Migration Solutions Data Centre Comment

How secure is secure? Pt. 2 - Building Security

2010-02-09T14:07:00.003Z

We are continuing to look at the security of data centres and what it takes to be truly secure. After site selection, looking at the construction of a data centre is the next step in ensuring maximum possible security. The building construction and the location of entrances play a huge role in data centre security. From an environmental perspective, having windows in a data centre have a negative effect of the buildings insulation and from a security point of view, they provide a weaker point of entry into a facility. The entrances to a facility should be manned 24/7 to prevent any unauthorised access, but while many companies spend large amounts of money on man traps and biometrics to regulate entry through the front doors, often not as much care is taken over the back doors.

Fire exits should not have door furniture on the outside to prevent unauthorised entry and should be linked to an alarm at the security desk. Controlling access into a data centre is often a gruelling activity for visitors and engineers who need to visit the facility on a regular occurrence. Ensuring that the correct procedures are followed to prevent unauthorised access maintains a secure data centre. Enforcing anti-tailback entry points with location monitoring allows security staff to record the number of personnel in the data centre and their positions as they move around it.

Migration Solutions are specialist Data Centre consultants with many years of expertise in both building and operating Data Centres. With this combined knowledge, they can advise you on the best security systems for your facility and help train your staff so that you can be as well protected as possible. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255 today.

How secure is secure? Pt. 1 - Site Location

2010-02-09T10:59:00.005Z

How secure really is a 'secure' data centre? Data centres house the world's information, web pages, financial transactions and social networking. Every data centre needs appropriate levels security commensurate with the data they contain, what is enough security? When planning a new data centre installation, whether a refurbishment or a new build, it is imperative to look at the processes that will be running and the information held BEFORE thinking about trying to design the facility. Most data centre designers will concentrate on power and network resilience and then look at front of house security.

A secure data centre must first and foremost be in the right location. This is not necessarily in close proximity to, or within the head office as is so often the case. When choosing a secure site consideration must be given to resilience. What or who could interrupt service? Is the site on a flood plain, in an area prone to power outages, or in an area where the data centre's presence is, or will become common knowledge. Are there diverse feeds available and are they truly diverse?

What perimeter fencing to you plan to install and what would happen if someone tried to drive through it? Are there separate secure areas for employees and clients to enter and park? Are there any blind spots that a thief or hacker could utilise as cover for entry? Site selection is one of the most important contributing factors to the security of your data centre. If this isn't right security will be compromised from day one. And a final point, do you really need the name of your secure facility emblazoned on the side of the building, or come to that, on your access control cards?

Migration Solutions are vendor independent specialist Data Centre consultants with many years of expertise in designing, building and operating Data Centres. With this knowledge, Migration Solutions provide advice on best security for your facility and help train your staff making your facility as well protected as possible. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255 today.

LEED - Is it beneficial?

2009-10-16T13:19:00.021+01:00

Increasing amounts of Data Centre operators in the United States are looking to get LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification on new Data Centre builds in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint. There are obvious advantages to creating a more sustainable building which conserves and/or generates its own power, but are all the LEED checklist points beneficial to the building of a new facility?

23% of the LEED checklist refers to the site chosen for building construction. The checklist covers areas such as the reduction of impact on the land, rehabilitating biodiversity and minimizing the effects on water flows and runoff. Although many of these site-related points can be achieved, the nature of Data Centres generally require them to be located close to, or in, a major town so as to avoid the huge cost of re-routing power and sourcing data connectivity. Urban sites are often limited and developers often do not have the space or money convert 50% of the land to promote biodiversity which is one of the LEED requirements.

Conforming to other sections is easier. There are recommendations on taking logical steps to reduce carbon emissions. Building in minimum levels of energy use in new devices by design can realise significant power reduction.

A major section is to demonstrate that a building will be more efficient than a normal building, scored on a percentage improvement on an incremental scale. It encourages improvements at every stage of the build to encourage the highest scores. The more efficient the building materials used, the more efficient the building will be.

A relatively small maximum score (6.3%) is awarded for the production of on-site renewable energy, which appears to recognise the fact that it is not feasible to produce off-grid energy in large quantities at this point in time. They also give points for sourcing grid power from a green source. Most electricity providers now supply, for a premium, energy produced sustainably using wind, wave, hydro and solar. Crucially, LEED promote building power metering - essential for a well run Data Centre. Only by monitoring and logging energy use can it be properly assessed. This provides the basic tool to make informed changes to reduce energy use.

So to answer the original question 'Is LEED beneficial to new Data entre construction?' the answer is.....it depends! The benefit of LEED accreditation must be balanced with return on investment. Many of the criteria for LEED compliance are industry best practice and should be followed as they will result in lower running costs. Other criteria may not be considered as essential, and with budgets being tight, this may mean that not enough points could be realised to obtain creditation.

There is also the issue of potential conflicts between LEED and meeting the requirements for a tiered facility, as defined by the Uptime Institute.

Companies will look at a return on investment when designing a new Computer Room or Data Centre. The benefit of LEED accreditation has to be weighed against cost. LEED best practice should however, be followed where possible.

Migration Solutions is a specialist Data Centre consultancy focused on improving data centre and computer room design. Migration Solutions is an active member of The Green Grid, the only UK accredited RIBA CPD Network Provider for data centre design and endorsers of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255.

Power saving V's Facility relocation

2009-10-14T14:40:00.013+01:00

Power costs in the UK are on the rise, you don't need to be told that. Everyone is feeling the pinch, none more so than the Data Centre industry. Businesses are tightening their belts and reducing staff levels in order to cut costs and stay in business. Data Centre and Computer Room managers are constantly trying to increase efficiency and reduce costs so that they can be competitive in a growing market.

The Invest in Iceland Agency appear to have the answer to everyone's problems. Cheap green power, multi feed connectivity, low building costs and a skilled workforce. It appears to be a no brainer! Power in Iceland costs around 2.1p kW/h for heavy industry where the cheapest rates in the United States are 3.1p and 10.2p in the UK. One of the biggest drains of power in Data Centres is cooling using around 40% of the total power. Fresh air cooling in Iceland solves this problem with the annual temperature not rising above 13ºC.

So why is everyone not building Data Centres in Iceland? There is a misconception that latency to Iceland is a hurdle that companies cannot afford to jump. In reality, latency from London to Iceland is half that of London to New York. A more worrying problem is the geomorphology of Iceland. Iceland is geologically, a very young island which has, depending on sources, 18-22 active volcanoes. This would pose a large threat to Data Centres across the island, although the nearest is over 50 miles from the capital, Reykjavik. Earthquakes could also be considered a major problem with Iceland, although they have only recorded 2 major tremors in the past 10 years, compared with Japan which has had more than 10 in the same period. Also, what happens if one of your servers breaks down? Iceland is 2½ hours flight away, not including travelling to and from the airports and getting through security.

So should you relocate to Iceland? It will vary between businesses whether the cost savings are worth the amount of potential downtime from natural events, but if you can, it could be a perfect location for you.

Migration Solutions are a Data Centre consultancy who specialise in Computer Room and Data Centre migration. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255

Sun to run your Sun Servers?

2009-10-09T15:01:00.008+01:00

This blog has looked at renewable energy for Data Centres and Computer Rooms before, but an increasing amount of information is surfacing that suggests that, without any further improvement, the payback on solar panels does not make it cost effective.

Toyota have an office in California which, since 2003 has relied on the sun for 20% of its power requirements. Now we all know California is a sunny place; it enjoys on average, 263 days of strong sunlight a year, but what is the payback of their installation?

Toyota have 54,000 sq ft of solar panels on their office in Torrance which are rated at 536 kW in total. Southern California has an insolation value of between 4-5.5 depending on the source. Taking the maximum figure, that each m2 of solar panels generates 550 watts per day, we can presume that their panels generate £331 of equivalent grid power every day, or £120,810 a year. The solar panels cost Toyota $3 million, half of which was paid by the government in tax credits. Ignoring the tax credits as they vary from country to country, and including the need to replace the inverters every 12½ years (at a $240,000 cost!) payback on these panels would be 17¼ years, and after that they would save Toyota £108,785 a year off a £543,925 electricity bill, or around 20%.

What relevance is this to the UK I hear you scream? The same set-up in the London would take 157 years! By this time, the technology would become defunct and replaced by more efficient systems. For now I think we are safe using mains power until a more efficient method of power generation can be found!

Migration Solutions are a specialist Data Centre consultancy who are fiercely vendor independent. They created ERA, and Environmental Report and Assessment to take a snap shot of a facility and suggest ways to improve its efficiency and save on running costs. Information Age presented Migration Solutions with the 'Data Centre Innovation' award for this product. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255

Free Cooling Calculation

2009-10-07T11:53:00.009+01:00

Free cooling has been around for a significant amount of time and many data centre managers are choosing to, at the end of its practical life, replace their current cooling plant with equipment that takes advantage of free cooling technologies. In smaller data centres where IT is a support tool and not the core business, data centre managers often find it difficult to persuade the people who hold the purse strings that it is better to spend a little more money now and make large savings down the line.

The Green Grid, campaigners for more efficient data centres, have developed a tool to help data centre managers to justify the extra capex when replacing the cooling plant. Their calculator 'The Free Cooling Tool' takes into account your data centres country, location within that country and all of your cooling and power use thresholds and combines this information with the cost of power to estimate the savings possible from replacing your current equipment with a free cooling type.

With this tool, the Green Grid hope to assist the world in making data centres as green as possible and to reduce their global carbon footprint. The net result is that you can help save your company money, while saving the environment and improving your facility.

Migration Solutions are specialist data centre consultants and members of the Green Grid. Being vendor independent allows them recommend free cooling equipment that will not only be the best available on the market, but best for you and your data centre or computer room. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com

Box in Box in Box

2009-08-17T14:19:00.009+01:00

Cardboard, bubblewrap, parcel tape, foam padding, plastic strapping. In IT there is excessive packaging with every item purchased. A keyboard will come in 3 boxes covered in tape and surrounded by foam. The Register recently reported about a delivery of a standard PS2 Mouse to a reader from HP which was the only item strapped to a pallet. Excessive? I think so! They also reported another reader's delivery from HP of 32 pages of information. Each 2 sheets was wrapped in foam and enclosed in its own box. These 16 boxes in turn were in a larger box. Is it all really necessary??

There is a serious point to be made though. 6-10% of all IT equipment failures in Data Centres are solely caused by dust. Cardboard dust is the worst dust as it is very fine. It gets sucked into servers by the fans where it settles. This makes the fans work harder to cool the equipment as the dust reduces airflows and the fans create more heat as a result. The cooling plant must cool a higher temperature driving up power costs.

Many facilities have dedicated de-box rooms so that cardboard never enters the operational floor, but 90% of these rooms are ignored and people unpack equipment in the facility and use any spare space for storage. A number of facilities that Migration Solutions has visited has had boxes, clothes, furniture and food on the live floor to name a few! The design of a facility makes it easier for staff to keep to tidy habits and maintain a clean environment, but it is up to the Data Centre Manager to ensure that these standards are adhered to by the entire workforce. A well run facility will as a result be a clean and efficient facility.

Migration Solutions created ERA, an environmental report and assessment to look at Data Centres and Computer Rooms and investigate what improvements could be made to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Cardboard dust cropped up on many ERAs that were undertaken which greatly effects the efficiency of a Data Centre. Over 150 points are assessed in an ERA which provide Data Centre Managers a great incite into the health of their facility, and a selection of free, small cost and large cost suggestion on how to improve efficiency and save money. For more information vist www.migrationsolutions.com

Web Security

2009-08-13T10:19:00.011+01:00

Twitter, the hugely popular blogging site fell under another attack from hackers again on Tuesday night. The 30 minute outage has not had a cause linked with it yet, but many people feel that it could be related to an account hack last week. This is not the first time that Twitter has had security issues. In January, 33 accounts were hacked into, including the US President Barack Obama, gaining access to the administrators secure area where they made changes including changing email addresses and leaving messages.

The attacks on Twitter have highlighted the need for careful security at server and software level to protect private information. Since the internet went live, hackers from all over the world have been breaking into websites and breaching security whether it be with malicious intent or just for fun. No level of security is immune from these virtual threats and this has been exemplified by Gary McKinnon from the UK who managed to hack into the United States military computer system, allegedly in search of information about UFO's.

Companies spend thousands of pounds protecting their computer systems from hackers and viruses, but Data Centres are often a major weak point in IT security. Data Centres and Computer Rooms throughout the country lack the physical security that their servers virtually uphold. How many times have you held the door for someone else to enter a facility? Did you check whether they should have had access? How often is your loading bay door left open or secure doors propped open while you 'carry a box through'? In Migration Solutions experience, it is often too easy to enter a Data Centre through the back door and get someone to let you into the live floor without a pass or signing in.

It is not just having the physical security that needs to be addressed. Staff need the training to ensure that they don't let people through, that they follow procedures and maintain the security levels that your facility requires. Regular staff training can vastly improve your Computer Room or Data Centres security and maximise the potential of the the security measures, physical and virtual, that you have in place.

Migration Solutions are specialist Data Centre consultants with many years of expertise in both building and operating Data Centres. With this combined knowledge, they can advise you on the best security systems for your facility and help train your staff so that you can be as well protected as possible. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255 today.

Connection Security

2009-08-07T10:54:00.001+01:00

How resilient is your Data Centre? How many fibre feeds does it have and where do these feeds come from? In the news recently was a story about the majority of west Africa being cut off from the internet due to a fault in the cable that runs from Portugal and Spain to South Africa via west Africa. The initial reports suggest that 70% of Nigeria have had their bandwidth cut as the remaining 30% takes up the load. Some may view this as a good thing as those pesky Nigerians who want to transfer millions of $ into our accounts so they can make themselves and us money, will not be able to send out any more emails! On a serious note, the bandwidth blackout has had a major effect on the government, banking sectors and the mobile phone networks. The lack of communication has left the country struggling to maintain normal activity.

