DCD>Magazine Issue 5 - SDN Breaks Free

June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com

DATACENTERDYNAMICS.COM

The Business of Data Centers

SDN

DATACENTERDYNAMICS • VOLUME 04 ISSUE 05 • JUNE 2015

BREAKS

FREE 9 772058 494001 >

Contents June 2015

VOL 04 ISSUE 05

Our tracks guide your path through DCD magazines and events IT + Networks

App > Cloud

Design + Strategy

Security

Understand the implications of IT and network transformation on data center design and architecture.

S K A BRE SDN

FREE

Managing blended infrastructures and delivering critical ICT applications through the cloud.

The big picture: organisational strategy and design issues for onpremise data centers.

Ensuring reliability and protecting online data and services from the data center.

Cover Story Software Defined Networking

Critical Environment Issues faced by professionals who manage the performance, efficiency and resilience of the critical environment.

Martin Courtney examines the path of SDN through the global data center market

30

21

5

14

28

... and how to contact them

Fujitsu Perth gets an upgrade; Vox Box with Liquid Technology

Can you power your data center purely with solar power yet?

Meet the team...

News

6

Editorial

15

34

EMC buys Virtustream for $1.2bn

Peter Judge looks at how much grip SDN has on the road so far

News

Global Editor Peter Judge looks at the tech revolution that is SDN

16

7 Editor’s infographic

Brazil

In the editor’s figures – Global data center space requirements

Campinas, a city in São Paulo, is now Brazil’s tech powerhouse

9

37

18

From Greenpeace to allegations that Facebook kills polar bears

Time to try for the only data center gongs worth winning

Malaysia is set to make good on its claims for data center fiefdom

News

It’s awards time again

Malaysia gets serious

11

23

Alibaba launches cloud in Dubai; OpenStack gets interop tests

Amazon is bidding for grid freedom with just batteries

News

Battery power

13

26

Tegile gets $70m in VC backing to fund global expansion

Max Smolaks reports from a trip to China with the network giant

News

Solar solutions

Huawei

Traction control

41

Opinion

Are utilities really the bad guys in the green tariff debate?

42

Security summer

As RSA melts into Infosec Bill Boyle picks the winning hacks

44

Dates for your diary

All the key dates for your summer data center social calendar

46

Whateverrr...

Bill Boyle’s telescope

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 3

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Meet the team Subscriptions: www.datacenterdynamics.com/ magazine To email one of our team: firstname.surname @datacenterdynamics.com ADVERTISING APAC Jimmy Yu EMEA Yash Puwar Vanessa Smith LATAM Daniel Clavero Santiago Franco USA Kurtis Friesen Jai Wallace DESIGN Head of Design Ross Ellis Designer Jess Parker PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jon McGowan MANAGING DIRECTOR DCD Media Imran Sroya

Bill Boyle Global Managing Editor @BillBoyleDCD

Peter Judge Global Editor @PeterJudgeDCD

Max Smolaks Reporter @MaxSmolaksDCD

Power Man. (Design & Strategy). Covers power, finance, mergers, corporate & telco data centers.

Green Guru. (Critical Environment). Also, open source, networks, telecoms, international news.

Captain Storage. (IT & Networks). Also, international incidents, data sovereignty.

David Chernicoff US Correspondent @DavidChernicoff

Virginia Toledo Editor LATAM @DCDNoticias

Celia Villarrubia Assistant Editor LATAM @DCDNoticias

Former CIO, test lab leader and developer.

Our man in Philadelphia gets his hands dirty.

Editor LATAM edition DatacenterDynamics.

Breaking the moulds and based in Madrid, Spain.

Assistant editor LATAM DatacenterDynamics.

News and pithy opinions in international edition.

Michael Kassner US Contributor @MichaelKassner

Paul Mah SEA Correspondent @paulmah

Laura Luo APAC Reporter @Luo644762742

Our man in Minnesota.

Fifteen years’ enterprise and IT writing on technology, science and business.

IT Writer also teaching tech in Singapore. Deep interest in how technology can make a difference.

Out and about reporting the news in APAC. Based in Shanghai, also drives our Chinese web site.

CIRCULATION Manager Laura Akinsanmi Executive Martina Matyus Find us online datacenterdynamics.com datacenterdynamics.es datacenterdynamics.com.br twitter.com/DCDnews Join DatacenterDynamics Global Discussion group at linkedin.com iPad App on Apple’s App Store @Datacenter Dynamics PEFC Certified This product is from sustainably managed forests and controlled sources PEFC/16-33-254

www.pefc.org

UNITED KINGDOM 102-108 Clifton Street London EC2A 4HW +44 (0)207 377 1907

USA 28, West 44th Street, 16th floor New York, NY 10036 +1 (212) 404-2378

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© 2015 Data Centre Dynamics Limited All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or be stored in any retrieval system of any nature, without prior written permission of Data Centre Dynamics Limited. Applications for written permission should be directed to Jon McGowan, jon.mcgowan@datacenterdynamics.com. Any views or opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Data Centre Dynamics Limited or its affiliates. Disclaimer of liability: Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the quality and accuracy of the information contained in this publication at the time of going to press, Data Centre Dynamics Limited and its affiliates assume no responsibility as to the accuracy or completeness of and, to the extent permitted by law, shall not be liable for any errors or omissions or any loss, damage or expense incurred by reliance on information or any statement contained in this publication. Advertisers are solely responsible for the content of the advertising material which they submit to us and for ensuring that the material complies with applicable laws. Data Centre Dynamics Limited and its affiliates are not responsible for any error, omission or material. Inclusion of any advertisement is not intended to endorse any views expressed, nor products or services offered, nor the organisations sponsoring the advertisement.

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 5

Freedom now?

• Peter Judge - Global Editor @PeterJudgeDCD

6

datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

192%

I

f you want a tech revolution, look no further than SDN. It is liberating data center hardware from proprietary control and will change the way infrastructure is built and managed.

Freedom is intoxicating stuff. Sometimes fear of change outweighs the excitement, the change never gets started, and we stick with the status quo. Sometimes the movement goes full-speed ahead but hits a brick wall because something hasn’t worked out right. Sometimes the revolution happens, but the revolutionaries become the new despots.

None of those things is happening here. There are designs for bare-metal switches, shared by the Open Compute Project. The OpenDaylight project is producing the software specifications to deliver virtualized network functions, and OpenStack is using them in its cloud platform.

These are soundly governed open-source projects, and we can judge them on their output.

So, standard network hardware is clearing the decks.

Bare-metal switches allow for creativity in the software levels. Network functions can now be virtualized and we are finally getting the kind of flexible infrastructure that can deliver on the promises of movements like grid computing and software-defined data centers (page 30).

But is it really happening? Yes. Vendors are producing those bare-metal switches and developing the software.

More importantly, DCD Intelligence’s census reveals that users are adopting it at a significant rate (page 34). The sales of SDN kit for data centers grew by 192 percent last year, according to research by Infonetics.

But it’s not all about the networking. Elsewhere this month, we’ve got two different angles on changing your power supply. Elon Musk’s Tesla is offering giant powerpack battery systems (page 23) that could operate as power supplies for data centers, smoothing out grid demand, increasing reliability and potentially integrating enough renewable sources – solar panels and the like – to make you independent of the grid.

But speaking of solar, do the sums carefully. A roof full of panels won’t power your site, but it can still be worth doing (page 28). However, the real value will depend on where you are, and what tax breaks your local government offers.

Elsewhere in this issue, we have dates for your diary.

DCD’s Max Smolaks has been to China (page 26), and we also have reports from Brazil (page 18) and Malaysia (page 14), as well as our news roundup.

Data center SDN market growth 2014 Infonetics/IHS

Sometimes fear of change outweighs the exciting prospects, and the change never gets started. Sometimes it goes full-speed ahead and hits a brick wall

Figures from DCDi’s Global market overview and forecasts GLOBAL DATA CENTER SPACE REQUIREMENT (MILLION SQ M) GLOBAL FIGURES Power consumption (GW) 46.5

Power consumption (GW) 43.9

Total 37.7

Total 35.7

In-house 24

In-house 24.7

Colocation /outsourced

Colocation /outsourced 13

11.7

2014

2015 MEA

45 1.54 1.99 2.6

LATIN AMERICA

0.46 1.65 2.21 2.8

0.53 1.6 2.15 2.96

EUROPE

0.61 1.7 2.31 3.24

11.9 10.4

12.3 10.7

7.54

7.5

2.9

3.2

NORTH AMERICA ASIA

11.4 9.2 5.4 3.8

12.5 9.9 5.6 4.3

15.7

15

12.6 11 7.9

8.2

4

4.4

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 7

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News Roundup

Google cuts Compute costs The price of Google’s Compute Engine service is down, signalling another price war. Pre-­ emptible Instance option is ultra­-cheap but can hand over to a higher­paying customer in 30s.

http://bit.ly/1dkcBtk

Zynga goes back to AWS

Amazon’s Elastic Cloud helped Zynga cope with the Farmville boom. The games maker built its own data centers, but now that it has hit hard times it’s going back to Amazon.

http://bit.ly/1c4J7hq

CenturyLink leases ubersite The Titan site at Moses Lake in Washington leased by CenturyLink should be ultra-­reliable. It is the former command center for US missile defence and can take a 10-megaton strike.

Greenpeace praises Apple, but slates utility companies

transparency. The company has The latest edition of Greenpeace’s promised to move to 100 percent Clicking Clean report praises renewable energy, which earns it a Apple’s commitment to renewable ‘C’ for commitment, but it scores energy. The annual report urges low on transparency because it a greener internet, criticizing hasn’t yet said how it will get there.

Amazon’s secrecy. It scores leading “By continuing to refuse to cloud players according to their http://bit.ly/1ScK2NX provide any information on the energy strategy, their “advocacy” energy consumption or greenhouse for renewables, and their efforts on Microsoft’s gas footprint of its data centers, efficiency and sources. subsea cables Amazon falls further out of step, not Greenpeace gives Apple straight Trans­Atlantic and only with its IT sector competitors ‘As’, praising its commitment to trans­Pacific cables but also with major global renewable energy. A year ago, CEO should help Microsoft corporations,” says Greenpeace.

