The Data Bunker Boomlet: Data Center Knowledge has a list of bunker data centers. Royal Pingdom features two of the listed in this article: 8 ways to make data centers less boring. As The Bunker is announcing a second facility in London area, this is a trend to follow. Not mentioned in the list, Telehouse Europe will open its third site Telehouse 3 : Magny (pdf) soon in Paris area (map) in a former secure military place.
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To complete the brief news I posted in April: Top of Rack vs End of Row Data Centre Designs, Cisco has a document from 200902 : Data Center Top-of-Rack Architecture Design (pdf). Related to the Nexus 5000 switches, it highlights the benefits of “unified networking”, from the physical infrastructure, to the logical one. For those interested in the physical benefits, the document Power and Cooling Savings with Unified Fabric (pdf) extend the discussion to power and cooling. You never get enough green factor.
Edit: ViewYonder has an article “Cisco UCS dog food tastes nice” on cabling at cisco with a slide that says it all.
ENERGY STAR® Program Requirements for Computer Servers (pdf) version 1.0 have been released on May 2009. This document’s scope includes only Tier 1 servers, from 1 to 4 processors . Applicable in October 2010, Tier 2 will include systems with greater than four sockets, Blade Systems, Fully Fault Tolerant Servers, Server Appliances, and Multi-Node Servers (more than two node in the same enclosure). Storage and network equipment are explicitly excluded and will be covered by extra specifications, although Ethernet efficiency will be included in Tier2 specifications (page 13).
The requirements focus on the following points :
- PSU efficiency (page 9),
- Power Management – idle power (page 10) dependant of the number of sockets and configurations (an extra PSU is 20 W, a hard disk is 8 W, etc.)
- Information presentation through a standardized data sheet (page 11 – sample from HP (pdf) and Dell (pdf)). This will become easier to compare during purchasing process.
- Data Measurement and Output on power, processor usage and inlet air temp (page 12). This one applies only if the server qualifies for the “Managed Server” category or has more than 2 cpu sockets. It leaves up to the manufacturer the way to measure (service processor, embedded power or thermal meter). The good part is that:
Data must be made available in a published or user accessible format so as to be readable by third-party, non-proprietary management system.
Testing criteria are also mentioned at the end of the document.
Two manufacturers have released compliant hardware but note that Dell does not appear on the ENERGY STAR Computer Server Qualified Product List (pdf) from June, 1 2009:
- HP ProLiant Energy Star for Servers: HP’s first two servers are HP DL 360 and DL380 G6. This list will soon be extended to the DL180, DL160, DL320, DL350, DL370, DL385G5P, and ML150 servers.
- Dell and Energy Star: Dell’s first servers are the R710 and R610.
This list will surely be extended soon…