Does your facility have diverse feeds? Do you know the routes these diverse feeds take? It is all very well having a resilient facility that has multiple feeds, but if both feeds exit the premises together, or at any point on their journey follow the same path, there is a large point of weakness to the connectivity of your Data Centre. With the country's infrastructure being dug up over and over again as water mains burst, sewers get clogged and broadband improved, there is increasing risk of damage to the fibre optics that service your facility. Being prepared and looking into having true diverse power and connectivity feeds into your Data Centre or Computer Room is a must for any business that relies on 24/7 connectivity.

Migration Solutions are a specialist Data Centre consultancy focusing on design, build, operation and migration of facilities throughout the UK and Europe. Contact us now for advice on how to make your Data Centre or Computer Room more resilient at www.migrationsolutions.com

Green Repercussions

2009-08-05T13:46:00.007+01:00

The EAC (Environmental Audit Committee) has commented today that they believe that if government departments fail to cut their carbon emissions in line with their Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) plan, that the taxpayers will have to pick up the bill. The CRC plan charges companies £12 per tonne of CO2 they release or expect to release in a year. Using energy saving technology to reduce emissions and increase efficiency will allow companies to be ranked on percentage of CO2 reduced and will then be given a rebate if they succeed or exceed the 12.5% reduction by 2012.

The government's plan is to give companies an incentive to reduce energy consumption and they expect the savings to more than pay for the £12 charge, making a net gain for the businesses involved. The EAC are suggesting that this plan could come back to bite the government if they cannot achieve their own targets, meaning the government would have to take money out of the national budget to pay for their own shortcomings.

There are widespread worries that a 12.5% reduction in CO2 emissions will be hard to attain for many companies.

In the words of Lance-Corporal Jack Jones "DON'T PANIC"!! This is far from a bad thing for Data Centres. As we all know, Data Centres consume around 3-4% of all power in the UK. 12.5% of this equates to the equivalent of a 200MW facility!

Reducing every Data Centre and Computer Rooms power consumption by 12.5% may sound like an impossible challenge, but in reality it can be a very simple to achieve.

Migration Solutions developed ERA (Environmental Report and Assessment) which concentrates on all aspects that affect the running of a Data Centre or Computer Room and advises clients on how to improve their efficiency and as a result, reduce their power consumption and costs. Using the advice provided by Migration Solutions, estimated savings that will be free to implement could save between 5-10% of your facilities power costs. With a small amount of expenditure you could expect to see a reduction of 12-20% in power consumption. So the CRC may not be as hard to fulfil as you may first think! For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255

Broadband Bashing

2009-07-28T12:18:00.007+01:00

ISP's (Internet Service Providers) are in trouble again after the release of Ofcom's latest report. There has been extended debate about the legalities and honesty of ISP's 'up to' speed clause in their bandwidth package, because the majority of customers do not and cannot attain the speeds suggested by them.

The Ofcom report focused on the 8Mb service provided by ISP's across the country. Their findings revealed that only 9% of users who subscribe to an 8mb service could attain above 6Mb and that the majority of users could get less than half the quoted amount. The ISP's argue that customers within a close proximity to the telephone exchange attain close to the quoted bandwidth speeds and because of distance and drain on the service by other users, customers who are further out get a slower service. Ofcom also revealed that the majority of 8mb connections could not even support 8Mb, and actually only had the capacity for 7.1Mb.

While the rest of the country has to abide by advertising laws and provide the customer exactly what they offer, ISP's have the ability to suggest that you will receive a service that they cannot provide. The two words 'up to' are an unfair loophole for consumers considering that the majority of customers are not getting the advertised amount. The issue that Ofcom is attempting to solve is to allow the public to get broadband connections that are consistent and that can be regulated. If companies are willing to install the infrastructure to support fast internet speeds such as ADSL MAX or fibre, then they should be allowed to advertise its availability - but not before the service is available.

So what does this report hope to achieve? The government wants the ISP's to be honest about the service they provide so that they can reach their target of the whole country having a minimum of 2Mb internet speeds. If the report has the desired effect, ISPs will have to improve their infrastructure and improve their service, which allows the public to receive what they pay for and not a substandard service.

The result of increasing internet speeds across the country will be a larger demand for Data Centre space, as people access websites, store information and extend their dependency on online services. The competition will increase speeds and drive down prices which will make Data Centre space more affordable and desirable. Migration Solutions are data centre specialists who focus on the operation, migration and design of new and existing data centres. They are vendor independent which allows the best products to be selected for their clients. To find out about what Migration Solutions can do for you visit the website www.migrationsolutions.com

Is a wireless Data Centre possible?

2009-07-24T17:24:00.014+01:00

Does your Data Centre look like this?

The majority of Data Centres and Computer Rooms in the UK have disorganised cabling and patching which inhibits air flow and reduces efficiency. The organic nature of a network infrastructure often starts with the best intentions and neat cabling, but develops into a sprawling mess when 'quick patches' are made and then left in position. Five years down the line and you can't see the rear of your servers!

There are so many benefits to a neatly patched facility. Connecting your servers through a patch panel allows quick organised alterations to the network while maintaining sub-floor cabling and air flows through the Data Centre. Using cable management arms inside cabinets keeps all cables neatly together and easily traceable, and allows hot air to exit quickly and unobstructed from the servers, which reduces the need for the computer fans to work as hard, reducing power usage. But could we do away with cabling all together?

Companies like WiTricity are already researching safe, wireless power transfers with the idea that in the future, you will be able to walk into a room or your office and phones, laptops and and mp3 players will start charging automatically without being connected to anything. The potential for this technology is unlimited, giving true freedom for you and your gadgets. But what about Data Centres and Computer Rooms? If the same technology was applied, power cables could be removed which would improve air flows and therefore cooling efficiency. The question remains though, would the amount of power required be able to be safely transferred to the equipment reliably? And, more importantly, being only around 40% efficient vast improvements will have to be made to make it a viable solution in a Data Centre environment.

So if wireless power is a possibility, what about wireless networking? Cisco are currently operating and improving a wireless Data Centre. Their facility uses Power over Ethernet and Wi-Fi Ethernet to create a network cable free Data Centre. They have up to 27 routers in the ceiling per meter to give excellent redundancy and bandwidth levels. This technology, along with wireless monitoring and management like the service provided by Synapsense would create a true, wireless Data Centre. Synapsense gives an on-demand picture of temperatures, humidities and pressures within a facility which could replace an expensive and often in accurate CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) test.

While CFD has its place, it lacks the ability to map each individual facilities server utilisation. This new method would allow a Data Centre Manager to fine tune a facility so that servers are always in the most efficient area. With the ability to move servers and racks around freely to optimise cooling, with the only constraint being floor grill placement, super efficient data centres could be just around the corner and they could, just possibly be wireless!

Migration Solutions is a member of The Green Grid which is focused on advancing efficiency in Data Centres. They have also recently received Information Age's award for Best Data Centre Innovation for ERA - an Environmental Report and Audit which aims to help data centre owners to save money and the environment with no or little financial outlay.

Swine Flu

2009-07-24T14:55:00.011+01:00

The world has gone swine flu crazy! The public has become paranoid about contracting swine flu and doctors have been inundated with appointments from people who think they have the symptoms. The NHS has just launched a telephone and online service to handle the huge number of enquiries and to provide Tamiflu without the need for a visit to the doctor, where the infection has potential to spread rapidly. Record numbers of people have been phoning the service and accessing the online website, www.pandemicflu.direct.gov.uk.

In the first hour they received 10,000 phone calls and 9.3 million website hits!

NHS direct normally run at around 110-140 GB of bandwidth a month with people looking for information on their website. With their dedicated swine flu website coming online, in the first 3 hours they used 1,404 GB! The new website does use a less bandwidth-heavy design, but even taking that into consideration, they had a rise of 2,453% in bandwidth used! If you compare their normal bandwidth figure (110-140GB a month for 2006-2007) with that of 2003-2004 (25GB) you can see how much of an increase in the reliance on the internet there has been to help find information and diagnose problems.

Is the internet becoming a core utility? The majority of the country use the internet daily to find out everything from directions to talking to relatives abroad. We rely on it as our library, dictionary and news source. When did 'Google it' become an acceptable business term!? Lord Carter's Digital Britain report has promoted the need to give everyone in the UK access to broadband internet by 2015. When you move house, ensuring that you have internet connectivity has become as essential as organising your electricity, water and gas suppliers. If the internet is becoming a core utility, should it be treated as such? Should each house have a bandwidth meter to measure 'how much' internet you use? That way, you could could pay for what you use and not what you think you will use; better value for money for the consumer.

Using the same methodology in Data Centres would reduce the amount of website downtime that is linked to company's exceeding designated bandwidth limits. Companies wouldn't have to second guess the amount of bandwidth they might use which would make Data Centres more competitively priced. There would be a larger focus on the cost of power and subsequently the efficiency of each Data Centre. With more efficient Data Centres, less power would be used and there would be less CO2 being released so the Data Centre operator, customer and the environment would benefit!

Migration Solutions created a Environmental Report and Assessment to look at how a Data Centre operates and areas that could be improved within the facility and operations. The ERA report comes with an entire section on changes that can be made to help your Data Centre run more efficiently and effectively. These improvements range from free, low man-time changes that can yield a 5-10% reduction in power costs to major works which include changing a facility layout, rack layout and replacing old plant equipment. For more information on the Environmental Report and Assessment visit www.migrationsolutions.com.

Power to the People

2009-07-22T09:58:00.007+01:00

Have you got power? Do you know where your power comes from? How long can you survive without power? Many companies in Kent are asking these questions as they face a third day without electricity. Up to 100,000 homes and businesses have been left without power after a suspected vandal attack on an electricity substation in Dartford. Many businesses have had to close as they cannot function without power and only facilities with backup power generation have been able to continue their operations as usual.

For those who need to keep their businesses going, there has been a huge demand for generators and fuel. EDF who own the substation have been trying to restore power and have been providing backup power in 3 hour long, rotated sessions where possible. A number of Data Centres in the area who do not have generators on site have been paying higher than usual prices to source power at short notice. They are starting to realise how fragile the national grid is in the UK and how there is an increasing need for standby generators with present and expected, future power problems.

So do you know where your Data Centre gets its power? Do you have diverse feeds to maintain resilience? In a worst case scenario, how long could your facility survive without mains power and without generator fuel? For the majority of Data Centres with standby generators, no more than 24 hours worth of fuel is kept on site. According to the Uptime Institutes tiering standards, a tier 4 facility is only required to have 4 days of fuel while a Tier 3 only 3. What happens if fuel trucks cannot get to your facility to refill the tanks? Some Data Centres claim to hold enough fuel for 90 days of normal operation. This may seem very expensive and sound like overkill, but talks of London running out of power in the near future and past fuel price strikes are leading business continuity experts to recommend larger fuel tanks to minimise potential impact on critical business systems. How vital are your systems and how long could your facility survive?

Migration Solutions are a specialist Data Centre consultancy focusing on design, build, operation and migration of facilities throughout the UK and Europe. Contact us now for advice on how to make your Data Centre or Computer Room more resilient for the future at www.migrationsolutions.com

Will BitTorrent ever beat the Data Centre?

2009-07-21T16:57:00.014+01:00

With the Pirate Bay and Kazaa deciding to go legit, the way we access music, films and software could be about to change. Peer to peer (P2P) transfers of files, legal or not, has boomed since Napster's break through in technology in 1999. The introduction of BitTorrent's in 2001, a file sharing protocol that allows millions of computers around the world to share files quickly, has made sharing files easy and fast. The technology works by taking the original file from a user, and when it is downloaded, splitting that file into many small chunks. When there are multiple users downloading (or providing) a file, BitTorrent allows people to access these little bits from different people, which minimises the amount of bandwidth traffic that the original 'seeder' has to use to share the original file. The protocol ensures that the rarest part of the file is provided first to ensure high availability. As a result, large files can be downloaded very quickly, significantly faster than a normal website download could be achieved with multiple downloaders.

The popularity of this method of data transfer has exploded and now, although there are conflicting reports of actual amounts, around 30-50% of all internet traffic is thought to be from BitTorrent up and downloads. IsoHunt has claimed that there are 1.7 petabytes (1,000,000 gigabytes) being shared by their sources. Although BitTorrent downloading is popular, it cannot guarantee a connection to the file you require.

When you download a song from iTunes, you are connecting to their server in a Data Centre directly. You have a guaranteed connection speed from the Data Centre via a fibre optic cable. The only limitation to the speed you receive that file is the Internet Service Providers (ISP) network and your own personal internet connection. Theoretically, you could connect to the Data Centre at 14 terabits per second via fibre, which would effectively produce instant downloads. The reality is that fibre transmitters limit the possible bandwidth of fibre and that PC's cannot connect directly to a public fibre connection. Additionally, most bandwidth gets limited by connection via copper cables when connecting to a computer as it is a vastly cheaper method of data transfer in a localised area.

When you download a file from a P2P or BitTorrent network, you are connecting to individual PC's in the majority of cases. You are limited not only by your own computer, bandwidth and ISP, but by the person's that you are connecting to. BitTorrent is considerably more efficient at using this method over P2P due to the fact that it downloads many small files from many different users which allows the for an increase in availability. The limit to this technology appears when connecting to another user. If you could guarantee the connection speed there would be less of an issue, but connecting to P2P networks requires reliance on other users having the file you want, and that they have their computers switched on so you can receive it. In a Data Centre environment, a file would always be available.