Tim Cook famously told rebellious shift Azure data Amazon responded with a shareholders at a meeting that around, thanks to an statement saying the Greenpeace Apple is committed to renewable investment in three report is “inaccurate and power, and anyone who doesn’t like cable projects. misguided,” and has not correctly it should invest elsewhere. http://bit.ly/1ILimNx calculated what proportion of Amazon Web Services (AWS) its data comes gets low scores, including an ‘F’ for 15A4512GL-Data-Center-Ad-TAP-Partners-50mmx182mm-June-v2.pdf 1 centers’ 5/20/15energy 12:32 PM

from renewable sources.

Energy utilities come in for more criticism – for blocking the use of renewable energy.

“Monopoly electric utilities that sell electricity that’s powered mostly by coal, and very little renewable energy, are the sole energy providers to several critical data center hubs, which continue to attract significant new data center investment,” the report explains. “Prominent examples of such utilities, including Duke Energy (North Carolina), Dominion Resources (Virginia) and Taiwan Power Company (Taiwan), have all recently established green electricity tariffs to provide a renewable electricity option for their large customers, but they have not yet attracted customers due to their poor design and locked-­ in price premium, even though renewable energy is increasingly at parity with, if not superior to, traditional sources of generation.”

The other ‘F’­goes to Oracle: it’s one of the few big cloud players with no promise to go renewable. http://bit.ly/1Lb1Tzs

IS YOUR CABLING INFRASTRUCTURE DESIGNED TO WITHSTAND CONSTANT CHANGE?

C

M

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SPONSORED BY OUR TECHNOLOGY ALLIANCE PARTNERS

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Learn how you can benefit on page 22

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Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 9

News Roundup

Apple Mac Pros get racked for hipsters A California­-based company has designed custom racks that enable its customers to stick 44 cylindrical Apple Mac Pro workstations into a typical server cabinet – a marvel of unorthodox hardware engineering.

An article in TechRepublic details the challenges faced by Racklive, which was tasked with creating a suitable data center enclosure for Apple’s cylindrical computers. These were then tested by imgix, a cloud-­based image-hosting and processing service that relies on OS X’s graphics frameworks.

Apple’s Mac Pro was described by its creators as a “re­imagination of the desktop.” It throws out the conventional workstation design rulebook: instead of a dense cuboid, we are faced with a 9.9-­inch hollow cylinder. Inside, two AMD video cards and a motherboard equipped with a 12-­core Xeon form a triangle – the cold air enters at the bottom and is vented at the top.

imgix was set on getting these devices into its data center and asked Racklive to develop a custom solution.

After several design iterations, Racklive decided to place the Macs sideways, venting hot air into the corresponding aisle much like a conventional server would. Each rack-mounted unit has four workstations in a 4U form f­ actor – 44 in a 46U cabinet, along with the required networking equipment. imgix says the new racks have dramatically increased peak power draw over the previous design, which relied on Mac Minis.

But data center engineers don’t need to deploy desktop hardware to fill their facility with cylinders. Vapor IO has recently launched a product that adopts a similar shape, enlarged to the size of a conventional server cabinet.

It is even cooled in the same way, with the ‘hot column’ air rising in the center. http://bit.ly/1Gpfi7P

TALKBACK

Every time you log into Facebook, you kill a polar bear.

Maybe you need satellites in space and space solar power.

If anyone would be in favor of space solar power, it should be me.

We didn’t believe the [Telecity-Equinix] deal would have a big impact - then we saw an opportunity to extend our footprint.

– Jon Karlung, CEO,

Bahnhof Sweden

–Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla Motors and SpaceX

–Steve Smith, CEO, Equinix

http://bbc.in/1Hvcjtb

See page 23

10 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

See page 11

News Roundup

Alibaba launches cloud in Dubai Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has extended its cloud offerings to the Middle East and taken its competition with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to a new continent in a joint venture in Dubai.

Alibaba’s cloud subsidiary Aliyun has signed an agreement with Dubai-based Meraas Holding to set up an IT company that will provide cloud-based system integration services to enterprises and government bodies in the Middle East and North Africa. Meraas operates in sectors including tourism, leisure, real estate, development and asset management in both the United Arab Emirates and abroad.

The joint venture will build a data center in Dubai, which will be Aliyun’s seventh worldwide, and only its second outside China. In March the cloud provider opened a data center in California’s Silicon Valley, aiming to compete with AWS, Microsoft and Google.

The new Dubai data center will be ready in time to support the 2020 World Exposition, which will be held in Dubai. It will also support Dubai’s Smart City Initiative, serving transportation, communication, urban infrastructure, electricity, economic service and urban planning, said Meraas Holding’s chair, HE Abdullah Al Habbai. “We are moving from the ‘IT era’ to the ‘data era.’ By taking advantage of Dubai’s advanced infrastructure and economic strength, as well as Alibaba’s technical expertise, we will be able to provide infrastructure to entrepreneurs and stimulate innovations,” said Jack Ma, the founder and chairman of Alibaba Group.

In the last quarter of 2014, cloud and infrastructure was Alibaba’s fastestgrowing business, expanding at 85 percent to a sales volume of $58m.

Like Amazon, Alibaba is now listing cloud as an independent business item in its reports, and in the Group’s recently released first quarter figures it accounted for two percent of the Group’s quarterly revenue.

Aliyun dominates China’s cloud market with a 23 percent market share, and earlier this year it launched a data center in Silicon Valley, showing its resolve to compete directly with cloud giants including AWS, IBM and Microsoft.

The Silicon Valley site, built in accordance with Tier III+ standards, will firstly serve Chinese companies developing businesses in America, followed by American companies that aim to develop businesses in both countries. http://bit.ly/1IPyhZB

OpenStack gets interoperability tests

Equinix gets Telecity for $3.6bn, snubs Interxion

The OpenStack Foundation has set up interoperability tests to reassure users they will get a common set of abilities and interfaces in any products and services based on the open source cloud platform. Sixteen companies have put their products through these tests and display an “OpenStack Powered” badge on their entries in the Foundation’s OpenStack Marketplace. “This is a huge step forward. It involves common code that’s going to be available in every product or service that calls itself OpenStack, and common APIs that work the same way,” said OpenStack Foundation executive director Jonathan Bryce.

Colocation giant Equinix is buying British data center provider Telecity for $3.6bn (£2.4bn), ending Telecity’s plan to merge with Netherlandsbased Interxion. The deal creates Europe’s biggest colocation provider.

“This will be bad for the market – there will be far less competition,” said analyst Nicola Hayes of Andrasta Consulting. Equinix and Telecity argue the deal will benefit customers and shareholders, with Telecity chairman John Hughes commenting that Telecity’s ability to provide hybrid cloud would be “considerably augmented”. The deal is not expected to close until 2016. Equinix said further purchases are possible.

http://bit.ly/1c4IlB3

http://bit.ly/1cOM8mN

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 11

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se asia

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL GATHERING OF DATA CENTER & IT PROFESSIONALS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA

APP > CLOUD DESIGN + STRATEGY CRITICAL ENVIRONMENT

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IT + NETWORKS SECURITY + RISK

News Roundup

Tegile gets $70m in VC backing to fund global expansion American enterprise storage specialist Tegile Systems has received $70m in venture capital in its largest round of financing to date. The money will help the company double the number of employees and fund the expansion of global operations.

“The opportunity to partner with Tegile and help scale the company as it continues its rapid ascent in the flash storage industry is one that we simply could not afford to pass up,” said Dipender Saluja, managing director at Capricorn Investment Group.

Hybrid and all-flash storage arrays made by Tegile rely on high endurance enterprise-grade NAND memory from SanDisk, made more affordable by proprietary data management and compression algorithms, which allow cramming more data into SSDs. Investors participating in the latest Series D round include Western Digital and SanDisk, which also supply the drives for Tegile’s storage arrays.

The company will use the money to increase the number of employees from 300 to 600, and ramp up its sales and channel operations, especially in Europe and Asia. The previous funding round – worth $35m – was intended to focus on North American and European channels.

“With this infusion of venture and debt capital, we will be able to satisfy the rising demand for our Tegile Intelligent Flash Arrays and methodically build Tegile into a sustainable multibillion-dollar business that will deliver maximum value to our investors,” said Rohit Kshetrapal, CEO of Tegile. http://bit.ly/1FEY7xk

Basho launches complete NoSQL software kit American NoSQL vendor Basho Technologies has combined its Riak distributed database with popular open-source software in a single product called the Basho Data Platform. It includes Riak KV database, Riak S2 object storage software, Apache Spark engine for in-memory analytics, Redis key-value cache for increased performance and Apache Solr search platform for enhanced queries.

Unlike traditional relational databases, NoSQL databases are not built on tables and tend not to use structured query language to manipulate data, which allows for more flexibility and makes them perfect for new types of workloads.

Basho was founded in 2008 by a group of former Akamai executives and engineers to bring this emerging technology to the enterprise. Its most successful product is Riak KV (formerly Riak), an open-source database written in Erlang and used by Adobe, AT&T, Best Buy and the British National Health Service. “Big data with multiple data models, hybrid cloud architectures with distributed active workloads, and the rise of the Internet of Things require developers to integrate, replicate and synchronize information across functions,” said Mac Devine, vice president and CTO of cloud services at IBM. “Basho specializes in solving distributed systems challenges, and integrated approaches such as the Basho Data Platform help ensure that applications are highly available, massively scalable and easy to deploy at production scale.” http://bit.ly/1LLyNaX

Fire rages through Apple data center HQ in Arizona

Apple’s massive new data center in Mesa, Arizona – which it acquired through the ill-fated partnership with GT Advanced last year – caught fire recently. The blaze was soon under control, say reports.

Photographs (above) show the roof on fire. The rooftop, which is equipped with hundreds of solar panels, was the scene of frantic activity as local firefighters and emergency crews attempted to extinguish the flames. At the time Apple acquired the facility, it promised to power it entirely by renewable energy.

DatacenterDynamics reporter Nick Booth wrote in February: “Apple has said its new data center will be a ‘command center’ for its global networks. It will be powered entirely by renewable energy, and could help create up to 500 temporary construction jobs and 150 permanent positions.”

ABC 15 reports that crews from Mesa, Gilbert and Superstition Fire worked together to extinguish the blaze within 35 minutes.

At the time of going to press, local news reports claimed that the fire appeared to have originated on the solar panels on the roof, saying there were no known injuries.

