack's open-source components
• Virtual data center manager supports multi-tenant distributed clouds and integrates elastic networking over wide area networks
• Automated deployment driven by a service-level agreement drastically reduces costs and time to market

As part of the recently announced Network-enabled Cloud concept, Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) has joined the OpenStack project, an open-source community dedicated to creating cloud software that has achieved strong industrial momentum. Ericsson will contribute to further developing OpenStack to support carrier-grade services and applications. OpenStack provides a flexible alternative cloud management solution that is based on open-source components.

If you didn't think Mobile and the Cloud had much to do with each other, Ericsson may change your mind.

Dell opens its Quincy Data Center, How big is it? 42MW of diesel generators deployed with an additional 42 permitted

The folks at DatacenterDynamics and DataCenterKnowledge have posts on the opening of Dell's new Quincy Data Center.

Dell opens Quincy data center

Says heat exchangers will make cloud delivery even more cost efficient at its newest data center

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/02/15/dell-opens-quincy-data-center/

The official Dell press release is here.

Dell Opens New Western Technology Center in Quincy, WashingtonDate : 2/13/2012

Plano, Texas

• Extends Dell’s delivery capability and enables regionally delivered, high-value solutions, services and cloud-based delivery options around the world

Dell Services today opened a new technology center in Quincy, Wash., that will provide customers in North America access to cloud technologies and IT outsourcing services. The opening is part of Dell’s ongoing commitment to develop new cloud-based services, solutions and delivery options.

But, I want to know how big the data center is in terms of Power.  The diesel generator capacity is rated at 42 MW = 14 x 3MW Caterpillar Model C175-16.  You can make your own assumptions on the IT load that would be supported by this generator capacity.

How big is the site?  Here is a google maps snapshot.

It isn't that hard to find this information. Especially when a data center is near an elementary school and there is a lot of concern about the health risks from the diesel generator operations.

It was much more interesting to read the public documents than the official press release, but I guess I am too much of a data center geek. :-)

In a few months, it will be interesting to see some if the satellite photos are updated.

The 42 MW of diesel generators are for Phase 1.  An additional 42 MW is approved for Phase II and III.

Public disclosure of diesel permits is here.

Google cloud storage gets ready to compete with DropBox

WSJ reports on Google getting to launch a cloud storage business.

Google Near Launch of Cloud Storage Service

By AMIR EFRATI

Google Inc. is close to launching a cloud-storage service that would rival one of Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups, cloud-storage provider Dropbox Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

Like Dropbox, Google's storage service, called Drive, is a response to the growth of Internet-connected mobile devices like smartphones and tablets and the rise of "cloud computing," or storing files online so that they can be retrieved from multiple devices, these people said.

Drive allows people to store photos, documents and videos on Google's servers so that they could be accessible from any Web-connected device and allows them to easily share the files with others, these people said. If a person wants to email a video shot from a smartphone, for instance, he can upload it to the Web through the Drive mobile app and email people a link to the video rather than a bulky file.

Google does sound like the old Microsoft that is getting into everything and competing with everyone.

Google's Drive service also would rival Apple's iCloud, which lets people store data online and is designed to synch with Apple mobile devices.

Google's service is expected to be added to its suite of online software that it sells to businesses, called Google Apps. That would also make Drive competitive with Box.net, which sells cloud storage to businesses.

IBM and Tulip Telecom launch Largest India Green Data Center in 5MW increments up to 100MW

IBM and Tulip Telecom have worked together to launch the first of 20 modular data center pods in a 100MW four tower building configuration. When you look at this building, it is actually 4 separate buildings connected with an atrium.  One of the top questions that most of you will ask is what kind of power reliability can you get in India for 100MW load.  Speaking to Mike Hogan, Global offering Executive IBM Site and Facilities Services, he shared that the site has two power feeds to the site, and 4 separate network taps, making the site an ideal opportunity for a data center.

The building above has a green hue to it, and it has green features.

The new highly efficient data center is designed to international green building standards and engineered with power, chillers, cooling, rack layout and uninterrupted power supply systems.

The expected PUE performance is about 1.6 -1.7.  A lower PUE is challenging in the conditions in Bangalore, and given it is a hosting facility the equipment is not totally controlled by Tulip and IBM.  There is cold aisle containment, raised inlet temperatures and raised chilled water temperatures as well.  Given the cost of electricity and infrastructure challenges electricity is a resource that is used wisely.  Note, this building is a true data center with the staff in the building there to support the IT operations.  Call center operations are not in this building as the space and power were so valuable.

The media has latched on to air side economizers, but when you think of how to build a building in 5% increments of capacity (twenty 5 MW PODs), it can be much more difficult to expand capacity with air handlers vs. chilled water pipes.  The rack density was designed to be in the 4 - 6 kW per rack density.  For higher densities, chilled water can be brought direct to rack.

IBM's top design challenge was how to get the highest density of capacity in the footprint of the building, be cost effective, green, and efficient.  The first of 20 PODs is ready for occupancy and the building is designed for continuous operation as additional diesel generators are installed, power and cooling infrastructure upgraded, and white space is finished.  Going tall is one case where containers where not a viable option for modularity.

Here is an IBM video with Tulip executives discussing  the data center.

The press release from IBM is here.

Tulip Telecom and IBM Build India’s Largest Data Center to Address Rapid Growth of Mobile Consumers in Emerging Markets

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Bangalore, India - 07 Feb 2012:

- 900,000 square foot facility uses advanced green design for maximum efficiency
- New IBM SmartCloud services allow Tulip to deliver Infrastructure, Storage and Platform-as-a-Service to customers 
- Modular Data Center design and high reliability supports up to 100 megawatts of power
- Virtual tour takes you inside state-of-the-art facility

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has worked with Tulip Telecom Ltd. to design and help build the largest data center facility in India to deliver new cloud and networking services.

Below is a video of Mike presenting on Green Data Center and the cloud.

James Hamilton and other Amazon execs discuss AWS DynamoDB

James Hamilton posts about DynamoDB.

Amazon DynamoDB: NoSQL in the Cloud

Finally! I’ve been dying to talk about DynamoDB since work began on this scalable, low-latency, high-performance NoSQL service at AWS. This morning, AWS announced availability of DynamoDB: Amazon Web Services Launches Amazon DynamoDB – A New NoSQL Database Service Designed for the Scale of the Internet.

In a past blog entry, One Size Does Not Fit All, I offered a taxonomy of 4 different types of structured storage system, argued that Relational Database Management Systems are not sufficient, and walked through some of the reasons why NoSQL databases have emerged and continue to grow market share quickly. The four database categories I introduced were: 1) features-first, 2) scale-first, 3) simple structure storage, and 4) purpose-optimized stores. RDBMS own the first category.

DynamoDB targets workloads fitting into the Scale-First and Simple Structured storage categories where NoSQL database systems have been so popular over the last few years.  Looking at these two categories in more detail, Scale-First is:

Scale-first applications are those that absolutely must scale without bound and being able to do this without restriction is much more important than more features. These applications are exemplified by very high scale web sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo, and Amazon.com. Some of these sites actually do make use of relational databases but many do not. The common theme across all of these services is that scale is more important than features and none of them could possibly run on a single RDBMS. As soon as a single RDBMS instance won’t handle the workload, there are two broad possibilities: 1) shard the application data over a large number of RDBMS systems, or 2) use a highly scalable key-value store.

And, here is a video with James and others at Amazon.