So will BitTorrents ever replace the Data Centre? The nature of the connection method and the process that allows a BitTorrent file to be downloaded requires many people to have the same file and an active internet connection. There is no guarantee that you can download a file and each file that is not downloaded would lose someone money. While BitTorrent may be great for the free and illegal file downloading, the lack of control would make it hard to charge for the downloads. Aside from this, the majority of Data Centres require servers for their raw computing power and storage capabilities. BitTorrent software cannot recreate this and even if it could, the running costs would be significantly higher and the synchronisation impossible to maintain.

Migration Solutions is a specialist computer room and data centre company offering independent advice on the design, build and operation of data centres and computer rooms. See our website at www.migrationsolutions.com

Apollo 11 Guidance Computer - Has software moved on?

2009-07-21T11:51:00.003+01:00

21st July 1969 was a big day for computers! Apollo 11 made history when the first man landed on the moon. Migration Solutions MD, Alex Rabbetts, has been taking a look back at the technology in use at the time and how it has evolved today.

The Apollo Guidance Computer, (Apollo 11 actually had two - one in the command module and one in the lunar module), was very advanced for its time. It had 2k of memory, 32k of storage and a processing speed of 1.024 MHz and it managed to guide Apollo 11 all the way to the moon and back.

Let's put this in context - it had 2kb of memory ... the machine used to write this article has 2.75GB of memory. That's 1,441,792 times more memory! It had 32kb of storage ... the machine used to write this article has 139GB. That's 4,554,752 times more storage! It had a processing speed of 1.024MHz ... the machine used to write this article has 3.4GHz of processing speed. That's 3,320 times faster!

So, what can be concluded from this is that a machine with over a million times less memory, almost 4.5 million times less storage and a processing speed that is 3,400 times slower than the PC in my office managed to fly man to the moon and back! But then my PC does run Windows ...

Taking a quick look at the Microsoft support website and I find the minimum requirements for running Windows XP:

At least 64MB of memory (128 MB is recommended) - 32,768 times more memory that the Apollo Guidance Computer
At least 1.5 GB of storage - 49,152 times more storage than the Apollo Guidance Computer
A 233 MHz processor (300 MHz is recommended) - 233 times faster than the Apollo Guidance Computer

The question therefore must be ... such a low spec computer such as the Apollo Guidance System is capable of flying man to the moon and back, what is my PC with such a vastly superior specification capable of doing?

One could be forgiven for wondering exactly how this relates to data centres! The answer really is in that very large storage number. The IDC estimates that by the end of 2010 the amount of data storage worldwide will reach 1 zettabyte (1,180,591,620,717,410,000,000 bits of data) and it will continue to rise at an exponential rate. The recent Digital Britain report supports this view of exponential rise in the storage of digital media. All this data has to be stored somewhere ... much of it in data centres.

Data Centres require huge amounts of power to drive the storage equipment used for all this data that is produced. There are all sorts of drives to reduce carbon emissions from data centres, ranging from The Green Grid, the EU Code of Conduct to the Carbon Reducation Commitment. Greater efficiency in data centres is the right way to go, but we mustn't forget the software. 1.5 gigabytes just to install an operating system is a massive amount of storage when compared to that of the Apollo Guidance Computer - the real question is whether this vast increase in the amount of code required simply to run the computer is so much better than the system used to send the first man to the moon!

And one final thought ... if we were told that we were to fly to the moon today and that the computer that would get us there and back was running Windows XP or Vista, would we still want to go?

Chillerless Facilities

2009-07-17T10:58:00.003+01:00

In the news this week is another of Google's data centres. Their facility in Belgium does not use chillers and traditional air conditioning, but utilises fresh-air cooling to effectively cool the data centre for free. Fresh-air cooling is not a new technology and it is in use by many different facilities around the world, but the clever part is that Google have done away with the need for backup air conditioning units for the few days a year when temperatures rise above the safe operating levels of their computer equipment.

To allow this facility to run at optimum levels, the technology employed had to be redesigned from the ground up. Google already build their own servers which mean they can purpose build them to their specific requirements, using minimal components and reducing the need for expensive casings and multiple drives. These servers can be run at a temperature of 27 degrees centigrade which allows for cooling requirements to be minimal in the first place. The average summer temperatures in Brussels are between 19-21 degrees which allows a 6 degree variance for heat waves or unseasonal hot days. If the temperature in the data centre rises to a level where the IT equipment cannot handle the heat, Google, using its virtualisation technology, starts to transfer the servers activity to different facilities around the world which allows the data centre to cool naturally, restoring a lower temperature and allowing the facility to continue to operate at normal levels. This process is performed automatically by the data centre, which can recognise when it may be over heating. There is also an increasing reliance on local weather forecasting so they can pre-empt any problems that may occur.

As the world moves towards virtualisation as a more efficient method of server utilisation, the question remains, is the Google data centre blueprint the future of the modern computer room? Google have the ability and the financial backing to be able to take a problem, dissect it, and redesign it so it works most efficiently for their requirements. This is their plan for Google OS, but are Googles requirements the same of the rest of the worlds?

Making your Data Centre as efficient as possible will reduce your yearly power bill significantly. Some very small, often free changes can return 5-10% savings in power. Migration Solutions are specialist consultants who created their ERA, Environmental Report and Assessment, to help Data Centre and computer room operators save running costs and extend the life of servers and their support equipment. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255

Wind Power

2009-07-09T17:07:00.003+01:00

The Energy Saving Trust (EST) has released a report this week about domestic wind generation, which could change how and where wind turbines are installed. The report, which sampled a number of homes across the UK, used predicted and actual average wind speed readings to map the UK and decide where the most appropriate location for wind turbine installations actually are. Although the ideal position and geographical location was no surprise, findings about return on investment (ROI) and home installations were revealing.

Manufacturers figures for domestic wind turbines suggest that on average, building mounted turbines make 10% of their ratings a year and free standing turbines make 17% of their ratings. If a turbine is rated at 1kW, this would equate to 100 Watts and 170 Watts respectively. In direct comparison, the large wind farms get closer to 30-40% of their rating on average, reaching 59% efficiency at peak output. The EST's findings revealed that building mounted turbines actually came closer to being 3% of their ratings, a difference of 7%. This would mean that a £4,500 1kW wind turbine would generate 262.8 kWh of power per year, which equates to £34. Therefore the ROI for a 1kW wind turbine mounted on a domestic house in an average area would be 132 years!! This therefore is not a very environmentally friendly method of power production! If they are located in an ideal location such as Scotland where it is windy, with few obstructions and either by the sea on on a hill, this average rises to 7.4% of the rating. This equates to 648.2 kWh for the same turbine per year or £84. This lowers the ROI to 53 years and 5 months!

On the other hand, due to the ideal location of free-standing turbines, they have a much higher efficiency and much lower ROI. Free standing turbines need a large area of open ground so that they are safely positioned and not a danger. They should ideally be in a high position with no trees or buildings obstructing the wind flow. In the EST's tests, the average load was 19% of the turbines rating which almost certainly is because of their location. The benefit of a free-standing turbine is that it can be larger than one that is building mounted. So for example, a 6kW free standing wind turbine costs £17,200 to buy. At 19% of its rating it will generate 9,986.4 kWh a year or £1,298. Therefore, the ROI would be 13 years 3 months. In perfect conditions either by the sea or on top of a hill, the efficiency rises to 30% which makes the ROI 8 years 5 months. After this period it will start giving you free electricity.

So what has this got to do with data centres I hear you cry? Reducing power costs in data centres is big money, and many new facilities are trying ways to make their data centres or computer rooms "green". One idea is to have private power generation through wind and solar generation, but as was discussed before in this blog, solar power generation is not at a level yet where the benefits can be gained in the UK. If you have a data centre or building located in a remote area which has high average wind conditions, installing 10 free standing wind turbines could power four 3kW racks. Although the ROI would be a major factor, for a domestic situation, the government will provide a grant of up to £1,000 per kW of turbine installed and similar incentives are provided for businesses. In Dubai a number of different designs are being considered by architects to build wind generation into new skyscrapers. These could produce 1,200,000 kWh of power a year, enough to power a 20 Rack data centre with cooling included. If every new building had this technology included in the design, the possibilities of "free power" are endless.

Making your Data Centre as efficient as possible will reduce your yearly power bill significantly. Some very small, often free changes can return 5-10% savings in power. Migration Solutions are specialist consultants who created their ERA, Environmental Report and Assessment, to help data centre and computer room operators save running costs and extend the life of servers and their support equipment. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255

Google to re-invent the netbook OS

2009-07-08T11:39:00.004+01:00

ChromeOS - could this be the new face of cloud computing? Google announced on their blog last night that they were developing a totally new operating system that will be specifically designed for netbooks. Chrome OS is expected to be ready for shipping towards the end of 2010 but will be available for the open source community later this year.

Google has revealed that they are planning to include in-built security. This has been totally redesigned in order to do away with processor hungry anti-virus and malware products, and to ensure that from switch on to internet browsing there is only a a few seconds delay rather than the few minutes needed by Windows. By starting from scratch, Google hopes to be able to redefine the operating system into something that will "just work" rather than a tool that constantly has problems. All web-based applications will work on ChromeOS and Google is concentrating on ensuring that all the ChromeOS apps are usable on all other operating systems.

This could be the future of operating systems - to give users what they want rather than what they are given. One question remains, although there are many people who disapprove of Microsoft's strangle hold on the market, will Google start to carry the torch?

Super-Data Centres

2009-07-06T17:31:00.003+01:00

Has anyone got a spare million lying around? How about cheeky $2 billion?

The NSA (National Security Agency) in America, has announced plans that they intend to build a $2 billion, 1 million sq ft data centre in Utah as they are fast growing out of their Fort Meade headquarters. The proposed 65 MW facility will be sited on 2 major power corridors and will house new supercomputers that the Fort Meade facility can no longer support. The NSA, who watch and listen to most communications - via the internet, phone calls, radio broadcasting and other communications methods. They watch over the whole world's communications, attempting to spot dangers to the USA from foreigners. An element of this information is shared with GCHQ, the UK's version of the NSA. The NSA build bespoke supercomputers to break ciphers and encryption around the world, which require huge amounts of power and cooling to operate effectively. As an example, the world's most powerful supercomputer, the IBM Roadrunner takes up 296, 42U racks and uses 2.53MW of power, not including the water-cooled CRAC units.

In the UK we can presume that GCHQ must have a similar sized computing capacity. There is not much information as you would expect from a highly classified branch of the government, but they have stated that “It’s hard for an outsider to imagine the immense size and sheer power of GCHQ’s supercomputing architecture.” This does beg the question, does the government/GCHQ have access to vast amounts of power that is not readily available to the public and average data centre operator. There is a severe shortage of power in the UK which has been highlighted through the reserving of electricity for the Olympics by many companies who have been paying vast sums of money in a bidding war to secure the limited power available. The government has a plan in place to build a number of new nuclear power stations and clean coal powered stations (which will include carbon capture) by 2018, but many sources are saying that the UK will run out of power by 2015 as old power stations come to the end of their lives.

The best way to safeguard your data centre or computer room for the future is to make it more efficient now so that you will not require excessive power in the next 10 years. Migration Solutions are specialist Data Centre consultants who design and build, operate and migrate data centres all over the UK and Europe and have recently won Information Age's Data Centre Innovation award for ERA, an Environmental Report and Assessment which looks at ways that computer room and data centre operators can cut costs and improve their facilities efficiency. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255.

UK Government says more data centres needed!

2009-07-03T10:59:00.002+01:00

According to the widely publicised 'Digital Britain'report, it is anticipated that 'the volume of digital content will increase 10x to 100x over the next 3 to 5 years' and that 'we are on the verge of a "big bang" in the communications industry that will provide the UK with enormous economic and industrial opportunities.' The question posed in the report, however, is where is all this data going to be stored? The answer, of course, is in data centres.

The report continues; 'All of the information on the global Internet, whether for commerce, industry or consumer consumption, has to be stored somewhere in digital form on servers. This is the function of the Data centres. They are a crucial part of the underlying infrastructure and a vital foundation block of much of the digital economy.'

'The current demand for highly-connected data centres in the UK points to constraints in supply which is of concern as these facilities can take up to two years to build from initial inception. The private sector needs to look beyond the current recession since the up-turn in the economy will not be the only driver of expanding demand - the quantity of information to be stored continues to rise exponentially across the world.'

Those involved in the industry already know about the shortage of supply, but if the report is only half right, this shortage will soon become a drought. Putting this in context, the introduction to the report states, 'Yesterday, 20 hours of new content were posted on YouTube every minute, 494 exabytes of information were transferred seamlessly across the globe, over 2.6 billion mobile minutes were exchanged across Europe, and millions of enquiries were made using a Google algorithm.'

Assuming a rather conservative view is taken and that digital content increases just 5 times over the next 3 to 5 years, this would result in 100 hours of YouTube content being posted every minute, 2,470 exabytes of information being transferred and 13 billion mobile minutes being exchanged across Europe. This would result in the current shortage becoming chronic!

It is evident, not just from the report, but also from what is happening today, that new data centres must be built ... and soon! The average data centre will take 6-12 months to construct (some longer) and that's only after all the relevant permissions have been obtained. Building a data centre isn't that easy either. In order to support all of the technology - servers, storage, network equipment etc., there is a significant amount of infrastructure required. Firstly, any site that is identified as a potential site for a data centre needs power ... lots of it! And there isn't much of that around at the moment. Some towns and cities are reported to be down to their last megawatt of power, and that isn't nearly enough to power a data centre of any size. A data centre of just 100 racks of equipment is likely to need at least 1 megawatt of power, the average commercial data centre will have upwards of 500 racks ... some will run into thousands. A second consideration is the communications required. These data centres need big communications links. Not a 200Mbps connection as is currently being trialled in Kent, but several Gigabit, or even Terrabit, connections will be required. Getting these connections to the data centre is not cheap!