Apple plans to take over the Mesa, Arizona, factory where GT Advanced was formerly producing sapphire boules, transforming it into a massive $2bn data center.

According to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, the center will house 150 full-time Apple employees and create between 300 and 500 additional jobs. http://bit.ly/1AvIDgf

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 13

News Roundup

3

Number of sites in Australia with NABERS environmental certification

Storm-tossed Fujitsu Perth gets an upgrade Fujitsu is upgrading all its data centers in Australia, beginning with a AU$10m (US$8m) project to bring Tier IV reliability to a site that earlier this year was taken out of action by a storm.

The Malaga data center in Perth, currently rated at Tier III, was taken offline by thunderstorms in February; now Fujitsu has a plan to increase its reliability, aiming to make

it the first site in Australia to pass the Uptime Institute’s stringent certification for Tier IV reliability. This will be the first upgrade in a program to update all seven of Fujitsu’s data centers in Australia by 2025.

The data center, hailed as Australia’s greenest when it was opened in 2010, suffered two back-to-back incidents, which culminated in an outage

in February. Fujitsu called in the fire brigade during the first incident, which lasted 1.5 hours.

Backup systems responded as designed and the site kept running – until a second failure in an unspecified control system triggered the outage.

The upgrade to Tier IV should prevent a repeat, as the certification “stipulates how sites are to be designed and operated to tolerate the cumulative impact of every site infrastructure component,” says a Fujitsu release.

“The Tier IV Certification process for Malaga will provide unprecedented guarantees of availability for all businesses that rely on cloud-based data,” said Mike Foster, CEO of Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand. “Those data centers governed by Tier IV standards

will give customers even greater confidence to move more mission-critical applications into ‘always-on’ cloud infrastructure.

Organisations are increasingly demanding a level of security and availability beyond the level of existing Tier III facilities for their mission-critical systems.”

Fujitsu opened its first Australian data center in 2000 and now has 25,000 sq meters (250,000 sq ft) of space in its seven sites. Three sites have the Australian NABERS environmental certification. There is plenty of competition, however.

Equinix announced a new data center near Sydney. Rackspace was quick to take space there, as well as announcing plans to extend its own space, built by Digital Realty. http://bit.ly/1PWyCtK

VOX BOX / DCD VIDEO

Richard Greene Managing partner Liquid Technology

How can people ensure they are disposing of IT equipment safely?

Awareness is growing that you have to use a company that is e-Stewards-compliant or r2-compliant. A certificate doesn’t mean a lot unless there is a legal contract behind it, but we are audited and provide certificates to our clients. They should look to see that we are being audited year by year and are in compliance. We can assist with our clients’ liability.

http://bit.ly/1L2MrGd

14 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

Max Ahrens Board member Deutsche Börse Cloud Exchange

Tell us about Deutsche Börse’s cloud resources strategy?

Deutsche Börse is building markets for all sorts of resources - even IaaS. Providers see us as a channel for new business, and users have the benefit of having one contract with all the providers in the exchange. It is commoditization – if you buy through us you get a single standardized contract, plus we have transparency about the performance they deliver.

http://bit.ly/1Kk3TZt

EMC is buying managed cloud expert Virtustream for $1.2bn Storage giant EMC is buying Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider Virtustream for $1.2bn, aiming to rebrand it as its own managed cloud services business.

The acquisition is thought to be an attempt at offsetting the slowing revenue growth across

EMC’s traditional hardware business. “Virtustream is an exceptional company, and this is a critical and transformative acquisition for EMC, in one of the industry’s fastest-growing and most important sectors,” said CEO Joe Tucci.

“With Virtustream in place, EMC will be uniquely positioned as a single source for our customers’ entire hybrid cloud infrastructure and services needs.

We could not be more delighted that Virtustream will be joining the EMC Federation family. It’s a game changer.”

Virtustream was founded in 2009 to provide enterprise-class IT in the cloud. The company

offers extensive cloud security, performance SLAs and charging based on usage, not resource allocation. It attracted $129.6m in venture capital – most recently $40m in a Series D round in September 2013.

Virtustream’s xStream cloud management software platform is tightly integrated with VMware vSphere – yet another reason why the company is a good fit for EMC and its Enterprise Hybrid Cloud approach. “With the addition of Virtustream, we will be able to

NetApp rebrands Riverbed’s SteelStore as AltaVault NetApp has launched a cloud backup product range called AltaVault – essentially a rebranded version of Riverbed’s SteelStore - which it acquired last October.

AltaVault enables customers to securely back up their data to the cloud through physical, virtual and cloud-based appliances featuring inline deduplication and compression, which can reduce the bandwidth and storage requirements by up to 90 percent.

“Data lifecycle solutions like AltaVault are key elements of NetApp’s vision for a data fabric, which gives customers the confidence that no matter where their data lives, they can control, integrate, move, secure and consistently manage it,” said Phil Brotherton, VP of Cloud Solutions Group at NetApp. NetApp purchased the SteelStore product line for $80m, shortly before Riverbed was sold to investors Thoma Bravo LLC and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan for $3.6bn.

SteelStore and its predecessor Whitewater leveraged Riverbed’s proprietary WAN optimization technology to compress data for faster backup and much faster access in the event of an equipment failure, compared with traditional on-premise backup solutions that rely on tape as a storage medium.

Just like SteelStore, AltaVault offers on-premise cache, in-transit encryption and the ability to store backups in virtually any private or public cloud, while NetApp adds even better advertised data reduction ratio of 30:1 and seamless integration with SnapProtect management software.

The real upgrade will arrive later this year, when the company launches an all-new flagship physical appliance the AVA800. http://bit.ly/1LNAGDX

offer customers a comprehensive set of hybrid cloud offerings, including private, managed and public cloud solutions,” said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware.

“As we deliver VMware vCloud Air to our customer base to help them continue their journey to the cloud, Virtustream complements and expands our value proposition.”

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2015. http://bit.ly/1FHxSWU

Charter set to buy rival Time Warner Cable for $78.7bn

80

$

m

Price NetApp paid for SteelStore’s product line

American cable giant Charter Communications is planning to buy two of its competitors – Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks – creating a network powerhouse to rival Comcast.

The company is ready to pay around $78.7bn for Time Warner Cable – $55bn in cash and stock – with the rest coming from its debts and another $10.4bn for Bright House.

The combined entity – the ‘New Charter’ with the current CEO Tom Rutlege at the helm – would serve cable television and broadband to 23.9 million customers across 41 states. According to CNN, the deal would affect one in six American households. However, it is yet to be approved by the shareholders and regulators.

Charter Communications has around 4.1 million TV subscribers and 4.9 million broadband subscribers, making it the fourth-largest cable operator in the US by revenue.

But this could change with the acquisition of Time Warner Cable (more than 11 million subscribers) and Bright House Networks (2.2 million subscribers).

A merger would help the combined company better compete against traditional rivals such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, as well as emerging threats like Netflix and Amazon Video.

Charter says the deal will drive investment into advanced broadband networks, including public WiFi and high-speed fiber. The new company could also launch a mobile network service.

If everything goes according to plan, Charter Communications expect to close the announced transactions by the end of 2015. http://bit.ly/1ABV4Xt

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 15

T

Campinas the Silicon Valley of Brazil Providing 15 percent of all national technology production, one city in São Paulo has become Brazil’s tech powerhouse. Tatiane Aquim reports

hanks to the high-tech companies located there, Campinas in São Paulo has become known as Brazil’s Silicon Valley, providing a home for 32 of the 500 largest IT companies in the world.

According to Samuel Rosilho, the city’s secretary for economic development and tourism, Campinas is an attractive place for data centers because it has the best infrastructure and logistics in Brazil.

Campinas has five major highways: Anhanguera, Bandeirantes, Dom Pedro I, Adhemar de Barros and Santos Dumont. It is efficient and not wasteful.

According to Rosilho, Campinas has the lowest rates of water loss and energy of all Brazilian cities: “These issues are critical to the successful operation of data centers. Today the national average losses in the electrical system is 16 percent. In Campinas, this figure is only six percent. As for water, the losses are 19 percent, which is lower than the rest of Brazil, but we are working to reduce these further.”

Campinas now has 15 R&D centers, 18 higher education institutions and five technology parks. Over the past two years, plans to make it a smart “city of the future” were reactivated by the Council of Science, Technology and Innovation.

The city also has an accelerator for startups, rewarding innovation and providing free training for innovation managers. The legal framework was modernized and today the city offers tax incentives for startups as well as established companies in the market.

Chris Torto, CEO and founder of Ascenty, says the big attraction is that Campinas has its own data network of more than 3,000 kilometers, which enables interconnection to data centers in São Paulo and beyond. For Torto, the big advantage Campinas offers telecoms “is not energy, or even reduced

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16 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05 RIT-CL-37096_CeBIT_2015_AZ_DCD_GB_RZ.indd 2

for data centre

Latin America energy costs – it’s the interconnection.

Ascenty’s decision to invest here was not made because of tax incentives – we were looking for interconnectivity.”

Aceco TI lists more factors, including land price, availability of electricity, water and skilled labor. “Investment has migrated to Campinas for these reasons, but mainly for the quality of the local workforce, since the city has a high degree of development with targeted schools for IT and telecommunications,” says Fernando Almeida Prado, marketing director of Aceco TI. So, how similar to California’s Silicon Valley is Campinas? For Samuel Rosilho, secretary for economic development and tourism, it would be more accurate to call it the “Green Silicon Valley,” because companies there are focused on sustainable practices. He says companies are increasingly waking up to sustainability, and not just as a “greenwash” decision but with a real intention to preserve the environment for future generations. For example, the data center of Banco Santander – installed in the technology hub of Ciatec – includes ​​ a green park for families.

When it was built, the bank preserved much of the vegetation in order to protect the residents from dust.

Brazil’s federal government has had a sustainable procurement policy since 2010, so public agencies must include sustainability criteria in their bidding documents, and acquire “green materials and services.”

Rosilho says this policy is having a real impact, because government purchases represent 10 percent of Brazil’s GDP. In Campinas, social criteria are applied to public procurements of up to 80,000

reals (US$26,500) in compliance with Federal Law 147. These investments have included 10 buses running on 100 percent electrical energy, using distributed electricity generation at City Hall, with a contract to put solar panels on the roof of City Hall later this year. “We also have tax incentives, which attract high-tech companies that are considered environmentally friendly because they are less polluting,” says Rosilho.

