"Every single user who is on Facebook should have some relationship with some developer that creates distribution," said Lee.

In other words, developers should be focused on creating apps that help people know themselves better, which might have a profound effect on how apps are traditionally developed. In a way, apps are the new brands and developers are the new brand managers.

Lee explained how apps should be talking about "the intention of what the user wants to share." This is completely about the media, like music shared in Spotify, where people find meaning in their lives.

"You are an extension of something they want to already share, but they just want to do it in a more structured and interesting way," said Lee.

Li said that he didn't think it was an "ilegitimate goal" to make sure that all 800 million people on the social network will have a fundamentally human and "healthy" relationship with the work being done by developers.

And while C7 hasn't disclosed the name of this tenant, local media are speculating that it's Twitter, following the Salt Lake Tribune's report in July that the company had partnered with Twitter to build its new data center.

C7's new facility in Utah includes 36-inch raised floors, 10Mw of power capacity, and Internet service from three bandwidth providers. According to the C7 press release unveiling the new data center, Utah is a desirable site for these sorts of facilities because of the state's "disaster free record, low operational costs, and because of the area's strategic placement in the United States. Locating in Utah also brings the benefits of a well-educated workforce and appealing lifestyle."

Noticeably absent from that list is a statement about green energy, something that has had the environmental group Greenpeace jeering Facebook in recent months for the new data center it is building in Prineville, Oregon.

Tracking Twitter's Locations

Just for fun, we used the point-and-click database creation tool Needlebase to pull down the last 1,125 Tweets posted by Twitter staff members and parse them for locations. Twitter staff has Tweeted from 60 different locations in their last 1,000 Tweets but only one was exposed as being posted from anywhere in Utah. That was from Site Operations Technician at Twitter Mathew Rose, who Tweeted on Friday that he was leaving San Francisco and Tweeted today from Salt Lake City complaining about Qwest router problems. His message, however, was posted from a neighborhood across the highway from C7's new location.

According to Twitter spokesperson Matt Graves, "Twitter hasn't commented on the specific location of (or any other information about) our data center, including which provider we are working with." But even if the new C7 facility isn't the site of Twitter's new home, it still looks like there's lots of room for rent in a brand new data center in Utah.

Photo credits: Web Host Industry Review

From the beginning, Twitter has struggled against issues of scalability and reliability. Users of the fast-growing microblogging service have been constantly plagued by slow-downs and downtime, the latest only two days ago. A data center is a big step to putting that aspect of their history behind them.

Twitter engineer Jean-Paul Cozzatti surveyed the problems the company has had with reliability.

"We frequently compare the tasks of scaling, maintaining, and tweaking Twitter to building a rocket in mid-flight."

The new data center , he said, will give Twitter a number of advantages.

• More capacity to deal with growth
• Full control over network and systems configuration
• Flexibility to make infrastructure changes
• High redundancy

SLC photo by Dave Winer

In security, it's pragmatism that counts. You don't want to overreact in devoting company time, effort and finances on any security measures "just because", but you definitely want to allocate these resources towards what is best for you. One way to do that is by understanding the varying rings of security that begin at your servers and expand outward to the walls of the data center itself.

Each layer, or floor, of the security house has different considerations and best practices that should be accounted for. Regarding the data center layer, which is the subject matter of this post, two data center managers at Rackspace, Wayne Bell and Cormack Lawler, provided some helpful input.

A safe data center environment is established by concentric rings of security.

The outermost ring of data center security is comprised of the exterior of the actual center. The shell of the building is the most basic line of defense housing a data center in an unmarked building. Having cameras at entry and exit points and having no exterior windows onto the center's floor are all ways exterior security can be tightened. In regards to data center physical security, Lawler says "you can either be the most threatening guy on the block" or be hidden entirely. Both options can work.

The second component of exterior armament is access. Who gets into the data center? This can be regulated through some basic means: ID checks at the door, no cameras or phones allowed within the building, no one allowed on the actual data center floor. Access can be even further restricted to sensitive areas within the facility by limiting which employees actually have to be there. For example, if those employees in charge of product supplies don't need to be in the electrical room, then that access should not be allowed.

After the exterior of the compound, the power level comprises the next ring of security. Best practices for the data center industry are to have power enter facilities via underground channels. Additionally, power units should be encased in concrete conduits, and transformer units should be padlocked so only the electrical company has access. Once power enters the data center, electrical distribution rooms should become restricted access arenas.

The actual data center floor comprises the innermost circle of security. Bell points out that at the most simple level, "On the floor, security becomes a personnel issue." If someone can physically get their hands on your server, they can access the information stored within it. A lot of the risk inherent to a data center floor can be mitigated by highly limited access. Enabling employees to self regulate also can contribute to a safer environment.

As we move through the different floors of the security hierarchy, each layer will form a foundation for those that come after it. Moving through an online environment layer by layer may help to isolate risk throughout the data center.