Getting the design right is going to be crucial. It isn't, as some newer entrants to the market seem to believe, a case of chucking a load of power and communications into a shed and calling it a data centre. Very careful consideration needs to be given to the operation of these data centres after the builder has gone. It needs specialist design with the ongoing operation at the forefront of that design. In some existing data centres an upgrade will be necessary, in others it won't be possible as their design and infrastructure simply won't support the new demands.

The report states, 'London is the largest data centre market in Europe and a location for international businesses looking to expand into Europe.' This is currently true, but the clever people are going to be thinking slightly outside the box. London is the largest data centre market in Europe but with the chronic shortage of power in London at the moment and the lack of investment in infrastructure meaning it won't get better anytime soon, London may not be the panacea to the problem. The UK certainly, but the clever money will be building outside of the capital. Some will need to be close enough to allow synchronous replication of data, but most applications don't need this - digital storage being one.

Smart operators should be looking to build data centres in locations where both power and connectivity are available. Really smart operators should be looking at sites where both power and connectivity are available and where the power comes from a 'green' source. Whilst the government, through the Digital Britain report, has rightly identified that there is a need for more data centres and that there is a current shortage which can only get worse, they have, as ever, balanced this with the introduction of a promise to heavily tax those users of significant energy, or which data centres are one.

Interesting times are ahead for the data centre industry!

Migration Solutions has many years of experience in computer room and data centre design and construction. Utilising operational experience to create a data centre that runs as efficiently as possible, but is easy to use for the operations team is the most important aspect of any data centre or computer room design. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com

Heatwave!

2009-06-30T11:42:00.002+01:00

As you may be able to tell there is a heat wave happening in the UK! Throughout this week the temperatures will be increasing reaching a peak on Thursday. The Met Office has issued a Level 2 Heat-Health warning to prepare the public for the weather. While the temperatures may not be high compared to many places around the world, the UK is used to a more moderate heat and infrastructures are designed with this in mind.

Older data centres and computer rooms often start to overheat and fail in high temperatures, as the air conditioning struggles to cope with the increased heat levels and cooling. These facilities are also likely to be full to capacity. In a facility that is already on the limit of cooling, a heat wave becomes very dangerous, especially if a CRAC Unit (Computer Room Air Conditioning) were to fail. Old servers are also very sensitive to fluctuations in temperature. Increased heat requires the internal fans to spin faster to cool the equipment and if a fan stops working, a server can very quickly over heat and shut down. If any 1 server has business critical applications on it, you should be prepared.

Migration Solutions created a health check for data centres and computer rooms which looks at all aspects of a facility and gives it a scored rating. The ERA report comes with an entire section on improvements that can be made to help your Data Centre run more efficiently and effectively, and can identify possible problems that could result in down time. These improvements range from free, low man-time changes that can yield a 5-10% reduction in power costs to major works which include changing a facility layout, rack layout and replacing old plant equipment. An essential part of Data Centre management is preparing for the worst, and identifying the strengths and weakness of your facility is key. For more information on the Environmental Report and Assessment visit www.migrationsolutions.com.

Solar Servers

2009-06-29T15:15:00.001+01:00

Humans are having a big impact on the world, and learning how to slow and eventually stop the processes that are affecting our environment is of key importance to humanity. Not only is it important from an environmental perspective, it is important for preparation for life without fossil fuels, which will become reality in the not too distant future. The technologies that have been developed in the past 20 years which include super efficient batteries, electric motors, and solar panels, will help to cut our reliance on coal and gas power stations to a level that would help our planet re-stabilise itself.

Data Centres use between 3-4% of all electricity produced in the world. As a major drain on the planet's resources, the sector as a whole needs to look at how much power we are using, what can be done to reduce power consumption and whether it will ever be viable to run a Data Centre that is environmentally neutral. At present, the only area that can be run totally neutrally is computer room air conditioning. Using fresh air cooling, Data Centres can make use of low external temperatures to cool an entire facility effectively for free, saving 40-50% of the overall power costs.

But what about the other 50-60% which provides the power to run the servers themselves? Many environmentally conscious Data Centre operators are choosing to use power from green sources like wind farms and hydroelectric but there is not enough of this type of power available for everybody. In the UK, solar panels have never been that effective at generating power and initial outlay far exceeds the returns that would be gained from the amount of power they can produce. Systems like the solar-thermal power plant in Seville, Spain are significantly more effective than the traditional solar panel, using heliostats to track the sun and concentrate its thermal energy into a heat exchanger that powers a steam turbine. It currently produces 11MW of power according to its owner, Solucar, which could power 4 or 5 large Data Centres, but the system requires a large amount of space and strong sunshine to operate at this level. Being 100% environmentally neutral by combining this technology with fresh air cooling, is not a viable option as they both require very different environments.

Two inventors, one in Massachusetts and one in Missouri, have come up with two different ideas to make solar technology cheap and efficient, both claiming 70-80% efficiency (normal solar panels range from 10-40% efficiency with a steep increase in cost) and at a fraction of current prices. One inventor has created two different materials that can be sprayed onto glass or plastic which create different layers of conductive metals to produce electrical power. The second inventor has used nanoantennae, tiny loops of highly conductive metal, each 1/25 the diameter of a human hair which can be stamped onto a variety of materials and harness power through the infra-red part of the light spectrum. The benefit of this system is that during the day the antenna can absorb power from the sun, but at night they can absorb the stored infra-red energy in the ground which is given off long into the night after the sun has gone down. Both are promising technologies and when the eventually go on sale they may be the answer to the environmentally neutral Data Centre.

Making your Data Centre as efficient as possible will reduce your yearly power bill significantly. Some very small, often free changes can return 5-10% savings in power. Migration Solutions are specialist consultants who created their ERA, Environmental Report and Assessment, to help Data Centre and computer room operators save running costs and extend the life of servers and their support equipment. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255

Michael Jackson and Cloud Computing

2009-06-26T19:03:00.003+01:00

Google, ABC, AOL, CBS, CNN… to name a few were all hit hard this morning as news of Michael Jackson’s death spread like a ‘speed demon’ around the world.

The number of hits that these websites were getting were off the wall with Google believing it was under attack from a virus or spyware application during the peak of searches (between 0240 and 0315 Pacific time).

This begs the question, is it dangerous to rely on the cloud to cope with the demand of such relatively rare incidents? Cloud computing claims to have the technology to cope with such a massive influx of visitors, but has it? After all, we’re still relying on hardware based somewhere – working day and night, and when extra demand is needed how quickly can these dormant virtual machines be brought up?

It’s not black and white, who’s to say the architecture is robust enough to cope? Those promoting the cloud certainly Just can’t get enough of promoting their vision of a cloud based future.

In truth, the cloud is in its childhood, but growing up fast. A well defined, efficient architecture, using best practice techniques is very likely to offer an invincible solution that some current on-site computer rooms and data centres just don’t have.

It’s human nature to get excited about new technology, but persuading business to trust the cloud with their business critical data? It’s bad enough trying to convince business to move their data 25 miles out of their own London offices, let alone persuade them to send it into the cloud to a Stranger in Moscow.

There is no doubt that cloud computing is going to play a large part in the future of data. Once the fear of lack of data privacy is resolved we’ll be saying remember the time when we had all of our data stored on-site?

We’re almost there, whatever happens history will prove that cloud computing is coming of age. I’ll be there!

Digital Britain

2009-06-25T11:56:00.003+01:00

The final Digital Britain report was published last week with many interesting discussion points. The report was commissioned to ensure that the whole of the UK, from businesses to consumers could maximise the benefits that the internet and emerging technologies surrounding it can provide. Key points that were highlighted were the development of broadband across the country, especialy rural areas, so that the entire population can have access to higher download speeds; ensuring the public have sufficient IT and media literacy skills to take advantage of new technologies; creating a digital copyright framework to protect intellectual property rights to support and promote creativity along with investment opportunities and job creation in sectors important to the UK and to combat internet piracy to ensure the future of on-line music and film downloads.

One of the surprises that came out of the Digital Britain report was that all wired internet users will now have to pay a 'broadband tax' of 50p per month to help pay towards the expansion of fast internet across the country. There has been doubt expressed already that the government is just trying to look as if they are doing something to alleviate the problem, and that the big cabling providers do not require a "meaningless sweetener", and that it is just another stealth tax. When it comes to piracy, the government will only intervene as a last resort. This means that abusers will not be disconnected if they flout the law, which does not seem much of a deterrent. Whether this will work remains to be seen, but if after a year there are not significant improvements, Internet Service Providers will be asked to slow the abuser's connection speeds and as a last resort block their IP addresses. Removing the internet from the illegal downloader's appears to be one of the few viable ways of stopping piracy.

Data centres were touched on very briefly, maybe to explain to those not in the know what data centre is! All the report revealed is that the need for data centre and co-location space is increasing - which is stating the obvious! There does not appear to be a plan in place to help provide power for these 'in-need' data centres which is the biggest limiting factor at present. This means that power will remain very expensive as it becomes a bidding war for provision and it will become increasingly harder to obtain. As a result the public will end up picking up the cost.
So with all these 'revelations', internet use will increase while the ability to host the vital equipment needed to run the internet will remain limited!

Migration Solutions are a specialist, vendor neutral consultancy who focus on data centre design and builds; business continuity planning and disaster recovery; data centre migration and operation. For more information vist www.migrationsolutions.com

Restoring trust for the future

2009-06-16T15:09:00.003+01:00

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the highly honoured professor credited with being the father of the internet, has revealed that Gordon Brown has given him a job to assist the public in regaining the trust of their government. In new plans, Gordon Brown has agreed with Sir Tim, that taxpayers' money has paid for data about the government, so they should have access to it. This sudden bold move by the Prime Minister comes after a wave of resignations following the 'expenses scandal' which revealed that many MP's have been claiming for items and houses that they were not entitled to, passing them off as 'perks of the job'. Sir Tim's role will be to create a website that gives complete transparency of the government's expenditure in an attempt to restore trust before the next general election.

In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee, an Oxford graduate from London, presented the first proposal at CERN for an HTTP client for the sharing of information between scientists. In 1990 with the help of Robert Cailliau, they created the first communication via the internet. This team could also be considered the parents of the modern data centre. Data centres were already in use throughout the 1980's as the reliance on computing grew across the globe, but it wasn't until the internet took off in the mid 90's that data centres became what they are today. As many companies turned to the internet as a way of marketing and creating brand awareness, the internet exploded in size which resulted in the dotcom boom. As a result data centres evolved very quickly and many new facilities were constructed.

It is believed that data centres use 3% of the worlds electricity, while in the UK this figure is over 4%. This is equivalent to around 800 2MW data centres across the country. In reality this is made up of thousands of small 10 rack or less computer rooms. The figure gives an idea of just how much power we consume in IT. 1600MW would run 3.6 million homes for a year. While our requirement for data centre space is on the increase, computer processing capabilities are also increasing which allow a single server to perform multiple tasks more effectively and efficiently. The more efficiently a server works, the faster we can receive results from it and so our expectations of how long a task should take are reduced. As a result, we have created a perpetual cycle of power consumption that will be very had to slow down.

With the release of the full Digital Britain report today, the country is expecting to see an attainable action plan to get every person in the UK on the internet at a connection speed of at least 2Mbps. With 61 million people using the internet, and internet connections getting faster, eventually becoming fibre connections, data centres will need to have faster connections into the facilities and faster servers to process the information. This will just add more fuel to the perpetual technology cycle. The cost will fall to the consumer with a premium paid for faster connections and to the data centre operator who will have to increase the bandwidth to each facility. Improving data centre efficiency is likely to be the first step in keeping costs down. Migration Solutions has created a tool for this. ERA - the Environmental Report and Assessment takes a snapshot of all aspects of a data centre from the cooling to the layout, power to the processes and procedures, to help data centre operators save money and save the environment at the same time. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com

iPhone - The Next Generation?

2009-06-12T19:05:00.000+01:00

As the whole world will know, Apple has announced the release of the new iPhone handset for next week. This small piece of equipment has been the market leader in smart phone technology since its initial release in June 2007. The iPhone has made the internet accessible from pretty much anywhere with mobile phone reception and as a result, many more people have been accessing the internet, reading and writing emails, downloading music and Twittering on the go rather than waiting until they are at their PC or Mac. The public is becoming more dependent on the internet for everything, and the iPhone is one of a handful of phones that is contributing to this dependency.
The iPhone now has a better camera, 3.2 megapixels over the 2 previously, and supports video capture. It can connect and transfer data faster than ever. For the consumer this is brilliant news, and for Apple it's even better as many people will upgrade their phone, but how will it affect the users, the data centre owners and the data centre operators?
The faster connection speeds will require faster processing power in data centres to keep up with the advancing technology. The consumer will expect the infrastructure to be able to support the new technology and so data centre operators involved with any aspect of the iPhone will have to improve and maintain their technology to keep up with the ever increasing demand for speed. For many ageing data centres, this will mean that old servers will need to be replaced with new, multi core processors with sufficient RAM and fast storage attached to a fibre or cat 7a based network connection. New equipment and faster processing will necessitate more efficient and reliable cooling. The faster processors and increased cooling will require more power which increases the cost of running a server. The net result? The public will end up paying a premium on the services relying on data centres - which will show up on your phone bill as higher line rental and data charges.

