Guest post by www.greenhost.nl : A brand new server
May 11, 2012 | 
Author Last month we installed a new server. While this new hardware is great news for us nerds, some may see it as running slightly counter to our green commitment. Our preference is to optimize all our equipment to extend the useful life of the hardware. But now it really was time for a new server.
In order to alleviate our somewhat mixed feelings about this new addition to our array of hardware, we chose to travel by electric car to the data center 
in order to install the equipment. Since it was launched in Amsterdam some months ago, an electric Smart car sharing scheme has become very popular among several employees of Greenhost. The driving range of an electric Smart car proved to be more than adequate for a return trip to Haarlem
The server, which just about fit in the trunk, is an IBM X3550 M3 server with 144GB memory and 8 CPU cores. These types of machine
are used for our virtualization layer and form the basic building blocks of our network. The machines are fitted with an in-memory file system for the virtualization software, thereby doing away with the need for hard disks (and yielding additional energy savings). The virtual machines (with SAN or NAS storage) that will run on this hardware will eventually be responsible for hosting websites, databases or e-mail.
We opted for IBM systems due to their low energy usage and the minimal amount of heavy metals and other toxic substances in their hardware. Additionally, IBM is a class A brand and supplies ultra-reliable hardware.
For more information on Greenhost and their environmental thoughts and vision please visit their website or contact their sales department!
Jan Wiersma’s round-up from this year’s IMN / Data Centres Forum conference
At this year’s IMN Financing, Investing & Real Estate Development for Data Centres Forum, I joined the brilliant Jean-Simon Venne, Vice President-Energy Efficiency, SMi-Enerpro, to discuss datacenter design, implementation and construction. Our session on Day 1, combined with the Green Data Centres, Data Centre Energy Efficiency and ROI/Payback debate, saw many great and discerning arguments raised.
One discussion I was particularly involved in was around the idea that clients aren’t asking for modular and ‘green’ approaches from real estate giants. My counterpoint to this argument was that without utilising the modular approach, clients potentially miss the great CAPEX opportunity that this typically offers. Equally, from an OPEX perspective, the modular benefits of free cooling and reduced temperatures are unexploited. It is therefore the responsibility of the datacenter industry to educate customers on these issues as they often fall under the radar of many CIOs and CFOs, which is therefore the reason many businesses don’t opt for them.
Tags: 20KW, Cloud, conference, future, Greenpeace, High Density, IMN, market, outside cooling, rack, taxes | 
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The evolution of datacenter design
What is it that clients want from a datacenter? Well, that’s entirely dependent on the client. Connectivity and uptime are always important to every customer, and any service has to come at the right price. The ecological impact and desire to be carbon neutral is also a key factor for a client’s choice of datacenter. There is an array of eco-friendly datacenters where power usage effectiveness (PUE) is decreasing rapidly, but the industry average is still around 2.0.
The problem is most datacenters are old, and updating these buildings is costly and complicated for both the datacenter and its clients. But new build datacenters are introducing more and more innovative design to help reduce PUE, a consequential fall out cost for the client. Innovative design and investment in research and development is vital for the industry. Here are a few things to look out for if you’re in search of a new, sustainable datacenter.
Power and Cooling in the Datacenter
Datacenters are notoriously power hungry. What might surprise you to learn is that the most power-hungry element of the typical datacenter is not the servers at all – but the cooling systems that are needed to prevent the servers from over-heating.
In recent years, as servers have increased in capacity and speed, the amount of heat generated has increased massively. This means datacenters need to work harder than ever to maintain an optimum temperature.
Datacenters need to offer these high-capacity, fast servers to meet customer demand, but using this technology creates real issues around energy consumption and efficiency. First and foremost, in many cases, is the issue of cost – powering cooling systems is expensive, so anything a company can do that reduces the need for cooling has to be a good thing.
EvoSwitch – putting the power back into your servers
Power Usage Efficiency is a tremendously important term when talking about servers. You’ve heard us talking about it, you’ve seen our articles about it, you know it’s what makes us competitive. But in order to take it to another level we’ve started something new at EvoSwitch….
Together with TNO and many other partners, we have started working on a project which can be found when Googling the term Flexiquest. So, what’s it all about? Flexiquest examines the effects of managing demand for all parties in the energy value chain: producers, trading partners, (regional) grid administrators as well as the end users. Flexiquest is working toward business models that will enable all the parties in the chain to determine what more sustainable energy will mean for them specifically. “To what extent can we make the demand for energy more flexible?”, “What does more sustainable energy mean for the regional electricity transmission system operators in terms of grid transmission and the costs involved?”, and “What does more sustainable energy mean for the tariff that end users pay?” All these questions play an important role in this regard.
What happens when lightning strikes? How EvoSwitch’s datacenter weathered the storm
In late August of last year, we had a nasty shock when our datacenter was directly struck by lightning during a fierce storm. For any datacenter this could be a nightmare scenario – needless to say a surge of natural electricity and copious numbers of data storage devices do not go together!
Many datacenters in the region suffered in the same storm, however we were happy to report that not a single one of our racks in the datacenter was affected. However, this good outcome wasn’t down to luck. Though unlikely (or so we thought!), this eventuality was something that the experts at EvoSwitch were fully prepared for. When building our datacenter, we were sure to follow a number of technical standards and guidelines. These were designed to ensure that should something like a lightning strike occur, we would have everything in place to minimize its effect on the running of the datacenter and – most importantly – our storage of customers’ data.
Wanted: Senior graphics designer for our datacenter
As the Senior Designer, you will have extraordinary vision, outstanding design talent and creative ability as you will be heavily involved in the creative development of the brands to ensure they are unique and instantly recognizable.
Why outsource your IT? Because you can!
Usually, companies are not very interested in IT and technology, unless it’s their way of making money. So what are they interested in? They’re interested in using and expanding their core competencies, making money in the process. As long as IT helps them sell their products and services, they don’t care about the ins and outs of IT.
Allow us to elaborate on that. Nowadays IT is obviously very important to every company. Where would a company (or any individual in the western world, for that matter) be without email or Google? The thing is: people don’t care about IT as long as it does the job it is supposed to do, which is to offer permanent functionality.
What if it doesn’t? In that case, companies would lose money. They would need to make calls to help desks, providers and hosters, hire IT staff or tweak their infrastructures themselves. Read the rest of this entry »
What’s the buzz on modular datacenters?
‘Modular’ building has been the datacenter buzz-word for the past two years now, and you’ve probably heard us talking about it here at EvoSwitch. In case it’s new to you, the term describes large, portable, pre-assembled datacenters which can be set up easily, quickly and efficiently. Their main appeal is two-fold: flexibility and cost.
The modular approach is an extension of the principles applied by datacenter containers. These large 20 or 40 ft ‘1.0 version’ modules come in a variety of forms and are available with or without servers. They aim to satisfy market demand through scalability. This popular, pre-installed option allows for anywhere up to 2,500 servers. Over time the building blocks method has grown into a technique that is today known as modular building. The is an important difference though between a modular datacenter infrastructure and the container format is scale, with modular datacenters expanding the container principal to full facility level.
The modular model’s popularity stems from its cost-saving benefits which, in comparison to costly office space, reduce the upfront investment required to release capital. Resources can, therefore, be managed on a demand basis, meaning that the organization is only using what it requires at that given time. However, there are also other very practical implications. Convenience is always a key consideration for businesses in the decision-making process, as it is usually intrinsically linked to cost. Modular datacenters hit this issue head-on by reducing construction time from years to a matter of months. It enables expansion to be implemented as and when it’s needed, and the new modules can be chosen to meet specific criteria – capacity, efficiency, etc.