Google puts a strong emphasis on making its data centers as energy efficient as possible. Google doesn't release any data about its energy consumption, but according to some estimates, Google's data center in The Dalles, OR could require as much as 103 megawatts of power to run once it is at full capacity - enough to power the city of Oakland, CA for four months. Getting FERC's approval means that Google now has the ability to negotiate directly with energy producers, which will likely help the company to reduce it's massive energy bills.

Earlier this month, Google granted $5.7 million to 12 university projects in the U.S. to fund research that will look into ways to reduce the energy consumption of large data centers.

Even though Google isn't likely to start selling energy to consumers anytime soon, the company does offer one energy-related product to consumers: PowerMeter. This is a gadget the company offers for consumers whose power companies have already installed smart-meter technology. Google is also using solar panels to power it's Mountain View, CA headquarters and has invested in a number of green energy projects and companies, including eSolar, a company that plans to develop numerous large solar energy projects around the world.

Both North Carolina and Virginia have or are hurrying to instate tax incentives for projects such as this one, which will cost around twice as much as what Google or Microsoft would typically invest in a data center.

Currently, the company has had to allocate massive resources to its iTunes and iPhone online stores. As downloaded music and apps head into the billions - 1 billion apps and about 6 billion songs have been downloaded so far - and as Apple is surely planning for its future online offerings, more servers and more space become a necessary acquisition.

Apple's last major data center purchase was a $45-50 million dollar investment in early 2006. That Newark, California facility, however, is dwarfed in size and budget by the suspected East Coast project.

The two neighboring states' vying for Apple's millions has caused some slight political upheaval, as well. Virginia's tax incentives were passed earlier this month, and Northern Virginia's technology corridor already contains a wealth of similar facilities. North Carolina critics, on the other hand, are saying that a corporation already worth so much money should need no subsidies to be convinced to invest in their area. The tax breaks in that state would amount to around $46 million over a decade; and although the capital investment would be substantial, only around 50 full-time jobs would be created.

Recently, HP and research firm IDC took a look at some of the biggest trends they're seeing in the datacenter. These five hot new trends are having a big impact on computing today and the future of the cloud. But which ones are most important?

1) Blades

Blades will account for 29% of server sales by 2012. This market is growing quickly as customers are realizing the benefits of a bladed infrastructure: that is, space, time, cost and energy savings. Both enterprise and midsize customers are being impacted by this trend. (Source: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Forecast, 2008Q1)

2) Going Green

Going green is less about being environmentally conscious and more about saving money. CIOs and IT managers are surprised to find that creating an energy-efficient, high-performance data center through power and cooling is much less expensive they they anticipated. The end result of going green is a reduction in overall costs (energy, space requirements, management, etc) which is savings businesses some serious dollars. 

3) Virtualization

By 2011 more than half of customers' workloads will be deployed in virtual machines. With every new advancement in this area, like integrated hypervisors for example, the need to intelligently control the data center is strengthened. Data center managers need to know how to build a unified infrastructure combining both the virtual and physical environments.  (Source: IDC Multiclient Study, Server Virtualization On the Move 2007)

4) Cloud Computing Means Scalability Is a Must

Data is growing at an exponential rate thanks to cloud computing. Large content-rich data, like streaming digital media (e.g. IPTV, video on demand, broadcast, etc.), static digital media (e.g. photo sharing, online music download, etc.), and web content hosting (e-mail, blogs, Web pages, etc.) are having the most impact. Cloud computing companies need solutions that can easily manage multi-petabyte scalability - without disruption.

5) Linux in the Enterprise

Worldwide Linux server shipments have increased by 35% since 2003. Currently, one out of every five servers runs on Linux and the adoption of Linux servers is expected to grow. The adoption rate will increase by almost 8% by 2012  (Source: IDC, Worldwide Quarterly Server Forecast, 2008 Q1)

If you want to learn more about these trends using a real world example, HP's Pentel Case Study makes for a good read. This company was able to reduce their datacenter footprint from 5 full racks to 1 by using a combination of blades, storage, and VMWare virtualization. They were also able to reduce their power and cooling needs. Those efforts led to a savings of over $200,000 in three years in reduced maintenance costs alone. Their I.T. department is more agile, Oracle performs up to 80% faster, and they can deploy a server in minutes. In other words, these trends are just about changing needs, they're also about saving money.

Out of all these trends, which ones are most important? We tend to think that scalability is going to be a big issue going forward, especially with the growth of web apps and their specific infrastructure needs. We've already seen what lack of scalability can do to a service - we almost lost Twitter, for example, as demand outpaced their ability to provide the service. Knowing the intelligent audience of readers we have here at RWW, we're interested in what trends you think are the most important. 

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/five_big_data_center_trends_for_2008.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/five_big_data_center_trends_for_2008.php Trends Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:31:40 -0800 Sarah Perez