Refurbishment vs. New facilities

2009-06-02T16:13:00.001+01:00

Whenever there is a hot summer, old and some not to old data centres and computer rooms suffer. As they overheat due to inefficiencies and under-cooling, management must decide whether it is more cost effective to patch the room up to last another year, to totally refurbish the computer room or to build a brand new computer room or data centre from scratch. This summer is likely to be no different with many people expecting some record temperatures.
The task of persuading the powers that be to choose one of these options lies with the facilities and operations departments explaining the viability of each choice to the finance director. It has been said before that facilities and operations rarely see eye to eye, often due to the differing natures of their jobs, so the management team rarely get an unbiased view of the true needs of the IT department. So what are the benefits of refurbishing a data centre vs. building a new facility and vice versa?

Refurbishment
When refurbishing a facility there is one major problem that stands in the way; working around live equipment, be it plant or servers. Maintaining 24/7 operations during a refurbishment is possible, but special care needs to be taken by all parties working in close proximity to the facility. As workmen connect and test new plant, short circuits and power failures are a common hazard, as are people tripping over live cables and lifted floor tiles that span work areas.
In choosing a refurbishment, there are many areas in which budget can be saved when compared to a new build. Starting from scratch requires foundations, walls being built and services being connected, all of which may be avoided in a refurbishment saving time and money. The site will often be in, or close to the main office which appeals to many companies and IT departments and this also means it may be possible to reuse plant from the old facility.

New
Many computer rooms and data centres have evolved over time to become the backbone of company operations, but often, this Darwinist approach to IT results in a room that is the wrong shape, size and layout for modern computer equipment and the installed plant often struggles to cope with advances in computer power. Building a new computer room or data centre provides the ability of hindsight to prevent the same problems happening again, by future proofing the new facility from its outset.
A new data centre will be specifically designed for the businesses needs. Building from maximises the efficiencies of new technologies such as free and fresh air cooling, heat re-use and dust reduction. By designing a new facility, the ability to include de-box and test rooms adjacent to the computer room or data centre, secure delivery bays and single level entry to the finished floor level helps to maintain the operation of an efficient data centre. A problem that often arises from a refurbishment is that IT staffs still see it as the old facility and fall into bad habits that encourage poor patching which reduces airflows; poor housekeeping that increases dust levels; and poor security to name a few. A new facility is often treated like a new car; you want it looking like that day you took ownership for as long as possible so staffs try especially hard to maintain its high standards. By moving data over to a totally new facility you can start afresh and help maintain a reliable, efficient computer room or data centre for many years to come.

Every case is different and Migration Solutions are experts at recommending the most suitable options for each client. Migration Solutions has many years of experience in computer room and data centre design and construction utilising their operational experience to create a data centre that runs as efficiently as possible, but is also easy to use for the operations team. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com

Symantec Publishes 2009 Green IT Report

2009-06-01T09:12:00.002+01:00

Symantec has just published its 2009 Green IT report, and it makes interesting reading. Here are some of the key facts:

97% of respondents state that they are discussing a green IT strategy
45% said that they have already implemented green IT initiatives

Key drivers are reducing electricity consumption (90%), reducing calling costs (87%), and corporate pressure to be green (86%).

The report also highlighted that organisations are prepared to pay a premium for more energy efficient servers with 95% reporting that new energy efficient equipment is part of their strategy, followed by monitoring power consumption (94%) server virtualisation (94%) and server consolidation (93%).

The report’s press release can be read in full via the Symantec website http://www.symantec.com/.

These results are positive, but in other news, published yesterday on the BBC’s website, sales of servers fell almost 25% in the first 3 months of 2009. That doesn’t look too promising for the move to ‘greener’ servers.

But is buying new the right thing to anyway from a green perspective? Old servers may use more energy to run, but what about the energy used to produce this new hardware, and the environmental impact of the disposal of the replaced devices?

There is so much more that can be done to improve the efficiency of a computer room and data centre, and a lot can be done for little or no money.

Migration Solutions’ award winning Environmental Report and Assessment (ERA) has shown companies, government bodies and educational establishments how savings can be achieved without spending a fortune on changing the whole of the IT estate.

Simple steps can be taken immediately, and recommendations made on a future strategy to improve efficiency when a refurbishment is due, or when fitting out a new computer room or data centre facility.

Migration Solutions is a specialist computer room and data centre specialist offering independent advice on the design, build and operation of data centres and computer rooms. See our website at www.migrationsolutions.com.

How good is wind?

2009-05-29T15:27:00.003+01:00

The Scottish government has officially switched on the largest onshore wind farm in Europe. The site on Eaglesham Moor, which takes up an area the size of central Glasgow, has 140 turbines which will power 250,000 homes. The owners, ScottishPower Renewables, have been given further permission to increase the site by 25% to 176 turbines which would have the ability to produce 452MW of power. There are also discussions in place to build an 1800MW offshore wind farm in the west of Scotland. To put this into perspective, 452MW is about 1% of the UK’s electricity consumption, and 1800 MW is about 4.5%.

Data centres in the UK have been said to use around 4% of all power used in the UK. If the offshore wind farm in Scotland gets the go-ahead, these two sites combined would produce enough power for every data centre in the UK. The Whitelee wind farm takes up an area of 55 square kilometres and the UK would require 600 of these to meet its energy policy by 2050, or an area the size of Wales.

The question on many people’s lips is, will energy prices fall as a result of this renewable energy? In America, many IT companies base their data centres around the Colorado River, where hydroelectric power is created in huge volumes and is sold back to the public at a relatively low rate. The electricity prices in Colorado have risen 63% from 2002-2008, this new energy may be clean, but who can be sure how it will affect the price we pay in the UK?

Migration Solutions are a specialist data centre consultancy who recently won Information Age's Data Centre Innovation award for ERA, their environmental report and assessment. ERA takes a 360 degree look at your data centre and then suggests areas that you could improve on and could help save the environment while saving you money. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com

Do they delete your data?

2009-05-21T17:41:00.003+01:00

Cambridge University have recently completed a PhD study into Internet security, focusing on what happens to your data that is stored by the numerous social networking sites and Web 2.0 websites.

The study, which was focusing on the process of information removal after you delete an item or account, found that 3 of the biggest social networking sites, Myspace, Facebook and Bebo retained the information after it was deleted. It is possible to gain access to this information though direct links to the pages which have been cached. The big photo sharing websites like Flickr and Photobucket are very careful with this loop hole, ensuring that all your information is deleted when you ask it to be.

The implication for data centres is that all that extra information has to be stored somewhere. For example, on average Facebook receives 250,000 new registrations a day. If we presume that 5% of this number delete their accounts everyday, 12,500 people's personal information and photo's are still held. As Cambridge University showed, the information must still be stored on a Facebook server somewhere, and if the average account takes up 15 MB of room on a server, that is 183 GB a day of information that should be erased. 65.2 TB a year is a lot of data and a significant amount of storage space. Utilising a modern server and storage running at 1.44 kW, this would use over 12MW of power a year and would increase by the same amount each year.

This does not take into account the security risks and personal information protection, but certainly asks a big question; do you know who has your personal data? and more importantly do they actually delete it when requested? Apparently not, and the only people that suffer are you and the environment.

Migration Solutions are data centre specialists. They recently won the Information Age Data Centre Innovation Award for ERA, an environmental report and assessment. ERA investigates all the elements that affect a data centre's operation and gives advice on how to be more environmentally friendly, more efficient and save on energy consumption. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com

Uptime Institute to change Tiering

2009-05-13T09:36:00.002+01:00

The Uptime Institute plans to open up its data center availability tier standards, with two programs catered toward end users and design engineers.

The Uptime tiers have become the de facto standard for availability in the data center industry. The system includes four tiers that escalate in availability as the number increases, with Tier 4 being completely fault tolerant. Uptime has tried to rein in the standards, as many data centers have claimed a certain tier availability without official certification from Uptime. On the other side, some have questioned the relevancy of the tier standards, saying that putting them to practical use can be as difficult as solving the Da Vinci Code.

(Excerpt taken from SearchDataCenter.com)

The real problems with the Uptime Institute's tier classifications are in my opinion, three fold.

Firstly, the standards are written by Americans for the US and half of them are not applicable to the rest of the world. They are written in imperial measures which do not apply to the vast majority of the rest of the world and are based on 110 volt power, which is not available in the rest of the world. The standards clearly state that in order to comply with any tier, you must comply with ALL requirements of that tier - i.e. if you want to be Tier 2, you must comply with all of the requirements of Tier 2. The problem here is that outside of the US, it is impossible to comply with all of the requirements for any tier.

Secondly, the standards are very, very widely misused. Claims are made of being 'Tier 3' or 'Tier 4', but what these data centres really mean is that they have some vague relation to the levels of resilience and redundancy that are required by a particular 'tier'. Very few people have actually read the standards and when challenged will only say that they are 'inline with industry peers'. Being a US based organisation, it is very difficult for any data centre outside of the US to obtain a tier classifcation as the Uptime Institute will not licence others to certify data centres and either do not have the resources to do it themselves, or do not have the appetite. The Uptime Institute say that they have only certified 'about a dozen' data centres, which tells us something about those who claim to be 'tier' anything!

Thirdly, whilst the Uptime Institute may be a 'not for profit' organisation, the fact is that it is a company. This same company has a subsidiary called 'Uptime Technologies', which is very much a 'for profit' organisation, selling products into the data centre industry. This calls into question the independence of the Uptime Institute as they surely must be tempted to introduce requirements that their subsidiary company just happens to have products to fulfill.

The advocation of standards is a good thing. However, these should be defined by an International Standards body that is trully independent and does not have a commercial subsidiary. These standards should be such that they account for differences between geographical locations and what can be achieved and should have at their heart the ultimate goal - that is, to have a standard that defines a level of availability that includes the infrastructure, the building and all the other areas that are currently covered (in a simpler fashion), but also includes the architecture of the technology. It will be interesting to see how this one develops!

Migration Solutions is a vendor independent computer room and data centre specialist company. Take a look at our website at http://www.migrationsolutions.com/

Virgin Media Trials 200Mbps Service

2009-05-08T08:57:00.003+01:00

Virgin Media is about to trial 200Mbps broadband. Great for consumers, but it will have a massive affect on data storage not just because of the new services that will be on offer. HDTV, 3D TV and other bandwidth hungry services will be on offer. The BBC’s recently launched HD iPlayer service will be readily available and other services such as You Tube will only increase the amount of HD content.

All this data needs to be stored somewhere, and more commonly content is being stored locally (by the service provider) to improve download speeds. In other words, these very large files are being duplicated left, right and centre.

These massive amounts of data all has to be stored somewhere – increasing the demand for more and more data centre space.

It’s not just what’s available we need to think about. More bandwidth for consumers will enable them to upload increasing amounts of content – videos, PC backups etc at lightening speeds. No one will think twice about doing it, and in our experience, people are very good at creating their DVD masterpieces and their weekly backups – but not so good at deleting data. So the amount of data to be stored will increase exponentially. Purging policies exist to some degree in most companies (but don’t go nearly far enough – what about all those funny emails that never get deleted and copies sent to anyone we can think of?) Training the public at large to purge their data is going to be an uphill task.

This is a serious issue. The data centre ‘industry’ is trying to reduce its environmental impact. With companies profiting from the amount of data stored by individuals, and by viewing larger and larger files there is no incentive for them to reduce this impact.

The time is fast approaching where more data will be stored for ‘leisure activities’ than for business activities which should be investigated as the percentage is most likely swinging more and more to the home user leisure activities – who are incredibly difficult to control.

Migration Solutions is a specialist computer room and data centre specialist offering independent advice on the design, build and operation of data centres and computer rooms. Visit our website at www.migrationsolutions.com.

Swedish Carriers

2009-05-07T10:30:00.001+01:00

The Swedish Ombudsman has ruled that local mobile carriers must advertise the actual attainable internet speed figures rather than the traditional "up to" figures. The ruling came after it was decided that advertising a speed that is very rarely attainable is misleading to the public and makes choosing your broadband supplier an easier job. When you order a 10Mbps connection that is what you expect to get, but many people end up receiving under 20% of this, depending on their distance from the distribution point.

In the UK, the Channel 5 show "Gadget Show" have had a campaign running for 18 months to get British users to complain to their suppliers if they are getting significantly below the "up to" figure. They believe it is misleading for the public. When you buy a car that can do 155mph, you don't expect to reach its top speed at 31mph!

With a major ruling in a European country, we may expect to see the same laws applied throughout the EU which would be beneficial to home users and small business alike. A slow connection to your server in a co-location facility renders it near useless when you need to access you equipment quickly. Paying more for extra bandwidth from the co-lo side cannot help you until you have a guaranteed speed to you PC or work network.

Migration Solutions is a specialist computer room and data centre specialist offering independent advice on the design, build and operation of data centres and computer rooms. See our website at www.migrationsolutions.com.

Choosing a Co-Lo

2009-05-05T17:14:00.003+01:00

Does your co-lo match your needs? Do you know what your needs are? Do you know what is best for your data?

When choosing a facility to host your IT equipment, be it one 1U server or 30 racks of high density storage, it is crucial to choose a data centre that matches your requirements. There are so many companies out there offering services that appear very similar, but are very different once you scratch the surface.

Do you need access to your server? So many people host their servers in the centre of London or in the surrounding area, paying a premium to be close to their server(s). Could you host your server in Iceland for example and take advantage of cheaper power and cooling costs - would latency be an issue? If you went down this route, would you have the confidence to know that you are getting a service that you have never seen or to do the research to get the level of hosting that is closest to your requirements?