Brazil does have power management problems, though, and a high cost of energy, but Rosilho does not think this will prevent future foreign investment in the data center sector. In fact, he says Brazil’s prices are no greater than those of European countries, and the Brazilian electrical system has a regulator – the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel).

Ascenty agrees. Whatever the country’s bottlenecks, demand is high, says Torto: “Brazil has 260 million mobile phones and is one of the countries that uses Twitter and Facebook. Every quarter, the number of smartphones doubles.

To deliver a low latency your data center has to be in Brazil, so many companies are setting up there, including IBM, Microsoft and Amazon.”

Prado says that despite its economic troubles, Brazil has a high employment rate, and both companies and individuals are consumers of IT. Rosilho believes the current economic crisis is creating an opportunity for public and private sectors to innovate and create new markets. “Our city has been growing at an average of four percent per year over the past 10 years, which is many times the national average. We have no doubt that this is a prime location for those that want to settle in Brazil,” says Rosilho.

Campinas has a data network of more than 3,000 kilometers

Consider Campinas…

• 15 percent of Brazil’s scientific production • 3,000 kilometer fiber network • Tax incentives for data centers • Ethanol fuel scheme • University of Campinas is Latin America’s second best (Times Higher Education Supplement)

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Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 17 12.02.15 15:44

On location Cyberjaya • Science park • In the Malaysian super corridor • 50km south of Kuala Lumpur • Inter-DC backbone cuts connection costs by 80 percent • Providers include NTT Iskandar Malaysia • Development region in Johor • Across the causeway from Singapore • Contains Nusajaya tech park • Providers include Telekom Malaysia

Malaysian ambitions Malaysia wants to take data center business from Singapore and Hong Kong. Paul Mah assesses its chances

Paul Mah South East Asia Correspondent @PaulMah

M

alaysia has always sought to position itself as a global data center hub, but when we spoke to Chiew Kok Hin, CEO of carrier-neutral operator AIMS, he was quick to concede that Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore started investing in data centers “much earlier”, and that Malaysia lags behind. Despite this, Chiew ticked off various advantages for Malaysia, including its competitive cost of power, ready access to skilled employees, cheaper access to land and low construction costs compared with Singapore and Hong Kong.

Many of Chiew’s points were separately echoed by Ho Yee Chung, director of engineering at NTT MSC,

18 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

a fully owned subsidiary of NTT Communications that operates four data centers in Malaysia.

“Malaysia is one of the best locations in terms of infrastructure stability in a region with low risk for natural disaster,” said Ho. “In terms of operation support, Malaysia has established mature education ground for knowledge development with a ready pool of talented resources. Operation costs are not high, with the advantages of average salary and reasonable power tariff.”

So why isn’t Malaysia already a data center hub? Chin Jun Fwu, research manager, data center and virtualization at IDC Asia Pacific, highlighted two crucial factors that have a heavy influence where demand is concerned.

Asia Pacific sleeve may well be the Iskandar Malaysia development corridor in the State of Johor, located just across the causeway from Singapore. It has been earmarked for the establishment of a second hub for data center parks in the country and recently saw Telekom Malaysia announcing its plans to build a $38m data center in the Nusajaya Tech Park there.

With the operating costs in countries such as Singapore unlikely to ease any time soon, Iskandar may prove to be an enticing alternative for organizations looking for a cheaper location for disaster recovery purposes, or as a backup data center. “Iskandar is definitely positioned that way. As the geographical boundary becomes blurred, it doesn’t really matter where the data center is located; it doesn’t matter if a backup data center is sitting in Given that attracting more MNCs and businesses to the region is not within Iskandar versus Singapore,” said Chin.

He says cloud providers such as the control of data center operators, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and this leaves the cost of connectivity as an Microsoft Azure area to tackle. have already “Connectivity demonstrated is a stumbling an ability to block; that is access compute where the interinfrastructure DC network across borders. is being Specifically, established,” data centers said Chiew. are established In early

by AWS and 2015, AIMS was Microsoft in appointed by various hubs the influential Chiew Kok Hin around the world, Multimedia with points of Development presence set up in Corporation regional locations that feed straight back (MDeC) to build a high-speed backbone to the infrastructure. to link data centers within the city of But what of concerns about data Cyberjaya as part of a governmentsovereignty, given that a backup data backed scheme to bring down the cost center will necessitate a copy of data of connectivity. By the end of June that being kept at that location? “The concern backbone should link six multi-tenanted is more live in local companies and data centers within Cyberjaya. Phase 2 is financial institutions than regional still to be confirmed, but will extend the companies,” Chin pointed out. After all, inter-DC network out of Cyberjaya to multinational companies and regional other parts of the country. companies already have their data spread To underscore the cost savings that over multiple countries by default. the inter-DC network initiative can Chiew said AIMS has customers bring about, Chiew highlighted how with a primary data center in Singapore a 10 gigabit connection can cost as relying on its facilities for disaster much as $35,000 Ringgit (US$9,700) per recovery. However, he said things are month based on rates offered by the changing as organizations start to see local telecommunications operators. the value of establishing their primary In contrast, the same connectivity routed via the inter-DC network will cost data centers in Malaysia, with Singapore serving as the backup location. “There just $7,000 Ringgit (US$1,940), or one were certain things we did not do well, fifth of the former option. such as connectivity. With the [inter-DC Chiew said there are already “a initiative] being realized, I’m sure we are couple of customers” confirmed, as able to give Singapore and Hong Kong a well as discussions on the possibility of integrating this to the Malaysian Internet run for the money,” said Chiew. “It’s time Exchange (MyIX) network. “The ultimate to let the world know that Malaysia will emerge as a strong contender for data objective is to bring cost down as low as centers. There will be interesting news possible,” he explained. coming along, so watch this space.”

Another ace that Malaysia has up its “Being nearer to the customer base is key. Most of the regional players are based in [Singapore and Hong Kong],” said Chin. This is the reason why operators and businesses continue to set up new data centers in these countries, despite the real estate challenges and higher costs.

“The advantage here is being near to the customer and having cheap connectivity,” he said. According to a recent IDC study, Malaysian data centers spend about 20 to 25 percent of their operational budgets on communications.

Data centers in Singapore, Hong Kong the UK and US, for example, attribute just five percent of their operational cost on connectivity.

It’s time to let the world know that Malaysia will emerge as a contender in data centers

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 19

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Opinion

Walmart sheds ‘proprietary’ for open-source IT Bruce Taylor examines Walmart’s use of OpenStack and its use of open source to free itself from everything proprietary

A

ttention Walmart e-shoppers: your order will process in an open-source environment!

Walmart top cloud tech chief Amandeep Singh Juneja has revealed OpenStack is the retail behemoth’s new choice for its cloud architecture.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon recently highlighted “tremendous growth from mobile devices, accounting for nearly 70 percent of Walmart.com traffic in the US during the year-end holiday period. For the same period, Walmart’s e-commerce production workloads ran entirely on its shiny new OpenStack platform – a scant nine months after inception.

The retailer will invest $1.5bn this year on digital expansion.

Could anything possibly scream more loudly about the ever-quickening pace toward IT commoditization than Walmart declaring “open source” IT? Here’s a bit of what Juneja has to say: “Walmart has always relied on cutting-edge technology to fuel growth. Our customers expect a seamless experience.

“With such rapid growth, we need a technology stack to scale to meet demand, be flexible enough to build applications that adapt to everchanging user preferences, and with enough big data smarts to predict what customers want, and provide real-time recommendations.”

For traditional businesses, growing means that economies of scale lead to lower per-unit costs.

“Walmart has enjoyed these savings.”

But expansion in a company’s technology footprint can lead to diseconomies of scale, where cost per transaction increases.

“This can happen due to bad infrastructure architecture, when you find yourself locked into a certain system or application, where vertically scaling costs more than horizontal scaling,” says Juneja.

“Maintaining and adding new features becomes a nightmare, increasing opportunity cost for delivering new products.

“That’s where the cloud comes in. Instead of expanding vertically by, say, buying big, powerful machines for 10 times the cost, distributed computing means you can use a large number of commodity machines to provide the same power, but at a fraction of the cost.”

WalmartLabs reimagined its architecture, resulting in an agile, elastic cloud. This platform also empowers product managers to iterate new product ideas in an agile manner,” enabling fast response to customer needs.

Juneja gives three reasons for open-sourcing: vendor lockin avoidance; ability to rapidly modify/customize; and access to a collaboration/innovation community.

“OpenStack has been used and supported by market leaders all over the Bay Area,” says the devops chief. “We want to be a part of that community. We have a team of very talented developers, and we plan to contribute aggressively to the open-source community.

“In the nine months since we started building OpenStack cloud, we’ve already built an OpenStack compute layer with 100K cores and counting. Our next step is to bring in more block storage and venture into software-defined networks (SDN) using OpenStack results from other projects.”

Walmart’s mobile traffic accounted for 70 percent of its traffic in the year-end holiday period

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 21

Advertorial: Anixter

Network Migration: High-Performance Structured Cabling Deciding to migrate to a high-performance structured cabling system isn’t as easy as ripping and replacing the current infrastructure.

T

here are four types of cabling topologies in the data center.

A centralized architecture is simple to design, implement and maintain, and there is good switch port utilization.

End of row and middle of row architectures push the switches closer to the servers, which allows for greater scalability. Top of rack architecture offers good scalability because the server cabinets can be easily added and replicated as the computing needs of the data center grow.

Media Selection

10 Gigabit Ethernet technologies continue to evolve and improve the speed and volume of traffic on data center networks, benefiting blade servers, networked enterprise switches, storage appliances and other applications.

There are three strong reasons for the broad acceptance and rapid growth of twisted-pair as the cabling media of choice for switch-toserver interconnect: • Low initial cost • Ability to deliver higher data rate LAN services • Flexibility to use one medium for all services As space is always a consideration, fiber’s small size and weight requires less space in cable trays, raised floors and equipment racks.

It has the ability to support higher data rates, taking advantage of existing applications and emerging high-speed network interfaces and protocols.

