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Linux has yet to displace Unix in the data center. Despite Unix server vendor consolidation, most data centers still run multiple flavors of physical Unix servers. That was the take-away from the 2010-11 Unix Vendor Preference Survey of 306 data center professionals conducted by Gabriel Consulting Group (GCG). GCG has been conducting its Unix surveys for five years, and focuses on physical systems, not virtual machines.

A special report from Spectrum, the journal of IEEE, is well worth a closer look to see where its writers see the Web evolving.

It contains, first and foremost, a series of articles on how the Internet and other technologies have changed how we work and relate to each other. There are a number of articles that compare Google and Facebook in different dimensions: how their data centers differ from ordinary data centers, what it is like to work at their Valley HQ campuses (although Facebook will be moving to a new facility later this year).

Google is famously secretive about its data centers, so a new video on its enterprise blog that gives a glimpse into the inner workings of its facilities is a rare treat. The video emphasizes security and environmental best practices. You can watch it after the jump.

JouleX is a company founded by four former executives of Internet Security Systems, according to GreenMonk's Tom Raftery. But instead of hunting for security vulnerabilities, Joulex hunts for energy inefficiencies. It can monitor anything with an IP address - PCs, servers, even IP-enabled HVAC units, etc. - all without clients or hardware. It's priced according to the number of devices managed.

This week the company released a new version of the application and added a new mobile one that can adjust power consumption - dim lights, turn off devices etc. - based on a users location. JouleX also expanded its out-of-the-box IT infrastructure support, added support for Linux and Macintosh operating systems and added new reporting capabilities, such as the ability to automatically identify the biggest power hogs in an enterprise.

The prophesied great migration to the cloud is often seen as a career killer for data center workers as storage and infrastructure requirements are consolidated into the hands of a few IaaS providers. In the past we've looked at the impact of cloud migrations on IT jobs in general, though not data center related positions in particular. However, Gartner analyst David J. Cappuccio thinks there could be a looming data center staffing crisis.