EvoSwitch
The evolution of datacenter design
April 25, 2012 | 
Author 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.
The EvoSwitch Green Fan: Helping businesses demonstrate corporate environmental responsibility to their stakeholders through ICT
We use the latest technology to reduce our energy use, from minimizing hot-spots to motion-sensor lighting, and do everything we can to make a significant, positive contribution to a climate-neutral environment. All these innovations together enable us to be a 100% carbon-neutral datacenter. But we’re not the only ones – many of our customers have the same sentiment, and as a result have begun to form a collective of like-minded organizations. These businesses are committed to corporate environmental responsibility and are working towards helping to reduce the 4.3 million tonnes of CO2 emissions that Europe generates each year. This is a huge figure and given that the IT industry accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions – as much as global air traffic – it’s vital that we support our customers in working towards these targets.
EvoSwitch Datacenter first 100GE AMS-IX backbone location
Amsterdam, January 10 2012 - EvoSwitch Datacenter has today officially been added to the list of colocation providers with an AMS-IX Point of Presence (PoP). In addition to being an AMS-IX collocation connecting with multiple 10GE, EvoSwitch will be the first datacenter of its kind for which AMS-IX uses a single 100GE backbone connection.
EvoSwitch, who became an AMS-IX reselling partner in 2010, already has connected numerous networks and built a solid reputation and experience in the interconnection market. The state-of-the-art and energy-efficient site has 10,000 m² of space and is located in the Amsterdam region, with close proximity to the main airport of the Netherlands. Today, EvoSwitch serves more than 35 regional carriers and thousands of hosting, telecom, IT and enterprise customers.
Tags: 100GB, 100GE, 10GE, AMS ix, Amsterdam, co-location, Colocation, connectivity, Datacenter, Ethernet, EvoSwitch, first, Marketing, port, PR | 
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