Data center cabling must be able to accommodate today’s large number of diverse bandwith issues.

should be considered when trying to manage dense port counts associated with high-density LAN and SAN equipment and servers within the data center. They free up raised floor and rack space, can be commissioned quickly, can lower overall costs and can be tested prior to leaving the factory.

provide bandwidth in the 500 MHz range with proven control of alien crosstalk present on 10GBASE-T enabled networks. OM3 or OM4 laser-optimized, 50-micron is the fiber of choice—again to make sure the data center is ready whenever and wherever 40 or 100 Gigabit Ethernet becomes a requirement.

Network Flexibility

For more information on network migration, download the Technology Solutions Briefing: Network Migration from Anixter and DatacenterDynamics. https://www.anixter.com/en_au/solutions/datacenter/network-migration.html

It’s important to build a long-term cabling plan that takes into account future growth (MACs), new applications, data rates and technology advancements. At minimum, a Category 6A construction is needed to

Density Demands

Higher density platforms are changing the design paradigm on which traditional data centers were built. As computing resources consolidate into smaller physical footprints, the kW usage per square foot increases as does the number of port connections.

Preterminated cable assemblies and modules

Advertorial: Anixter

Contact Details Phone: 1-800-ANIXTER anixter.com/datacenterdcd

Critical Environment

Going off-grid Amazon is testing big batteries from electric car pioneer Tesla that promise grid independence. Michael Kassner investigates

I

f Elon Musk has a “bucket list,” it probably includes getting to Mars and eliminating our dependency on fossil fuels. Truth be told, there are more than a few who are skeptical of his achieving either one.

As for overcoming the technical challenges of getting to Mars, one acknowledged space expert and self-professed skeptic, Dr. Phil Plait, has changed his mind about Musk and his company SpaceX, saying on his Bad Astronomy blog: “With his immense factory sitting directly behind me, there was no doubting this was not the wild dream of a sci-fi fan.

This is reality. The dichotomy between public perception and what is really happening here was never clearer to me.”

Getting off fossil fuel is another matter.

Roughly a third of fossil fuel is used in transportation – which Musk’s Tesla Motors is addressing with electric cars. But a third of fossil fuel in the US goes into the electric grid (and this would increase if transport shifted to electric vehicles).

Tesla is now attacking this too, with plans to get people off the grid – or at least to use it more intelligently.

Currently, it is prohibitively expensive to get off the grid. However, companies are getting close: building hybrid systems using one or more of the following power sources: solar, wind, fuel cells, or battery power with grid power as a backup. Since Musk and Tesla employees know about batteries, that is where they focused their effort.

Tesla is offering the Powerwall at a domestic level: “The battery system consists of its lithium-ion battery pack, liquid thermal control system and software that

33%

of fossil fuel in the US goes to electric grid

receives dispatch commands from a solar inverter,” explains the Tesla website. “The unit mounts seamlessly on a wall and is integrated with the local grid to harness excess power and give customers the flexibility to draw energy from their own reserve.”

Powerwall assemblies can be ganged together, providing up to 90kWh total for the 10kWh Powerwall and 63kWh total for the 7kWh Powerwall. So with enough Powerwalls and a solar array of sufficient capacity, it is possible to relegate the grid to backup status.

Larger organizations such as data centers will be more interested in the larger-capacity Tesla Powerpack – a 100kWh battery storage system – which, according to Musk, is infinitely scalable.

Initially, experts feel that companies will use Powerpack technology to reduce the cost of power. Bloomberg Business lists the following benefits that companies might get from Powerpack: • Max consumption of on-site clean power • Avoid peak-demand charges • Buy electricity when it is cheapest • Get refunded from utilities for taking part in smart grid services • Have backup power during power outages If ROI is there, this should interest companies owning power-gluttonous data centers. But not everyone agrees. Arthur Cole, networking expert and technology writer, has voiced concerns at IT Business Edge. He acknowledges that Powerwall and Powerpack are effective backup solutions, plus a means to cover when renewablepower sources are not available, but he warns: “I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but it is important to look at the totality of any energy solution before deciding on its u

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 23

Critical Environment

Tesla Energy Storage: a novel development that will do wonders for efficiency

u true efficacy – not to block its introduction, but to make sure we are aware of what the long-term implications are should the development in question scale up to global industrial levels.”

Cole’s concern centers on the fact that batteries are not what he calls environmentally pure. “The manufacturing process is highly complex, requiring a lot of energy, and a fair number of rare elements that can only be obtained through invasive mining and manufacturing processes,” he writes. “There is also the disposal issue to consider.”

Cole says that Li-ion batteries can produce a runaway chain reaction that leads to an explosion. These incidents are extremely rare, but he urges caution as there is little available data on Li-ion batteries’ storage systems of this magnitude. Another concern has to do with Musk’s mention that solar arrays could fit on the roofs of larger buildings. That is true, but in most cases the ideal location for a data center is not the best spot for renewablepower production. Living in Minnesota, I can attest to that. My solar array is less efficient than one of the same capacity in Florida.

If anyone would be in favor of space solar power, it should be me Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX

Well-known enterprise-size businesses are taking part in pilot programs with Tesla.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a test program based on a 4.8MWh Tesla energy storage system in AWS’s US West Region data center in northern California.

James Hamilton, distinguished engineer at AWS, explained the pilot: “We’ve been working closely with Tesla for the past year to drive innovative applications of high-capacity battery technology in data center applications, with the ultimate goal of reducing the technical barriers limiting widespread adoption of renewables in the

24 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

grid. Batteries are important for both data center reliability, and as enablers for the efficient application of renewable power.

They help bridge the gap between intermittent production, from sources like wind, and the data center’s constant power demands.”

Target Corporation is also working with Tesla. “We’re excited to partner with Tesla on a pilot test at select Target stores to incorporate Tesla Energy Storage as part of our energy strategy,” says David Hughes, senior group manager of energy management at Target.

“Tesla’s cutting-edge technology offers unique benefits to powering these stores, relieving stress from the grid at peak times, furthering Target’s investment in operating energyefficient and sustainable buildings.”

The Tesla battery is a novel development that will do wonders for efficiency, says Cole, but he warns: “It is not the answer to our energy problems. A diversity of solutions will be the most effective means of powering the data center going forward. Not all of them will be the most efficient or the most reliable, but over time the enterprise should be able to tap into the advantages of each solution while downplaying the drawbacks.”

As for Musk and all his ventures, I would not bet against him. He has taken some hard licks and is now wiser for it. As an example, he offered an interesting, apparently tonguein-cheek comment at the Tesla Energy press event, when pressed on the amount of land needed to power the entire US using solar energy. Some people have suggested using satellites, said Musk: “Like maybe you need these satellites in space and space solar power. If anyone would be in favor of space solar power, it should be me.”

How’s that for a hedge?

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Who are they?

What makes the Chinese telecommunications company tick? Max Smolaks visits its birthplace and finds out

Max Smolaks Reporter @MaxSmolaksDCD

H

uawei is building most of the world’s networks. But how did it get there?

In less than 30 years, Huawei has risen to become the world’s largest telecommunications equipment vendor (according to IHS) – and it is here to stay.

And the reason is R&D: Huawei reinvests at least 10 percent of its annual revenue into the development of new technologies, and out of the company’s 170,000 employees, 70,000 are directly engaged in research.

This army of engineers started working on 5G way back in 2009, so by 2020 – when we will actually make the switch to nextgeneration wireless networks – you won’t be able to walk even a few steps without hitting a Huawei patent. It’s with this idea in mind that I set off towards the company’s headquarters in Schenzhen.

The history of Huawei is closely tied to the history of Shenzhen – it was a small

26 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

fishing village just 35 years ago, transformed by the establishment of a Special Economic Zone and now a city twice the size of London.

The company was founded in 1978 by Rei Zhengfei, a former People’s Liberation Army engineer. An almost mythical figure, Zhengfei is credited with establishing one of the first domestic telecommunications ventures, at a time when all of the network technology was imported from abroad.

The secret of the company’s initial growth spur was simple – China needed huge quantities of telephone exchange switches to modernize its infrastructure, and Huawei could deliver cheaper, locally produced kit.

Later, it was actively promoted by the state as an alternative to foreign suppliers.

Today, 62 percent of the company’s sales come from outside China. Knowing this, Huawei wants to be seen as a modern company to rival any of its Silicon Valley counterparts, but its approach to innovation

IT & Networks is quite different. Beyond the squeaky-clean corporate showrooms, Huwei headquarters feel a lot like a research university, complete with wood paneling and overworked talent sleeping in dark corners. New employees, who often travel to Shenzhen from far corners of the country, have the option of living on campus for the first two years of their employment.

All the facilities are covered in lush tropical greenery, and there’s even a lake, complete with swans and Koi carp.

Several staff canteens offer everything from traditional Chinese fare to steak and lobster.

The architecture is a mess of styles and periods: we were told that the campus was built under the guidance of Zhengfei, who has a personal interest in building design – he attended Chongqing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture.

Local residents say that, years ago, working at Huawei was akin to a Chinese version of the American dream – it was a place where original thinking could propel someone towards unimaginable wealth.

Today, its only shareholders are its current and former employees. Shares are earned on the basis of their position and the length of time they spent with the company; however, only the holders of a Chinese passport who reside in the country can take advantage of this.

Another interesting quirk of the company are its three rotating CEOs – Xu Zhijun, Guo Ping and Hu Houkun – who lead the company for six months at a time, according to a strict timetable.

Marketing manager Daniel Kelly (who was previously responsible for building

relationships with Huawei while working at British Telecom) says that this approach makes political sense: in a country struggling with corruption, having three CEOs helps to ensure that the running of the company is transparent and fair.

Despite its R&D prowess, Huawei struggles with something as simple as overseas marketing. Its obscure press releases and naming conventions are the stuff of legend: this year alone, we’ve seen the launch of Data Center 3.0, Agile Network 3.0 and the Business-Driven ICT Infrastructure (BDII) – I was present at the launch of the latter two, but wouldn’t be able to tell you what they actually mean.

The much-publicized security concerns in the US present a more serious problem.

In a nutshell, American intelligence agencies are worried that China could be using its growing export sector to develop built-in spying capabilities across foreign networks – something that has never been proven.

These issues are unlikely to stop the advance of Huawei. The era when the global telecommunications market was ruled by former state monopolies from Europe and the US is over: the Marconi Company is no more; remains of Canada’s Nortel have been cannibalized by a dozen different vendors; both Alcatel and Lucent are now the property of Nokia Networks (and there are rumors it could retire both brands); and the future of Bell Labs is unclear.