When talking about facility location, do you consider its security implications? Major towns and cities suffer from increased security risks from accidental outages from non-related infrastructure maintenance and potential terrorist attacks (not just to the facility but near-by). From a power point of view, brown-outs and power cuts are becoming a greater problem in major cities as the present supply is stretched with our increasing demands.

How redundant are the co-location facilities? Do they have multiple data (telecoms) and power feeds, on-site generators, N+1, N+2, N+N equipment duplication? If they claim that they have redundancy in their water-cooled air conditioning, does this extend to the pipes, water pumps and water tanks?

The question that you need to ask is "What are you paying for?". When you want 5kW of equipment in 1 rack, do they charge you for 3 racks because they only have power provision for 2kW per rack? If they charge you for 3, is your equipment spread between 3 racks or put in one, and is there a cooling implication linked with this?

There are so many questions that you need to ask when hosting your equipment, and it can be a very daunting process whether you know data centres inside and out or have no experience in them at all. Migration Solutions are data centre consultants that specialise in performing due-diligence on behalf of their clients to ensure they have the best fitting, best priced solution based on their specific needs. Extensive experience in data centre design and operation allow Migration Solutions to help you get exactly what you want and what you need first time, minimising the stress of the selection process. For more information or to find out how they can help you visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call now on 0845 251 2255

Google Book Search

2009-04-30T17:03:00.001+01:00

In news today, Google are setting up a deal to digitise thousands of books so that they are available to download from the Internet for users worldwide. At present the deal is only being agreed for the United States, but is expected to be expanded across the globe. Many see this as a positive step as it will make books more accessible and safe-guard books from going out of print in the future, as well as re-releasing out of print books on the Internet. Others view the move as a potential future monopoly on all digitised books, which may well have significant repercussions on the future of publishing.

From an environmental perspective there are many pros and cons on both sides of the argument.

At present, it takes roughly 43 trees to make 1000, 1lb books, using the pulping process. This does not take into account the manufacturing process and how much carbon this consumes, along with delivery and marketing. Eco-libris.net suggest that each book requires 1.3 trees to be planted to make the process carbon neutral. But how much carbon would be used to scan and store the number of books being suggested by google?

It is highly recognised that data centres are one of the biggest producers of CO2 in the world. To run a 1MW data centre for 1 year, you would produce over 8,300 tonnes of CO2, and that doesn't include staff or production and destruction of equipment. The amount of trees required to make that 1MW data centre carbon neutral would approach 17,000 every year (or 395,000 1lb books!).

Google are very conscious of their carbon footprint, whether it is for ethical or economic reasons. They are constantly recording PUEs of 1.21, and have measured one data centre as low as 1.15. With this in mind, how many forests are Google plating to offset its digitisation of millions of books?

Major move to Outsourcing - but is it right?

2009-04-24T12:28:00.004+01:00

According to an article published on Kabelnet, there will be a major move to outsource services caused by the current financial crisis ‘to save money’. The author, Tony Travers, says if attempts by some councils to outsource large parts of their functions succeed, "almost every authority in the country will be inexorably pulled" towards this model.

The reason for the outsourcing appears to be about saving money, and that it will involve different organisations – mainly in the public sector, such as primary care trusts, and police forces.

But is outsourcing the right thing to do?

It depends. It is essential to get professional advice. There’s more to it than just the cost. Consider the data you hold, look at the security implications and remember, there is no such thing as 'one size fits all'. All hosting and coloctation facilities are different - offering differing levels of security, service and provision.

In our experience, refurbishing an existing facility, or converting existing rooms or buildings into a new computer room will have a payback time (ROI) of less than 7 years. That may be too long in the current climate, but it must be considered.

Outsourcing to a co-location provider can’t be an abdication of responsibility for the security of the data being held off site. It may seem like the easy option but outsourcing a computer room facility has other challenges that must be carefully considered.

This having been said, moving to a well run, secure, hosted data centre facility is right for some businesses. Using an experienced specialist company to provide an independent assessment of the business need is essential in making the right decision.

Whether you are a customer considering outsourcing to a hosting or colocation company, or you are a hosting or colocation company hoping to secure a deal, it is essential that you use independent specialist advice to help you make the right decision. Whether customer or provider, you are essentially about to enter into a 'marriage' and it is important that you are right for each other!

Migration Solutions is a vendor independent computer room and data centre specialist company. Take a look at our website at http://www.migrationsolutions.com/

Migration Solutions on BBC Radio 4

2009-04-21T15:23:00.000+01:00

Migration Solution’s Managing Director, Alex Rabbetts spoke on BBC Radio 4’s Costing the Earth on Monday evening.

The programme, called Virtual Warming, discusses “the contribution to CO2 emissions of huge ICT data processing warehouses”.

Alex comments on the record of the data centre industry, which he says has been pretty appalling. He says that although we like to think that the industry is solving a lot of the world’s problems, with the likes of internet banking, social networking sites and video conferencing the industry has never looked inwards to the data centre itself.

Data centres use huge amounts of power and pumping huge amounts of heat and CO2 into the atmosphere. Is there something we should be doing better? says Rabbetts, and we need to start looking at the issue now.

Regulation and government requirements are driving the need to store data up and up. The current financial crisis will almost certainly make the requirement to store data even higher with increased auditing. Growth in areas such as on-line shopping, social networking and even the BBC iPlayer is growing the requirement for storage at an exponential rate.

You can hear the full programme via the BBC Radio 4 website’s ‘Listen Again’, or contact Migration Solutions. Migration Solutions is a specialist computer room and data centre specialist offering independent advice on the design, build and operation of data centres and computer rooms. Visit our website at www.migrationsolutions.com.

What Tier is your data centre?

2009-04-16T11:01:00.000+01:00

This week saw the Uptime Institute's 2009 Symposium in New York. The Uptime Institute has, as many of us know, created different data centre levels so that it is quick and easy to see what you are getting for your money, and why a tier II is significantly cheaper than a tier IV. They visit data centres and grade them on a number of different areas, watts/ft, raised floor height, amount of downtime permissible, level of resilience and redundancy etc... which gives us mere mortals a simple scale to match a data centre or co-lo to our needs.

The tiering system was created for a client who needed to explain to their management where there money was being spent, and what they would get for it. This system has become a worldwide phenomenon and many people now refer to their data centres as being 'Tier 1' or 'Tier 4'. But do you trust their accuracy?

Many colocation and hosting companies offer their services up as being Tier 3 or 4 in the UK, (sometimes even 'Tier 3 Plus' ... what's that all about?), suggesting that they have 99.982% or 99.995% site availability, but how honest are they being? Firstly, the Uptime Institute certifies very few data centres outside of the US, with only one in the UK certified as Tier 3. The principle of the idea, to make it easy for anyone to understand the required elements, is a good one. The problem is, very few organisations actually do understand what is required to meet any of the tier levels. For this reason, their claims of being 'Tier 3' or Tier 4' are very misleading. Data centres claimed as being Tier 3 that have windows on the perimeter of the computer room - not allowed! Tier 4 data centres that don't have an operations room directly accessible from the computer room - not allowed! Tier 3 data centres with one loading bay - not allowed! It must have one per 2,500 square metres! A Tier 3 data centre that doesn't have a 'single person interlock, portal or other hardware designed to prevent piggybacking or pass back of access credential, preferably biometrics' - if it doesn't comply, it simply isn't Tier 3!

So what can we do? Our recommendation? Work out your exact requirements for a data centre based on YOUR needs and your appetite for risk and downtime. Next, if they claim to be 'Tier' something - ask them to demonstrate how they are - guaranteed they'll talk about their airconditioning being N+1, (or at least the CRAC units), or their generator that has 72 hours of fuel on site, but what about the construction materials used for the ceiling, the distance from their dedicated campus fencing, (oh yes, they need it for Tier 3!), or the actual pitch of the roof? They're all there in the standards, along with over 200 other requirements! Next, get an audit done of the facility to see where it actually sits in the tiering standards (we'll do it if you like!). And finally, now that you are fully armed with the real truth .... negotiate! There is no point in paying for something that is blatently not provided!

Migration Solutions are a specialist data centre consultants who focus on the operation, migration and design of new data centres and upgrading older facilities. Crucially, Migration Solutions are vendor independent allowing them to give impartial advice based on extensive experience. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com.

Metering the Data Centre

2009-04-08T09:44:00.000+01:00

PUE, DCiE, what’s it all about? PUE is a metric developed by The Green Grid to measure Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE); DCiE (Data Centre infrastructure Efficiency) is simply the inverse of PUE reported as a percentage. OK, so now we are in recession. There are, and will be more, calls for spending cuts and more efficiency from existing hardware and our staff. PUE and DCiE can play an important part in this.

But where to start? As we are talking data centres, look at the power consumption. Or more accurately, look to see if you can look at the power consumption. It is amazing how many data centres and computer rooms, even the new builds don’t have metering installed to monitor power consumption. Data centres are estimated to contribute 3% of the CO2 emissions globally, yet the vast majority of data centre managers have no idea how much energy their facility consumes – let alone where to start making savings.

How do you get on with your company’s Facilities Manager? Ok, putting that aside, it’s imperative that there is a good working relationship between these vastly important departments (IT and Facilities) as these two hold the key to reducing energy consumption, and therefore costs, more than any other department.

Look at it from the Facility’s Managers point of view. He has little if any impact on what is installed in the data centre. All he or she will see is the monthly or quarterly electricity bills coming in with little idea of where to reduce costs, or indeed, where the costs are coming from. Keeping him/her in the picture is incredibly important.

With metering installed a whole range of other opportunities for savings is opened up. Chargeback for example. Facilities charge IT for power used, IT charge the business, whether on an application basic or per U basis. The method can be agreed, the important thing is that metering opens the doors to making the whole business aware of the true cost of powering the data centre. Metering at the rack or server level isn’t necessarily needed. That’s an additional expense and an overhead to monitor. Although it would be great, keep it simple to start.

Working together to install electricity meters to enable the PUE and DCiE to be calculated and logged on a regular basis is a start. It is also imperative to log your consumption regularly by taking meter readings and trending the power usage, what impacts it and what changes it.

How much will you save by installing these meters? Without proper metering, who knows?

Migration Solutions is a specialist computer room and data centre specialist offering independent advice on the design, build and operation of data centres and computer rooms. See our website at www.migrationsolutions.com, or email us at info@migrationsolutions.com.

Facilities Manager - Friend or Foe?

2009-04-07T17:39:00.000+01:00

In the computer rooms and data centres that we visit there is invariably friction, to say to the least, between the IT department and the Facilities department. IT don’t want to allow access to ‘their’ computer rooms, and facilities need access to maintain the plant.

These frictions need to be overcome. Facilities do need access to the computer room, and this should be allowed in a controlled manner, and if necessary, accompanied by a member of the IT team. Don’t forget however, that access could be required 24/7.

Ideally the computer room or data centre should be built with Facilities in mind. Putting the chillers in corridors outside of the room means that they can be worked on without the need for anyone to access the secure rooms. The environmental monitoring system should be linked to the in-house BMS – usually within the Facilities team’s domain. There is no reason however, why access shouldn’t be given to the data collected by it or to be on the list of people to be paged, emailed and/or sent a text message in the event of an alarm. Indeed, this can be beneficial to everyone as the IT Ops team are often required to work 24 hour shifts.

As I will be discussing tomorrow, metering should be installed in any computer room to allow for the calculation of PUE and DCiE, and to allow for ‘charge back’ to encourage everyone within the business to reduce energy costs. Facilities charge IT for the energy used, IT charge their customers in some way - whether by application, U space, or some other metric.

Building strong working relationships between these business critical teams is imperative. With modern IT infrastructure, cooling and power requirements, IT and facilities will have to work closer together. Migration Solutions specialises in designing data centres and computer rooms for operation. We understand how to operate a well run facility.

For more information see our website at www.migrationsolutions.com or email us at info@migrationsolutions.com

Time for a Spring Clean!

2009-04-02T15:46:00.000+01:00

If a non-IT colleague visited your computer room or data centre I bet that they would be shocked by the amount of dust and dirt in there – it’s like a 15-year olds bedroom. Thank goodness food and drink are generally banned! It is amazing that most offices are cleaner that a great number of computer rooms.

It’s a ridiculous state of affairs, when dust and dirt are probably the biggest enemies to any computer equipment. Dust and dirt clog the fans trying to cool the equipment which therefore increases the chances of overheating and subsequent failure. It gets into the CRAC units, clogging the filters and makes them run inefficiently. This leads to additional costs and CO2 emissions caused by all those fans working overtime!

Dust and dirt can be carried into the room on footwear and clothing, from inappropriate ceiling tiles and from having unsealed slabs at floor and ceiling height. Carpet and carpet tiles should never be used in a computer room environment; they harbour dust and are difficult to keep clean.

Cardboard is also often found in computer rooms. Another no-no. The dust created from opening and tearing boxes is very fine, and is attracted to the fans in you IT equipment.

So, as it’s now spring, think about a good old fashioned spring clean. It can be done for next to nothing and will improved the life of your equipment, and reduce your running costs.

Remove all cardboard, packaging, and other rubbish from your facility. Then look at removing those boxes of cables lying on the floor, the polystyrene, the CD cases from the tops of servers, and all the other debris.

Show your ops guys and gals what a hoover is, and get them using it on a regular basis. It doesn’t take long – and will make all the difference. Set up a cleaning schedule which can be added to the Ops Checklists. Install Tak-mats at the entrances. These are just the basics.

Why not consider getting in specialist cleaning company to carry out a ‘clinical clean’? Find a suitable ‘de-boxing’ area so that there is no need to take cardboard into the computer rooms.

These are all easy steps for minimal cost and can make all the difference, as well as being a more pleasant working environment.

