By Steve Altizer, President - Compu Dynamics, LLC Hyperscale and multi-MW (Mega Watt) colocation deployments are driving the unprecedented development of dozens of large data centers. Much of this growth has been focused around major cities such as Ashburn, Dallas, Phoenix, and Chicago, where network providers are able to share traffic. Our experience with data center design and white space de...
This brief blog is being published to propose a data center repositioning concept for data center owner/operators with facilities designed in the early 2000’s. We would enjoy hearing back from professional data center managers who have an opinion on this concept; either negative or positive.
For the las...
Two decades ago, if someone used the phrase “data center” in a sentence, the mental image would bear little resemblance to the massive 100MW+ hyperscale cloud facilities popping up around the country. In those early days of ecommerce, a single IT cabinet with eight 4U servers consuming 2 kW of power was considered state-of-the-art. Most data centers were loc...
The development of “standards” is a common evolutionary story in every industry. Data centers are not unique in that respect. If you stand in the center of Waxpool Road and Loudoun County Parkway in Ashburn (which I would not recommend) you can look in multiple directions and see data centers that were designed and built to address similar customer needs.&nb...
First, let’s boil this down. Why do data centers exist? Why does technology exist?
It’s actually quite simple really…to meet a business need. When those needs change, a business has to be able to react quickly and implement new technology that best serves its customers’ demands. How does a person man...
By Steve Altizer, Compu Dynamics While the concept of pre-fabricated data centers is nothing new, we’ve recently noticed an elevated level of dialogue on the topic. The term “pre-fabricated” was first applied to data centers approximately 10-12 years ago. At that time, the industry standard was a reconstituted and retrofitted ISO container jam-packed with racks, servers, power, and cooling equ...
In most buildings constructed before the turn of the century, tenants are fighting a losing battle trying to adapt legacy analog telephone closets to serve today’s internet-enabled digital network equipment. In the old days (1990’s), phone closets needed little-to-no ventilation, only a few inches of depth, and perhaps one electrical outlet. Modern network centers (I call them network “center...
Due to recent mass migration to the cloud and an increase in colo facilities, on-premise data centers are far less common than they were just a few short years ago. Those that remain are typically vital to their organization’s mission. For these mission critical data centers, and other on-premise facilities that serve as network closets, it’s crucial that IT infrastructure remains reliably con...
History of Northern Virginia Data Centers During the late 1960s, the U.S. Government began experimenting with fiber optic networking. It was Northern Virginia’s low-latency connections to the national fiber network backbone that positioned the area as the top market for network peering serving some of the world’s largest telecommunications firms. Over the last fifteen years,...
As data centers are being built in record numbers to support and maintain the ever crucial ethereal 'cloud', an increasing emphasis is placed on their design to ensure they are operation...