Sure, Ericsson and Cisco are still around, but so is ZTE – another Chinese-owned multinational located in Shenzhen – which last year made more than $13bn in revenue.

The data center industry should pay closer attention to Huawei and the way it combines a culture of innovation with a degree of nationalism. Underestimating it would be a serious mistake.

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 27

SOLAR SUMS A roof full of solar panels won’t power your site, but it could pay off, discovers Michael Kassner

28 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

Michael Kassner US Contributor @MichaelKassner

P

lenty of data centers use solar power. Apple has been buying it up wholesale. But do the numbers really add up?

Alongside the positive stories, there has been some skepticism, in particular from James Hamilton, data center guru, and vice president and distinguished engineer at Amazon Web Services, who wrote a blog in 2012. An entry entitled ‘I Love Solar Power But…’ asked some tough questions, and is still making waves today. “I love solar power,” wrote Hamilton, “but in reflecting carefully on a couple of high-profile data center deployments of solar power, I’m developing serious reservations that this is the path to reducing data center environmental impact.”

Hamilton’s primary concern was, and still is, the way solar-array power capacities are advertised. All too often, reports simply quote the maximum output of a solar array, without taking into account two real-world variables that reduce the array’s capacity (see box).

Hamilton’s post got attention because he used Apple’s Maiden, North Carolina, data center and Facebook’s Prineville, Oregon, data center as examples. When Hamilton included the variables – location and altitude – in the capacity calculations, the output from the solar arrays at Prineville and Maiden barely made a dent in the power requirements for either data center. Regarding Apple’s Maiden data center, Hamilton’s calculations suggested that a solar array that supplied all of the data center’s power would have to cover over 4,000 acres.

Since 2012 things have obviously changed, and I was curious if Hamilton had any further thoughts. Via shipboard email, he wrote: “Both Apple and Facebook continue to invest in renewable energy, but it is still hard to fathom just how much space is required to fully power a large data center.”

It is evident that solar needs a lot of space: First Solar, a provider of photovoltaic solar energy solutions, affords us an idea with its California Flats solar project. The 280-megawatt solar array occupies around 2,900 acres in southeast Monterey County, California.

Hamilton raised another interesting point about finances: “As I

Critical Environment projects are not viable without incentives, and in Synergy Networks’ case, the federal government’s Solar Investment Tax Credit and the Florida Power and Light (FPL) solar rebate.

The federal tax credit amounts to a reduction of the organization’s tax obligation equal to 30 percent of the out-of-pocket cost of the system. Boyd said applying for the tax credit was just a matter of filling out paperwork. However, the FPL solar rebate is not quite that simple. At the designated time and date, the FPL solar rebate application website goes live. Within seconds, those interested in getting a rebate start entering data as fast as they can. It is first come first served, and when the designated amount of money runs out, the site closes.

Boyd said he practiced entering the information just to make sure Synergy If there is enough solar energy to make Networks’ application made it. The year Boyd a solar array cost-effective, there are actually applied (2013) the website closed after one other benefits, argued Anderson. The panels hour. The 2015 rebate application was even will also shade the roof and reduce heat more of a race. Alissa Jean Schafer, marketing build-up – a win-win situation. “In Dave’s approach, we don’t get a substantial change in and media director at US Solar Institute, said: “Residential solar rebate funds were all claimed the grid power consumption, but we reduce the heat load while getting 0.25 percent of the within the first 30 seconds. Business solar rebates followed suit and were completely building’s power requirement,” responded claimed in the next three minutes.”

Hamilton. “I think it could work. It’s worth It is easy to see why. Without $75,000 thinking through more carefully.” from the FPL rebate program and the federal I followed this thought on a recent visit tax credit, Boyd said the company’s payback to Fort Myers, Florida. One of my stops would grow from five years to 25 years. was Synergy Networks, a local ISP that also Commenting on the Synergy Networks provides colocation and hosting services. installation, Hamilton said he still likes the My contact at Synergy did not know it, but I idea of a rooftop solar array as an additive had an ulterior motive for my visit. Synergy Networks has a data center and a roof-mounted source of renewable energy: “It’s clearly a good business decision in many jurisdictions with solar array. As Ken Boyd, vice president of favorable tax benefits, but it will not meet the finance and business development, showed total power needs of the facility.” me around, he noticed my interest in a large There are also intangible benefits from conference room monitor that was tracking using a renewable resource such as solar the solar array’s performance.

Boyd showed me a picture of the building’s power. It allows positive marketing. Boyd agreed, telling me clients are impressed the roof. It’s stuffed full of solar panels. The array company is dedicated to renewable resources. consists of Trina Solar 60 cell, 250-watt, 15.6 It’s also important to Synergy staff. “The fact percent maximum-efficiency panels that are that Synergy is helping reduce its impact on the wired together using micro-inverters, and environment by using solar power makes me management software from Enphase Energy. proud to work here,” said Logan Tygart, senior The total array outputs 44kW. system administrator. “It’s interesting to see Is it cost effective? Boyd gave me the how much electricity the array is producing at numbers. An average week nets 1.5-megawatt different times of the day.” hours from the array, and it replaces on average $500 worth of grid electricity each month, giving a five-year payback. Boyd made Hamilton asked us to mention that the opinions it clear that this installation makes sense, expressed here are his own and do not necessarily but he agrees with Hamilton: solar-energy represent those of his employer. work through the numbers… they just don’t seem to balance out, unless tax incentives are included. I’m not convinced having the tax base fund data center deployments is a scalable solution. And even if it could be shown that this will eventually become tax-neutral, I’m not sure we want to see data center deployments consuming hundreds of acres of land on power generation.”

Hamilton’s original post also generated some thought-provoking comments. “Your analysis seems mostly correct, but I have an alternate proposal,” Dave Anderson responded on the blog. “Solar plus data center is not an answer to how I power my data center. It is an answer to the question: I just built this huge building, what do I do with the roof?”

2,900 Number of acres of the 280-megawatt solar array in Monterey County, California

44

kW

Total array output of Trina Solar 60 cell, 250-watt, 15.6 percent maximum-efficiency panels

30

secs

Time taken for residential solar rebate funds to be claimed or allocated

3

mins

Time taken for business solar rebate funds to be claimed

Reduction factors A solar panel gives maximum output when directly illuminated, but in practice sunlight will strike it at an angle, depending on the time of day, the time of year and the location.

At a higher latitude, solar arrays give less energy.

Similarly, the sun’s energy is dissipated by scattering in the atmosphere, which depends on the solar array’s altitude above sea level.

Both these factors can be calculated by a tool on the web called the Solar Power Calculator. If they are not factored in, a solar array will have unrealistic capacity ratings.

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 29

K A E R B SDN

FREE

30 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

S K A

Cover Feature

option l rise in ad a u d ra g a l re has been cted to deploy virtua e th s y a s y rtne expe aches Martin Cou ore data centers are logy appro o n m h t c u te b , ir e te to da one th s vendors h a s rk o tw e n

S

oftware defined networking (SDN) holds the potential to radically alter data center architecture in the long term, but adoption and implementation rates may remain low for the moment, with buyers wary of new, unproven and arguably overhyped technology that has little to offer in the way of standardization as yet.

Brad Casemore, research director for data center networks at research firm IDC, says that a lot of SDN standards and specifications are currently being thrashed out, but they will take time. It’s important to remember that, by its very nature, SDN is developer-driven, and the predominantly hardwareorientated standardization frameworks of the past are not the best fit for this kind of evolution.

“The old ways of doing things in standards from the IETF or the IEE are no longer as applicable in this API software and device-driven world, and the networking industry is still adapting to that,” he said.

Yet various analyst forecasts suggest that SDN-enabled products will take an increasingly large slice of the overall enterprise networking market in the future. IDC calculated that SDN-enabled physical network infrastructure, controller and network virtualization software, network and security

services and related applications, and professional services, will be worth $8bn by 2018, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 89 percent.

The significant potential of SDN lies in its decoupling of software functions from the underlying network hardware to build virtual overlays that span multiple type and brand of switches, routers and other equipment, giving network managers the ability to control forwarding and transport planes from a central console and spin up new network services and applications on-the-fly, often automatically, without having to touch the physical hardware.

But because of SDN’s reliance on software overlays, the underlying network hardware no longer needs much functionality built into its operating system or specialized ASIC-driven hardware. The central SDN controllers that program the physical and virtual switches within those overlays and direct traffic between them can run on very basic ‘white box’ switches or routers, or even sit as virtual, software-based equivalents on standardized x86 servers elsewhere in the network.

That capability has understandably struck fear into the hearts of traditional network vendors such as Cisco, Juniper Networks, Extreme Networks, HP and others, that u

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 31

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Cover Feature u see the potential for a multibilliondollar market for expensive, full-function network hardware to shrink considerably over the next decade. And rather than fight SDN’s momentum, all these companies have chosen to embrace the technology in a bid to keep themselves relevant and profitable in the long term – in some cases contributing to open-source SDN initiatives espousing interoperable SDN controllers able to manage any brand of equipment, and in others simultaneously developing slightly different versions of the same code, which provide some competitive advantage through close integration with their open operating systems or physical hardware.

Indeed, Casemore points out that two major alternatives currently being put forward for next-generation data center networks come from networking and storage hardware giants that previously joined forces to address the data center market through their Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) platform. Having parted company, Cisco now offers its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) based on technology acquired through its $863m purchase of Insieme Networks, while VMware claims 400 customers for its rival NSX platform built from its $1.26bn buyout of Nicira in 2012.

Elsewhere, Juniper Networks has weighed in with its Contrail SDN controller and built features that allow third-party SDN controllers to manage its hardware in virtualized networks into its other products.

HP has its own distribution of OpenStack called Helion, while Extreme Networks has released its own SDN platform based on an OpenDaylight controller. Yet all these

established vendors face a threat from startups services assurance platform (VSAP), while a host of smaller vendors – including Glue such as Cumulus Networks, which partnered Networks, CloudGenix, Viptela and Anuta with PLUMgrid to deliver an OpenStackNetworks – are addressing the SDN WAN based SDN platform running on a Linux OS orchestration problem. for bare metal or white box switches.