Migration Solutions is a vendor independent computer room and data centre specialist company. As well as designing and building facilities, we operate them. We understand the importance of good housekeeping in any facility. For more information, take a look at our website at www.migrationsolutions.com.

Saving on Servers

2009-04-01T15:07:00.000+01:00

The market research company Gartner (www.gartner.com) has just released the latest figures detailing how the big IT companies are doing in these financially turbulent times. Compared to last year, Dell has seen a fall of 11.2% in revenue from server sales indicating that IT budgets have been slashed as companies tighten their belts. IBM appears to have fared worse with a fall of 17.4% in their server sales revenue. As a whole the market has fallen 15% which has had a direct impact on the share prices of these companies, falling between $20-30 in the last 6 months.

In the average data centre, large server purchases have been put on hold until the economy recovers and until companies have more money to invest. The result of this has been that IT staff have been looking for extra space on existing servers, consolidating servers with low activity to free up servers for other uses and thinking about virtualisation. Running a server at 20-30% load does not give value for money from the purchase. It will not fully utilise the multi-core processors and will use comparitively more power per megabyte of information processed than if it was running at 80-100% load. Placing applications like payroll and accounts which only get run monthly or annually and do not clash on the same server, reduces the idle time and increases efficiency.

By consolidating servers you will increase the amount of free rack space and reduce the load on the air conditioning. When these power cost savings are combined with the reduction in the purchasing costs of new equipment large savings can be made.

Migration Solutions specialise in providing vendor independent advise of the design and operation of data centres enabling the optimum return of investment. For further information visit www.migrationsolutions.com.

Database State

2009-03-23T07:27:00.000Z

Ten of the 46 major databases that our government keeps on its citizens are illegal according to recent research released by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust – furthermore the majority of the remainder could be illegal depending on how they’re used.

No surprises really. In recent years these central databases have mushroomed as part of the ‘Transformational Government’ programme to make public services better, cheaper, and more joined-up. No comment on whether these objectives have been achieved (!) but one consequences of giving increasing numbers of civil servants daily access to our personal information is that over two-thirds of the population no longer trusts the government with their personal data.

Of course the breakdown of public trust in databases is not just a public sector phenomenon. As the media backlash against Google Maps’ latest innovation of 3D views of our streets and homes shows, private databases can come under fire from a privacy-demanding public as well.

The data centre industry needs to be prepared for these developments as we are very much part of the ‘freedom vs. privacy’ debate. If certain data is illegal (or even undesirable) what does this make the data centre that’s holding it? Are we aiding and abetting the use of illegal databases? To whom does a co-lo or data hotel owe its allegiance – their client or the person whose records they are keeping?

These may be lofty themes but, as the debate continues, I guarantee that more and more data centre owners will face the dilemma of legal demands to handover the data that they store on behalf of their clients. When this starts to happen we must make sure that the data centre industry’s house is in order – we must ensure that our data storage policies, procedures and security are clear and transparent so we remain part of the information age’s solution, not a contributor to its problems.

The Database State’s ‘Top 20’ – How many are you on?

National DNA Database
National Identity Register
ContactPoint - information on every child
NHS Detailed Care Record - GP and hospital records
Secondary Uses Service - summaries of hospital treatment
Common Assessment Framework - child welfare assessments
ONSET - a Home Office system that predicts which children will offend in the future!
The Department for Work & Pension’s data sharing programme,
National Fraud Initiative
The Communications Database - of itemised phone bills, email headers and mobile phone location history
Prüm Framework – EU-wide data-sharing for law enforcement
NHS Summary Care Record
National Childhood Obesity Database
National Pupil Database
Automatic Number Plate Recognition
The Schengen Information System, a European police database
Customer Information System - of the Department for Work and Pensions
National Fingerprint Database
TV Licensing

What your scores mean:

1-10 databases: Just because they keep information on you, it doesn’t mean you’re interesting.

11-15 databases: Don’t worry Mr Smith, Mr Smit or Mr Smiht. The average data entry clark is unlikely to have spelt your surname the same way twice.

More than 15 databases: Send us a postcard from Belmarsh!

How well labelled is your computer room?

2009-03-20T14:24:00.000Z

If a third party came to visit, could you identify a server by looking at it in the rack? Would you know where its network cabling terminated? Many computer room and data centres that Migration Solutions have visited have had a distinct lack of labelling, which makes auditing a long and painful process. Do you have a Change Management Database (CMDB)? If you do, is it up to date? How many times has someone gone into the computer room to make a quick patch and then left it there without recording it. Multiply this by a 10 year life span and it is more than likely that there are large amounts of unrecorded patching.

The maintenance of a CMDB is a very important part of computer room management. Using the best practice guidelines set out in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) a Data Centre Manager (DCM) should have a strict process by which new equipment is labelled, installed and patched but most importantly, recorded in a CMDB.

Asset management should be part of the processes and procedures implemented by the DCM. All equipment within a computer room from racks to routers should be labelled and recorded. Any person should be able to walk into your computer room, find a piece of equipment and either identify what its function is from its labelling, or be able to look up its asset number on a CMDB, and find out what it’s connected to, what service(s) it affects, when it was installed and information about power consumption and heat output, along with details of any support arrangements whether internal or external.

This is, of course, on the face of it, a large overhead. But IT is critical to the running of any modern business. Change Management, along with other ITIL best practice of Service Desk and Incident Management are essential in running an efficient computer room. ITIL is a guide. It does not force any of its practices to make a ‘once size fits all’ solution, but understands that parts can be used and adapted to fit the organisation.

If best practice is followed, with clearly documented process, when it comes to consolidate or migrate your assets, all the required information should be to hand, and the change management process in place to handle it.

Migration Solutions are data centre specialists who focus on the operation, migration and design of new and existing data centres and are vendor independent. Migrations Solutions provides computer room and data centre operational staff on long and short-term contracts, and believe strongly that the only way to build a data centre effectively is to also operate them. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com.

Be prepared for a hot summer

2009-03-17T17:17:00.000Z

The first warm days of 2009 have arrived this week, and hopefully we are in for a good summer this year. But is it good news for your computer room?

The last two summers, have been, to say the least, pretty dismal, giving your computer rooms a reprieve. Don’t be complacent this year, if we have a hot summer you’ll need to be prepared. The last very hot, and long summer was 2003. All that new kit that you have been installing since then will only make cooling your environment more difficult, especially if the amount of cooling available is barely sufficient.

So how can you prepare?

Take a good hard look at your IT environment. Do you have any windows? Windows in a computer room are the biggest problem. Do what you can to block the windows, whether it be with boarding or blackout blinds, it will help. Ideally your computer room should be well inside the centre of a building.

Check your installed devices. If they are in racks with a best practice hot aisle/cold aisle arrangement make sure that the equipment is installed correctly. You’d be amazed how often we find servers installed back to front with the hot air being blown into the cold aisle. If you have Cisco kit, it may have side to side cooling. Have you installed baffles to redirect the airflow?

Check your cabling. Is it blocking air flow? Do you have sufficient floor grills? You may have sufficient cooling on paper, but if the airflow is blocked, or the air can’t reach the front of the servers it will cause problems.

Do you have glass fronted cabinets? These are also bad news for air flow.

Finally, if the worst comes to the worst, do you know which non-critical devices can be shut down? Do you have development and testing servers that can be shut down, and do you have a plan in place to do this? Are you able to resources portable air conditioning units at short notice?

These are just a few of the things that can be done, which will not only help you to get though the summer, but will also save you money all year round. 2009 could be a very bad year for computer rooms. Getting your computer room in shape now is essential.

Migration Solutions are data centre specialists. They recently won the Information Age Data Centre Innovation Award for ERA, an environmental report and assessment. ERA investigates all the elements that affect a data centre's operation and gives advice on how to be more environmentally friendly, more efficient and save on energy consumption. As a pre-summer health-check, Migration Solutions can advise on how to prepare for an anticipated hot summer. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com

The Web at 20

2009-03-16T11:17:00.000Z

In a triumph of science over superstition, Friday (the 13th’s) birthday celebration of the web has passed without a hitch, global meltdown or terror attack on this haphazard data infrastructure which increasingly appears to be the ‘only thing’ that’s keeping our world together. Twenty years ago last week, in his unassumingly titled document Information Management: A Proposal, then CERN staffer Tim Berners-Lee put forward a revolutionary proposal for a new system for sharing information and, in doing so, changed the world forever.

From its humble beginnings as a CERN internal proposal for a more effective document management system, the web has grown exponentially into a global phenomenon – since 2000 the percentage of the world’s population which is connected to the Internet has risen from 5% to 25%, and there’s not an analysts who’ll seriously argue against the Internet being all but globally ubiquitous by 2020.

So thanks Tim! Google, Cisco, Amazon and indeed Migration Solutions: none of these businesses would have been possible without you! As for what will happen in the next 20 years? Migration Solutions is going to be pretty busy designing better data centres for the ‘last 75%’ of the planet that are still to get online.

Migration Solutions are data centre specialists who focus on the operation, migration and design of new and existing data centres. They are vendor independent which allows the best products to be selected for their clients. To find out about what Migration Solutions can do for you visit the website www.migrationsolutions.com

PUE, DCiE, what’s it all about?

2009-02-23T10:00:00.000Z

PUE is a metric developed by The Green Grid to measure Power Usage Effectiveness, which compares the total facility power usage against the IT power load. DCiE (Data Centre infrastructure Efficiency) is simply the inverse of PUE reported as a percentage. What do these figures actually tell us? They give a snap shot in time of a data centre or computer room's power use which can be used to suggest how efficiently your data centre's plant equipment is running. One of the main problems with PUE and DCiE is that the results tend to vary depending on the weather conditions at that particular moment in time. For example, if you took PUE measurements at 6am and again at 2pm, the difference in outside temperature and humidity would affect how hard your plant would have to work. A higher outside temperature requires air conditioning chillers to work harder to cool the same load, which has a significant impact on power usage. To make effective use of PUE and DCiE, reading need to be taken regularly to get an averaged result.

OK, so now we are in recession. There are, and will be more, calls for spending cuts and more efficiency from existing hardware and our staff. PUE and DCiE can play an important part in this. But where to start? As we are talking data centres, look at the power consumption. Or more accurately, look to see if you can look at the power consumption. It is amazing how many data centres and computer rooms, even the new builds don’t have metering installed to monitor power consumption. Data centres are estimated to contribute 3% of the CO2 emissions globally, yet the vast majority of data centre managers have no idea how much energy their facility consumes – let alone where to start making savings.

How do you get on with your company’s Facilities Manager? Putting that aside, it’s imperative that there is a good working relationship between these vastly important departments (IT and Facilities) as these two hold the key to reducing energy consumption, and therefore costs, more than any other department. Look at it from the Facility’s Managers point of view. He has little if any impact on what is installed in the data centre. All he or she will see is the monthly or quarterly electricity bills coming in with little idea of where to reduce costs, or indeed, where the costs are coming from. Keeping him/her in the picture is incredibly important. Working together to install electricity meters to enable the PUE and DCiE to be calculated and logged on a regular basis is a start. It is also imperative to log your consumption regularly by taking meter readings and trending the power usage, what impacts it and what changes it.

How much will you save by installing this meters? Without proper metering, who knows?

Migration Solutions is a member of The Green Grid which is focused on advancing efficiency in data centres. They have also recently received Information Age's award for Best Data Centre Innovation 2008 for ERA - an Environmental Report and Audit which aims to help data centre owners to save money and the environment with no or little financial outlay.

All that glisters is not Green...

2009-02-18T07:47:00.000Z

Back at Migration Solutions we're getting ready for the Data Centre World Conference & Expo next week in London (at the Barbican, 24-25 Feb) and, in addition to the usual preparations - which include making sure we have enough business cards, packing the company brochures and shining our shoes - Migration Solutions' MD Alex Rabbetts has been rehearsing for his speaker slot at the conference on a subject he's particularly passionate about. Entitled, 'All that Glisters is not Green: Real World Solutions to Increasing Efficiency, Cutting Costs and Reducing Environmental Impact' (3.15pm on 24 Feb), he sees this as his opportunity to highlight how IT industry greenwash is seriously in danger of spinning itself out of control.

As Alex has been saying for sometime, and now the mainstream media are beginning to pick up on (see Charles Arthur's excellent article in The Guardian: Greenwash? and let's start with that screen) Datacentres are not green and are not likely to be green for the foreseeable future. With some effort however they can be made greener (and btw, better, more efficient and cheaper!). Alex’s point is that Greenwash goes from being mildly amusing to dangerous when the hype starts to numb us to more modest (but real) benefits that can be achieved from the serious and sensible work of making our IT infrastructure greener.

Come along to the Data Centre World conference if you want to hear a great presentation from someone who's 'browned off' with how 'Greenwash' is blinding the industry to the serious solutions that can take the data centre power bill out of the ‘red’ … and reduce emissions too!

Money Vs Environment

2009-02-12T16:59:00.000Z

In these financially turbulent times, has everyone forgotten about the environment? Companies around the world have had their budgets slashed, all un-necessary projects stopped and anything to do with the environment put on hold until financial stability can be found again. Most people in the western hemisphere have been affected by the credit crunch in one way or another, some more than others, but it appears that the biggest loser has been the
environment. Six months ago everyone was cutting down paper use, recycling every scrap and utilising more efficient products but now people are more worried about saving money, sweating assets and managing to getting by. Can the two not go hand in hand?

100% efficiency is the final goal of any technology be it the combustion engine, kettles or computer chips. The growing trend in the car manufacturing market is for small, efficient cars that are cheap to tax, insure and run. They give consumers better value for money, albeit at a sacrifice of space, but even big cars like the hybrid Lexus GS 450h and the RX 400h 4x4 are embracing advances in electric engine and battery technologies to save their owners money. Sticking with the car theme, city car sales are up 17% while luxury and 4x4 sales are down over 40% each. What is the result of this boom in efficient, money saving designs? The environment is better off. Things that are good for the environment are good for our wallets!

