Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/207723
Power Drains". The industry terms these wasteful processes "Zombies" and while the article detailed LexisNexis' unique approach to auditing these processes, larger movements went unmentioned. The Uptime Institute implemented their inaugural Server Roundup in 2012. The roundup served as a healthy competition amongst data center operators to remove zombies from their environments in the hopes of combating carbon footprint, reducing energy consumption and ultimately delivering saved dollars. While this competition ended round 1 in 2012, 2013 was served with a healthy dose of enthusiasm likely as a result of the Times' article. AOL eliminated 8,253 servers -- roughly 16,000 Tons of Carbon Emissions which you can pull equivalencies for here: http://goo.gl/R2h9JJ. Organizations like Barclays and TD Bank were not too far behind. http://symposium.uptimeinstitute.com/ server-roundup "Thinking fast, Mr. Rothschild, the company's engineering chief, took some employees on an expedition to buy every fan they could find — "We cleaned out all of the Walgreens in the area," he said — to blast cool air at the equipment and prevent the Web site from going down." That quotation referenced an ad hoc engineering solution to a Facebook data center near-meltdown experienced during the company's infancy. Since that time, the company has grown to over 1 Billion users and issued a historic IPO. What has also emerged is a rationalization that ad hoc does not mesh with 1 Billion users and $100B market cap. Enter Open Compute, a movement that applies the software industry's Open Source ethos to the secretive data center space. The movement is championed by Facebook management (as it honors "hacker roots"), and has since inception published server specifications, building plans, and operational data. The result according to facebook: "… a data center full of vanity free servers which is 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to build and run than other state-of-the-art data centers." Chest thump or not, the result is the same: demystification, conservation, and cooperation. http://www.opencompute.org/ "The survey did discover that the number of federal data centers grew from 432 in 1998 to 2,094 in 2010." The past year has not been all rosy. Having completed a federal data center audit this year, the government's tally of data centers exceeds 6,500 (http://goo. gl/59H0ja). This is a staggering number when compared to the 2,094 measured in 2010 (http://goo.gl/OTcWYr) – all of this against the backdrop of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) launched in 2010. While the numbers are a bit misleading – small telecom closets in certain cases are now being counted as data centers – this by any standard cannot be measured as progress. What is progress, however, is (1) the introspective nature of the audit and (2) the publication of M-1309 by Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel. The memo's intent is to refresh the FDCCI including realistic consolidation and centralized strategies with the intent of reducing baseline data centers by 40% at the close of FY2015. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/ files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-09.pdf Sitting one year out from the release of the New York Times' piece, there is room for progress and yet much to celebrate. However, if there is one introspective conclusion that can be made, it is that the data center industry is not above having an ombudsman. As we all prepare to install iOS 7 and query Google, it's only fitting that we're reminded of the challenges associated with managing these hidden cities of data. n About the Author: Dave Fiedler is the Director of Technology at Modular Power Solutions, a modular data center company. He resides in Austin, TX. Follow him at: @ Dave_Fiedler The new TS IT rack with snap-in technology. Quick and easy to install. Come network with Rittal! 7x24 Exchange Fall Conference Fall 2013 Silver Sponsor, Table #43 November 17-20 in San Antonio, TX www.datacenterjournal.com THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL | 9 www.rittal.us/makeITeasy