For the moment, SDN has been The big question remains whether implemented largely in single data centers, increased adoption of SDN software but there are moves to extend its reach platforms and SDN-enabled switches and between hosting facilities for customers that routers will result in reduced spending need to bridge virtual networks via wide-area on dedicated or customized equivalents network (WAN) links. Casemore believes featuring optimized ASICs and operating the SDN WAN is going to be much easier systems that Cisco, Juniper and others for many enterprise data centers to justify have been selling into data centers for as given the pain points they already encounter long as they have been in operation. with SaaS and the cloud, one that removes David Noguer the obstacle Bau, head of of having to service provider connect different marketing at silos of network Juniper, thinks and storage otherwise. Rather, architecture he expects that and the political any shortfall tugs of war that in sales will be can provoke. compensated “Right away The price VMware paid for the Nicira platform in by data center you can see 2012, on which it built its NSX platform, a rival to expansion, that MPLS hops Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) as hosting are an issue companies for them, and add more ports through 10Gbit/s or 100Gbit/s they are looking for ways to mitigate that,” upgrades, or add higher speed interfaces to he said. “So it [SDN WAN] fits a compelling existing switches. “If you walk into a data business need, and that is why you see so center today, one quarter of it will have empty much investment in a lot of SDN startups, spaces in which to put more servers,” he said. plus activity from established vendors such as “Growth does not come from ripping out Cisco, Riverbed, Silverpeak and Citrix.” and replacing old hardware in this market Nuage Networks is busy extending anyway – it is still about new hardware and its virtual overlays over the IP and the more you put in, the more you have to Ethernet WAN connections within invest in other layers, whether top-of-rack telecommunications and cloud service switches, core networks or MPLS.” provider networks with its virtualized

1.26bn

$

OpenDaylight

OpenStack

Backed by Linux Foundation, the OpenDaylight consortium is a collaborative, open-source initiative with broad vendor support. It has released two versions of its open, standardsbased SDN controller platform to date: Hydrogen, which offers three different distributions, one designed for students of the technology and another aimed at service providers. A later release, Helium, gives SDN developers 11 new protocols, applications and technologies, a new user interface and installation process, deeper integration with OpenStack, and Apache Karaf container support.

OpenStack is the open-source software initiative for building clouds, originally developed by Rackspace Hosting and North American Space Agency (NASA) in 2010. It is now controlled by the OpenStack Foundation and counts more than 200 members, including network hardware manufacturers, telcos, chip makers and software companies. It releases new distributions every six months, with interoperability with SDN controllers and virtual switches and support for a growing list of SDN plug-ins added via a new element Neutron (formerly Quantum) in 2013.

Open Compute Project

Open Network Operating System

Incubated by social networking company Facebook, the Open Compute Project was designed as a data center technology-sharing initiative that originally concentrated on using SDN to build an open, OS-agnostic top-of-rack or ‘white box’ switch. Its focus has since extended to server design and storage, and now boasts 150 member companies, including Arista Networks, Broadcom, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Rackspace Hosting and VMware, and thousands of participants working on eight different projects.

The Open Networking Lab (ONLab), backed by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), released the Open Network Operating System (ONOS) – an SDN/ NFV-enabled open-source switch/router operating system that is designed for white box hardware in cloud service provider networks – in December 2014, after proponents criticized OpenDaylight for being too close to the network vendors looking to tie SDN functions into their own hardware operating systems.

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 33

Software defined starts to get traction The market is moving towards software-defined utilities in the data center, but there is a lot of variation between countries and markets. Peter Judge reports

Peter Judge Global Editor @peterjudgeDCD

I

f you believe reports, you would expect data centers to have become software defined long ago. Almost as soon as virtualization became a thing, vendors predicted that infrastructure would be turned into resource pools of computer, storage and networing that could be optimized, consolidated and consumed on demand.

Of the three services, softwaredefined compute has moved the furthest, with virtualization now expected, and a move to containers driving some of the overheads out.

Software-defined storage is well supported within vendors’ offerings, but these are likely to be proprietary.

Software-defined networking (SDN), driven by the Open Compute Project and OpenDaylight, aims to provide commodity bare-metal switches that run open-source software providing virtual network functions.

IT FOOTPRINT OF SOFTWARE-DEFINED UTILITIES IN 2015: CENSUS SAMPLES

34 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

Intending to deploy

In-house 44% Physical racks

External 18% Physical racks

20% 19% Virtualized/cloud Cloud located within firewall externally

In 2015, data center managers have big intentions, according to research from DCD Intelligence.

The analyst group’s most recent census finds that around 15.3 percent of the global industry plans to deploy “software-defined utilities” this year, while 17.7 percent of the industry has already started to do so.

The breakdown by countries and industry shows there is some fragmentation. Many European countries are ahead of the US in the adoption of software-defined networking. The Netherlands leads the way with 35 percent already deploying; France has 24 percent, and Germany is on 19 percent.

Broken down by sector, we find that colocation and business services have been the fastest adopters, with more than 25 percent deploying already. Other sectors such as finance and media are also showing enthusiasm for

IT & Networks Profile of software-defined utilities deployment into 2014 and projected

to utilities.

2015 byDeployment sector: % Census sample Profile of software-defined into 2014 and projected to 2015 by sector: % Census sample 2013/14 2014/15

the idea. Perhaps not surprisingly, the ever-cautious public sector is the laggard, with less than 10 percent using software-defined utilities.

Finally, DCDi looked at the make up of the IT estate within the early adopters. As you would expect, companies using software defined are more virtualized and more outsourced than the rest.

2013/14

2014/15

30% 25% 20% 15% 10%

Within the leaders’ group, around 44 percent is in-house and rack-based, compared with 54 percent for the whole census. Around 20 percent is virtualized in-house IT, compared with less than 16 percent for the whole sample.

Stepping outside the in-house data center, both groups have about 20 percent of their IT in outsourced racks, but, not surprisingly, the softwaredefined fans use more cloud – at 17 percent of their IT compared with 11 percent from the total group.

It’s a familiar story to some extent.

The big marketing stories always turn into a slow and incremental tale of implementation. Like other changes in the data center, the move to software defined is moving perceptibly, and delivering benefits along the way.

5% 0%

Total

IT services

Colocation

Media & Telecoms

Public Sector

Finance

Personal services

Adoption rates of software-defined utilities in 2014 (DCDi) THE NETHERLANDS

35%

UK

11%

US

17%

GERMANY

RUSSIA

15%

19%

MAINLAND CHINA

SPAIN

15%

4%

FRANCE

24%

INDIA

13%

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Visit www.ceedacert.com to find out how CEEDA could help you demonstrate your leadership in energy efficiency and improve performance.

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Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 35

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AWARDS 2015

YOUR GUIDE TO MAKING AN ENTRY Everyone likes their name up in lights, so why not make the effort this year to tell the world about a great project you have been working on, or a team that you are part of, that is pioneering the way for others in the industry. Not to mention that simply by sharing your work, you might be making the world a better place.

Our newly launched web platform will make it easier than ever for you to create and track your winning entries.

For more information visit:

www.datacenterdynamics.com/awards

2015 WHICH AWARDS CATEGORIES ARE FOR YOU? THE ENTERPRISE DATA CENTER AWARD ● ● ● ● ●

DCD AWARDS CEREMONIES

The “enterprise” class data center is the IT backbone of many of the world’s largest organisations. Often referred to as “on-premise” or “in-house” facilities, they are typically complex heterogeneous environments, which run a multitude of different applications, and will more likely than not have to deal with numerous upgrades over their lifespan while adapting to a plethora of new business requirements and technologies.

The winner of this award will demonstrate an innovative and pioneering approach to the design of a new data center or a major retrofit/upgrade to an existing facility.

Asia Pacific 16 September, 2015 Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

THE INTERNET DATA CENTER AWARD ● ● ●

EMEA 10 December, 2015 Lancaster London Hotel

Latin America 6 October, 2015 Club Ragga, Mexico City

The “service provider” data center is specifically built to house someone else’s critical IT infrastructure, and as such faces many additional challenges to our previous two categories. Often referred to as “outsourced” infrastructure this sector

THE DATA CENTER IMPACT AWARD ●●

Brazil 10 November, 2015 Buffet del’Orso, São Paolo US & Canada 1 December, 2015 Capitale, New York City

The “internet” class data center is implicit to all aspects of the online economy. From e-commerce to social networks, the Internet of Things and everything in between, they are mission critical. Often referred to as “web-scale” or “hyper-scale” facilities, they are typically homogenous environments, ones that run a select set of applications with very defined requirements. They regularly introduce the most cutting-edge technologies and platforms for marginal gains that translate into massive efficiencies at scale.

The winner of this award will demonstrate an innovative and pioneering approach to the design of a new data center or a major retrofit/upgrade within an existing facility either as a standalone project or in a multitenant environment.

THE SERVICE PROVIDER DATA CENTER AWARD ● ● ● ● ●

contains a wide spectrum of players, from “wholesale” to “retail” colocation providers, IaaS, cloud and managed services and telecommunications operators.

The winner of this award will demonstrate an innovative and pioneering approach to the design of a new “service provider” data center or a retrofit/upgrade of an existing facility.

It’s not all just business growth and corporate gain; in some instances data centers can be engineered in such a way as to “give back” to the community at large. “Positive impact” might be achieved through a committed integration into the local economy, an on-going contribution to improved local infrastructure, the enhancement of the local environment through heat exchange and/or energy recovery processes as well as through setting new standards in regard to the local impact of its technologies and resource requirements.

This award will be presented to the project which best demonstrates “going the second mile” in the desire for the data center to have a positive impact within local communities and surrounding areas.

THE PUBLIC SERVICES DIGITAL DELIVERY AWARD ● ● ●

REGIONS KEY ● Asia Pacific ● Latin America ● Brazil ● US & Canada ● EMEA

The role of the public sector and Government in the IT and data center world is well established, being in many countries the largest user of such services. Government is increasingly active in the development of models to deliver its own services to relevant stakeholders and ensuring the levels of infrastructure, education and investment to make this happen. This category is designed to recognise achievement in Government and public sector digital delivery models.

This winner of this award will excel in demonstrating the leadership required to bring together the disparate groups inside and outside of Government necessary to deliver a successful project.

THE MODULAR DEPLOYMENT AWARD

●●●●●

more than anything the power that creative and focused thinking can have in developing solutions that will make a real and positive difference to data center design, operation and management.

