The continuing advancements of today’s collaboration technology make it possible to transform virtually any place in the world into an ‘office.’ These days, my ‘office’ is much more mobile, since I’m usually working on wireless from my laptop, tablet or phone rather than a traditional desktop computer. I’ve nearly forgotten what it’s like to feel tethered to a desk.
Monthly Archives: October 2014
Tech 10: Virtualization Products That Are Making Data Centers More Efficient
Virtualization has had a beneficial impact on data centers for years, changing the way organizations run and manage their servers, desktops and infrastructure management. It’s probably the single most important technology that makes cloud computing possible; without it, the data center wouldn’t be nearly as dynamic and flexible as it is today.
Combining Cloud With Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Emergencies happen, environments go down, but the business process must go on! Right? Over the past few years, smaller and even mid-size organizations found it challenging to enter the DR and even business continuity conversation.
First things first: it’s important to understand that disaster recovery and business continuity are two different business objectives. However, they can certainly overlap. Even today there is still some confusion about what the cloud can really deliver.
Press Release: Crestron Demonstrates Lighting Control Solutions that Meet the Changing Building and Energy Code Requirements
New commercial lighting solutions and space-based design provide tools to easily build energy efficient buildings.
“We’re changing the lighting control design concept. For far too long the strategy has been to design a system for the entire building and then look at the needs of the individual rooms within the building; our new philosophy is to design a solution for each space first, then connect every space in the building together through a centralized, integrated lighting control solution,” said Brian Daley, Crestron VP of Sales, Commercial Lighting. Crestron is the only controls manufacturer that has the unique capability to do this. And every product we produce works together seamlessly.”
Understanding the Cost of Delivering a Service
Throughout the history of the data center, understanding the true costs behind the technology has been an uphill struggle. Recently, eBay and Facebook announced that they are taking steps to understand data center cost and efficiency. And while this proves that the struggle is gaining momentum, it doesn’t mean much to the average data center owner who can’t command the budget to take similar steps.
Building Blocks: Predictable and Simple Storage for Virtual Environments
Today, virtualization is commonplace in the enterprise data center and its benefits are indisputable. However, several challenges must be addressed to ensure the success of any virtualization initiative.
To accommodate rapid growth and fluctuations in demand, the infrastructure needs to easily support the scaling of individual VMs, as well as the addition of new virtualized workloads. Although network scaling is becoming simplified with software-defined network architectures, scalability continues to be one of the top challenges when increasing the level of virtualization in the modern data center.
Tintri: Reinventing Storage for the Virtual Enterprise
Kieran Harty, CTO and Co-Founder of Tintri, explains the company’s approach to data management for the software-defined data center.
No Stone Unturned in Reducing Data Center Power Consumption
There are many ways to reduce data center power consumption, and Billie Haggard’s team at CoreSite Realty Corp. leaves nothing off the table when it comes to optimizing their 16 U.S. facilities for energy efficiency.
Forget the big chill, it’s all about the big sell
When it comes to cooling technology, the biggest selling point today is the environmental factor, especially energy efficiency. But just a decade ago, energy efficiency wasn’t even a consideration in the buying equation. Back then, capital cost was the most important selling point. It was all about price.
There Are Now 3 Million Data Centers in the U.S., and Climbing
Data centers, the key backbone of the cloud, are growing larger and more energy intensive, prompting the Department of Energy (DOE) to launch a new initiative on Tuesday aimed at improving their energy efficiency.
According to DOE statistics, data center electricity use doubled between 2001 to 2006, from 30 to 60 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, and stood at about 100 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity as of 2013. This amounts to about 2% of all U.S. electricity use and climbing.
PTS Data Center Solutions, Inc. 