Anyone who runs a data centre will know how expensive they are to power and cool and that any new technologies that save on these costs are embraced as soon as budgets will allow. Look at blade servers when combined with virtualisation software. A fully populated 10 bay blade chassis takes up 7U of rack space and will draw around 4kW of power. This is equivalent to 10, 2U servers, but they will draw around 5kW and take up 20U of rack space. When combined with virtualisation, you can combine many servers, over 100 instances on one physical server is possible ... seriously improving data centre efficiency.

Environmentally friendly plant is also a great way to save money. Free cooling chillers can significantly reduce the amount of money spent on cooling by using the ambient temperature to cool a data centre. In the UK, anywhere from 8 to 12 months of free cooling can be utilised every year, with up to 80% savings in power costs per month when it can operate without running the condensers. Fresh air cooling is even more efficient - you don't have any chillers, but replace them with large intake fans to cool the data centre from just the ambient temperature.

So the answer to the original question; Can money saving and environmental awareness go hand in hand? Yes! And there are huge savings to be made with very short returns on investment. Should everyone change all their IT and plant equipment straight away? No, because the imbedded carbon from physically creating the new equipment does not make replacing new or partly worn kit environmentally friendly, but as soon as it reaches its end of life invest in equipment to save the planet and save your wallet!

Migration Solutions is a specialist data centre consultancy and a member of the Green Grid. Winners of Information Age's award for Best Data Centre Innovation 2008 for ERA - an Environmental Report and Audit which aims to help data centre owwners to save money and the environment with no or little financial outlay.

Safety First

2009-02-11T18:28:00.000Z

How safe is your data centre? A full populated 42U cabinet is 2.2 metres tall and IT servers can be 30kg. Would you lift the equivalent of half a teenager above your head without putting some kind of measures in place to protect yourself? Would you ask anyone else to do it for that matter? Health and Safety in the UK has become an area that businesses have to look at more and more carefully to protect their staff, their equipment, and themselves.

Data centres are dangerous places with high density power. Raised floors left open, leaving half a metre deep hole in the floor, are equally dangerous. In fact, there is virtually a trip hazard at every corner.

Do your staff know what to do in case of electric shock? Do your staff know how to lift a floor tile correctly? Is protective footwear used? How many times are removed floor tiles left at the side of of a gaping hole in the floor? Not only causing a trip a hazard, but a trip into the newly created floor void.

In 2007 35.3 in every 100,000 workers in the UK had a slip or trip injury at work. In an ideal world you would always have two people doing every physical job to minimise risk and strain but is this a practical measure?

What about lone working? Do you have man down alarms for lone workers? Do you allow lone working out of business hours?

Data centres are dangerous environments and they are relatively new to the employment world. HSE does cover working in them, but at the moment it seems that not enough data centre managers know their responsibilities as well as they should.

Migration Solutions are experienced data centre operators with a number staff working in a range of facilities in the UK. Migration Solutions also offers vendor independent consultancy and data centre migration.

Happy Birthday!

2009-02-09T17:25:00.000Z

Facebook is 5 years old! For some, social networking sites are a great way to keep in touch with friends, catch up with family or set up petitions to bring back extinct chocolate bars. For others, namely employers, social networking sites are the bane of their lives as their employees appear more committed to checking their Facebook status then doing their paid work, which has lead to many companies blocking these networking sites. On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz have made a small fortune (Zuckerberg has been valued as having a net worth of $1.5 billion) with investors running from Asian billionaires to Microsoft.

One of the first major social networking sites that made it big was Myspace which is still the worlds largest site of its kind with over 250 million accounts in existence. At the peak of its popularity Myspace was attracting 230,000 new users a day and has been credited with helping many music bands get record deals through free advertising on its site. At present, MySpace’s' growth is in decline where as Facebooks continues to grow. In the past year, Alexa have compared the two, with Facebook's reach rising 12% while Myspace has dropped by 2% although both are still rising in overall popularity.

The amount of personal information held by all of the social networking sites poses significant security risks especially identity theft. In the UK alone, people have been expelled from Colleges and Universities and fired from their jobs because of evidence acquired on Facebook and Myspace about their poor conduct. The younger generations do not fully understand the implications of allowing so many people to view their personal data; date of births, place of
residence etc... which can make identity theft significantly easier for criminals. This coupled with the increase of teenager hackers who are frequenting online fraud forums where they can easily swap stolen credit card details and find 'cracks' in public programs, means that the social networking sites have a huge responsibility to maintain vast firewalls and servers in highly secure data centres to protect their users.

One of the questions that should be asked every time you enter personal details online is "Where is my data being held?". In the UK we have very good data protection laws that aim to keep all information about us safe, but in America there is different legislation in place for each aspect of information held. There are many worries from the European Union about the adequacy of self-regulation that many private sector companies use in the US. There are many small laws that are in use, but there appears to be no plans for an all encompassing law to protect data as a whole. This means that while you think your information is being protected by European law, it may be being accessed totally legally in another country. The simple answer is never fill in your information details if you don't have to. The one thing that you truly own is your personal data, protect it and make sure you know who has access to it.

Migration Solutions are experienced data centre designers, builders and operators who are proud to be impartial and vendor neutral. To find out more about the services we offer visit www.migrationsolutions.com.

We won!

2009-02-06T08:36:00.000Z

Yesterday, Information Age, the magazine that has been the backbone of the IT industry for many, many years, announced the winners of the Information Age Awards. The awards were made for innovation in a number of categories; Data Centre, Security, Information Management, Eco-Responsibility and Business Applications. Over 500 voters, readers of the magazine and web site, voted for the finalists. Migration Solutions submitted an entry for its ERA product. It is a great honour to win the award, against stiff competition from Telecity Group for their new data centre design. You can see our entry here.

ERA (Environmental Report & Audit) is a product that Migration Solutions offers to customers to help them reduce the environmental impact of their data centre or computer room, whilst also reducing the power costs. The audit, or assessment, takes just a couple of hours on site and assesses over 150 different data points. The subsequent report provides informative advice on how the environmental impact can be reduced and operating costs can be cut. The conclusion of the report includes a series of recommendations, some of which will cost nothing to implement, some that may take some time or a small amount of investment and some that need planning and investment to achieve.

Since launching ERA take-up has been strong with many companies looking to reduce their environmental impact and also take advantage of the massive cost savings that can come with it. It is an indication of the success of ERA that every data centre or computer room that has engaged Migration Solutions to carry out the assessment has saved the cost of the service ... many within weeks!

So, forgive our pride, but it is great to be recognised by our peers and to win such a prestigious award!

Migration Solutions is a vendor indepedent consultancy, specialising in the design, migration and operation of data centres and computer rooms. To find out more, please visit: http://www.migrationsolutions.com

Snowed In

2009-02-03T13:09:00.000Z

The conditions of the last two days have played havoc with the country's infrastructure with people stranded at home, on the road and at work. For many it was a welcome day off, but for those that have needed to travel it was a nightmare. Nearly all the public transport links in the South East were shut down and the roads were plagued by accidents and road closures which resulted in 20 minute journeys taking 4 hours. An estimated £1.2 billion was lost to the country's economy as at least 6.4 million workers stayed at home unable, or unwilling to brave the treacherous weather. For those who tried to get to work, checking the weather, traffic conditions and public transport networks was vitally important, but with much of the country having similar ideas, popular websites could not cope with the increased traffic levels. The Transport For London (TFL) website was down for a prolonged period as hundreds of thousands of people check to see if they could get to work and National Rail Enquiries recorded 800% more website hits than usual for a Monday morning.

Many people also experienced problems making phone calls, as the major phone companies buckled under the shear volume of calls. Many people were receiving engaged tones or network busy messages as people called friends and relatives and sent picture messages of the snow across the country. The BBC reported numbers upwards of 36,000 pictures and videos being sent in of local weather conditions and humorous activities in the snow.

The net result of this increased traffic will certainly mean upgrades to the infrastructure of all those affected by the technology 'black-outs'. Consumers reliance on up to date information, and annoyance when this cannot be obtained, will lead to an increase in the amount of power dedicated to the websites and phone lines of the major companies that have been affected by the adverse weather conditions. Much of this power will come as emergency servers are switched on to cope with the increased demand. With the UK already suffering from a severe power shortage, the knock-on effect will be more brown-outs, full blown power cuts and spikes to be coped with in our ever important data centres. Data Centre Managers, be warned, knowing whether your backup power supplies work now would be a very good thing. Many data centres have backup power supplies, but they are never tested or only partially tested. It is at times like these that some Data Centre Managers will wish they had done a full integrated system test earlier and under more controlled conditions.

Migration Solutions are data centre specialists, providing truly independent and impartial advice to customers from all sectors of industry. Visit www.migrationsolutions.com for more about the company and services that we offer.

Disaster? What disaster?

2009-02-02T16:14:00.000Z

There is much debate and some considerable hype regarding Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning. A disaster that requires one to invoke a Disaster Recovery plan (DR) is all too often thought of as that 'smokin' hole in the ground'. Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is equally considered as that plan that we will implement following our disaster. Whilst it is true that a 'smokin' hole in the ground' would certainly constitute a disaster, it is not this that would normally cause the invocation.

Take today, for example. Much of Southern England has been crippled by snow that has been swept in from Siberia. Virtually all train services have been affected - many have been stopped altogether. Bus services in London have been withdrawn on safety grounds. Many, many roads are impassable, with cars and lorries abandoned all over the place. (True, we're not very good at dealing with a bit of snow, but that's another matter!)

It is the snow that will cause some companies (those with a reliable plan in place) to invoke DR. Many staff have been unable to reach their offices and this could have disastrous impacts for some organisations. Imagine, if you will, this scenario. Company 'X' take backups of their systems every night. They are required to keep these backups for regulatory reasons (maybe they are regulated by the FSA, or are required to keep them for health and safety reasons). Today, however, the staff are unable to get to the office in order to change those backup tapes. That means that tonight the current backups will get overwritten, or if its a system that knows it is last night's backup, it may fail because there are no new tapes. This could easily be a disaster.

More often than not, the reason for invoking DR is not a physical disaster, but is a more subtle problem that means the business cannot run as usual. The inability of staff to access the office is a good example of how DR may become necessary - even though nothing physical has happened directly. Having a good DR Plan in place is essential in today's world and it is only the fool hardy that don't have one.

So, what about BCP? How does that come into play? Contrary to the belief of many, it is not necessarily the plan that is only implemented after a disaster. It may be that in a situation like today, where weather has impacted the ability of the business to trade as usual, BCP comes into the fore. It may not be necessary to invoke full DR, but BCP may provide the solution. BCP is, as is suggested by the name, all about continuity. If the staff can't access the office, what plans are in place? Can they work from home? Will they have access to email, the company intranet or those essential files that are stored on the network drive? Who will co-ordinate the staff? Who will call them and tell them what they need to do? If there are only limited resources available, who are the most important people to have access, and who can the business do without for a limited time? A good BCP plan will have all the answers ... and a really good BCP plan will be up-to-date!

DR and BCP are no longer options for a business, they are essential. So many companies suffer unnecessary problems, many financial, simply because they hadn't planned for events that, whilst weren't directly attributable to the business, impacted it's ability to trade as normal. Having a reliable DR Plan in place, ensuring that it is regularly tested and that the business can get back from a DR position is essential. The DR Plan, however, should never be thought of alone - it is imperative that it is accompanied by a robust, up-to-date, BCP. With both in place, the chances of an external event impacting the business are significantly reduced and, even if they do, the business will be ready to deal with the situation.

Migration Solutions is the only truly independent consultancy specialising in the data centre industry that can offer informed, unbiased, advice on matters data centre or computer room related. If you would like to know more about the services offered by Migration Solutions, including the development of robust DR and BCP planning, visit www.migrationsolutions.com.

Mixed reaction to digital plans

2009-01-30T16:00:00.000Z

Digital Britain, the publication by Lord Carter has been met with huge criticism from politicians and analysts alike. The report, an 86-page document on the future of UK broadband, internet regulation and public service broadcasting, has been described as "weak" and "bitterly disappointing". The public appears to have been looking forward to a document with a clear action plan for Britain’s' digital future, to provide the entire country with high speed internet and a gateway to improving our economy. The report "Digital Britain" highlights many areas in which the UK needs to improve its digital infrastructure to meet the technology demands of the next decade.

The introduction of digital television was one of the first steps taken into upgrading the nation’s infrastructure, but the increasing demand for Internet consumption has led to comparisons being made with other European countries and nations around the world. In Japan, for example, many new homes utilise fire optic technologies for running telephone, Internet and television connections which results in a better, faster service.

What does this mean for data centres? The future can only be positive for the industry as the world increases its reliance on the internet. Bigger connections will lead to increased use, and larger file sizes and as a result higher demand on public and private networks. Net books like the Eee PC and Mini Note have been designed specifically for Internet only use, and appear to be the future of computing if Google and Yahoo are to be believed. These companies along with the likes of Amazon are pushing the future of cloud computing which will require new data centres to be built, new servers being utilised and old data centres requiring a refit to become capable of handling these new technologies.

The new Digital Britain looks likely to feed a further increase in demand for data centres, both private (where storage requirements will continue to increase) and public (where increased reliance on the internet and the services provided will result in even heavier requirements than today).

Migration Solutions are data centre specialists, providing truly independent and impartial advice to customers from all sectors of industry. Visit www.migrationsolutions.com for more about the company and services that we offer.