Technological advances in the development of servers and in the equipment that is required to support them have over time created a THE ENERGY EFFICIENCY breed of data center that are able to sidestep IMPROVERS AWARD ● ● ● ● ● the rules of real estate that apply to larger ‘fixed’ facilities and which can be located or The current drive towards greater energy even moved on a more temporary basis to efficiency in the data center industry has where they are needed. put additional pressure on owners This Award will be given to the and operators to improve the modular, containerized or ‘pod’ performance of their existing Over data center which best symbolises facilities, in particular those the flexibility, versatility and facilities designed and fitted scalability of this type of data before power consumption Award entries center. And it’s not just about the became a critical issue. submitted precariousness, novelty or ‘level This Award will be presented since 2007 of difficulty’ of the location, it’s also to the organisation that can about the added value this represents demonstrate the success of any to the organization that has invested in project it has instigated to improve the this data center option whether through the energy efficiency of a single or group of ability to site IT facilities where none would facilities through a journey of measurement, otherwise be possible, or through the ability benchmarking, analysis, recommendation to build up to a larger data center through and implementation to a verifiable outcome. modular units.

1800

DATA CENTER CRITICAL ENVIRONMENT TEAM OF THE YEAR ● ● ● ● ● Everything that happens inside the data center depends directly or indirectly upon the people charged with design, operation and management of the facility. Since the data center professional is rarely working in isolation, this places an added premium upon the development, management and motivation of effective teams to carry the operation forward.

This Award seeks to recognize team achievement in situations where the team has been convened for a special purpose or task relating to the data center environment above and beyond everyday duties.

This may be at any stage of the ‘strategizing’, design, construction, fit out, operation, refit or decommissioning of a data center just so long as it represents a ‘special assignment’ or series of activities’ in the life of the data center.

CRITICAL ENVIRONMENT FUTURE THINKING AWARD ● ● ● At the heart of every product or solution that moves the data center industry forward is a great idea and this Award is about recognising the innovation and thinking that is shaping the next generation of cutting edge data center solutions. With the challenges confronting the industry now moving quicker and hitting harder than ever before so the solutions developed in response need to raise the bar continually in terms of innovation, ease of deployment and ‘real world’ application.

All our previous winners demonstrate

DATA CENTER TRANSFORMATION PROJECT OF THE YEAR ● ● ● ● ●

In the age of hyper-convergence, data center transformation is about combining technologies, services, IT processes, and skills to transform the environment into one that is responsive, agile, sustainable, and automated.

From consolidation and virtualization projects to creating on-demand environments the outcome of a successful project is invariably better performance, economies of scale and the flexibility required for changing business circumstances.

This award will be presented to the project that most clearly demonstrates the success of both their strategy and its implementation and that embodies the spirit of interdepartmental collaboration in the journey.

JUDGING CRITERIA & ENTRY REQUIREMENTS In Round 1 of the judging process the entrant must answer 3-4 questions regarding their project including relevant background information. This is done using our new online awards management system.

Full details of the requirements are available on each award category page.

In addition to these written responses, entrants should upload supporting documentation in the form of PDF and/or JPEG only, to include design presentations, articles, white papers or graphics (limited to 4 documents). These will also be taken into consideration to determine the shortlisted finalists.

In Round 2 judges will ask further questions about the entries using the online awards platform. Shortlisted finalists will be expected to provide timely responses in order to meet the deadline requirements. In the event of a tie, finalists may be required to attend a live presentation - this is at the discretion of the Chair of the judging panel.

Good luck with your entry!

Winners EMEA 2014

THE “OPEN“ DATA CENTER INNOVATION AWARD ●

YOUNG MISSION CRITICAL ENGINEER OF THE YEAR ● ●

The “Open” revolution, inspired by the work of OpenStack, Open Compute, the Linux Foundation and other major opensource efforts is empowering the industry to develop more intelligent and free-flowing infrastructure across the whole IT stack, from the data center facility right through to the cloud.

This award will be presented to an individual, team or organisation that has developed an innovative data center product or service based on the principals of opensource.

The future of any industry depends on the quality of the young people it can attract.

The data center industry is no different and the historically low profile of the data center as a career choice combined with increasing management and operational complexity and local shortages of suitably qualified staff places a premium on attracting new blood into the industry. New technologies and new platforms require new skills, so this year we are opening up this category to the whole mission critical “stack”, to include M&E, systems, architecture and software professionals.

This award will be presented to the individual that shows a track record of achievement in project leadership and delivery and a higher profile in our industry than their tender years would suggest.

THE “OPEN“ DATA CENTER PROJECT AWARD ● ● ● The “Open” revolution, inspired by the work of OpenStack, Open Compute, the Linux Foundation and other major opensource efforts is empowering the industry to develop more intelligent and free-flowing infrastructure across the whole IT stack, from the facility right through to the cloud.

This award will be presented to a data center project that has used an “open” approach or methodology in whole or in part and that demonstrates its success over and above the parameters of a traditional deployment.

CLOUD JOURNEY OF THE YEAR ● ● ● ● ● With such a vast array of cloud offerings to choose from, and volumes of claims, counterclaims, technical material and promises to wade through, starting out or taking new directions in the cloud can be a daunting prospect.

Notwithstanding, the “cloud” in all its forms touches nearly all IT delivery models, whether they are “public”, “private” or as “hybrid”.

This Award will be presented to the organisation that can demonstrate an innovative or pioneering approach to cloud adoption that best matches business objectives meeting corporate requirements in terms of risk, availability and security.

THE DATA CENTER EVANGELIST AWARD ●

● ●

This Award recognizes a company or individual who in the view of the judges has done the most over the past 12 months to build the profile of the data center industry to key stakeholder groups whether they be investors, shareholders, financiers, owners, operators, the media and/or government.

In each Awards region the judging panel comes together to nominate worthy candidates and decide upon the recipient. No external nominations are accepted and there are no finalists.

AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO THE DATA CENTER INDUSTRY ● ● ● ● ● Every industry has its thought leaders and pioneers who will always be revered for their contributions. Previous winners of this Award are distinguished by extensive service to the data center industry through publication, education, developing innovation and active involvement with data center community globally. In each Awards region the judging panel nominates candidates and decides the winner. No external nominations are accepted and there are no finalists.

After 8 years establishing itself as the leading industry awards programme globally, we are making exciting changes to the award categories and to the judging process that better reflect the evolving market dynamics of its people, its projects and its practices.

Join some of the world’s most known brands on the winners podium.

For more information visit:

www.datacenterdynamics.com/awards

The value of independent awards programmes is widely recognized. Not only do they showcase excellence to a wider community, but they also make an impact on morale and motivation for companies that enter. The changes to the DCD Awards programme will make for better competition in what are without doubt the most coveted of awards in our industry today.”

Ian Bitterlin, Chairman of the Judges EMEA

Opinion

Are utilities really the bad guys? T Cloud providers are asking for green tariffs, but Peter Judge says electricity firms are not playing ball

he regular Greenpeace Clicking Clean reports have settled into a role where they provide something for everyone – and the latest edition is no exception. Clicking Clean picks green winners who can boast about the endorsement. It finds villains for environmental activists to attack. And the report itself is a useful target for those in the industry who want to criticise the way it oversimplifies the business of running data centers.

However, the report has real value. It’s got the right aims – to encourage efficiency and renewable energy use. It ranks cloud providers according to their energy strategy, including their use of renewable energy, their ‘advocacy’ for renewables, and their efforts on efficiency and sources.

It provides the usual green heroes and villains in the cloud, but it also turns its sights on the players behind the scenes – the utilities.

Service providers might criticize the rankings, saying they have other things to juggle, including reliability, security and price.

Greenpeace doesn’t understand everything about data centers.

It’s an outsider – but that means it will say things that insiders never would.

Greenpeace gives Apple straight ‘As’ across the table because, among big tech firms, it’s a strong advocate for using renewable energy. A year ago, CEO Tim Cook famously told shareholders who don’t like Apple’s renewable policy that they could invest in some other company.

Amazon is the villain. It’s given a low score for efficiency, which I’d say is unfair as you don’t run data centers as big as Amazon without having to watch the power bills. Amazon promised in

November that it would eventually use 100 percent renewable energy – and gets a ‘C’ grade for its commitment – but it scores low on transparency because it hasn’t yet said how it will get there.

There’s no roadmap to renewables from Amazon, like the ones from Google and Facebook.

The other ‘F’ grade in the table goes to Oracle, by the way, for its renewable energy commitment.

It’s one of the few big cloud players that hasn’t got a promise to go renewable, let alone a roadmap.

But are utilities the real bad guys? I’m more positive about Greenpeace’s attack on the utility companies, many of which have monopolies and show no enthusiasm in getting power from renewable sources.

Duke Energy in North Carolina now offers a green tariff, prompted

by Google and Facebook, which have data centers there. But that tariff is so badly designed that no one has signed up to it: “The design and price structure have been such a barrier that so far no companies have agreed to purchase renewable energy under the program.”

Dominion Resources in Virginia and the Taiwan Power Company are also singled out by Facebook for offering green tariffs that look good on paper but which charge a premium so high that no one is signing up.

Facebook claims that extortionate green tariffs are an anachronism, as renewable energy is increasingly available at parity with fossil power.

The internet – like the rest of us – must move to renewable energy. If companies are blocking this, they deserve a bit of attention from activists.

Greenpeace is an outsider - it doesn’t understand everything about DCs

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 41

Hoodies hooked up to the IoT – are you worried yet?

It’s the security event season, so Bill Boyle takes a look at the health of the security industry and asks if the data center is ready for a massive attack

A

cording to research issued recently, worldwide security software revenues totalled $21.4bn in 2014, a 5.3 percent increase from 2013. However, slow growth in endpoint protection platforms and a decline in consumer security software – which together account for 39 percent of the market – offset the strong performance of high-growth areas, such as security information and event management (SIEM), secure web gateway (SWG), identity governance and administration (IGA) and enterprise contentaware data loss prevention (DLP).

The overall market growth was up slightly from 4.9 per cent in 2013, according to research outfit Gartner. Even though the SWG segment experienced single-digit growth in 2014, cloud-based and hybrid SWG deployments are becoming increasingly popular. As organisations’ corporate data traffic becomes more exposed to the internet, and moves out of the control of traditional network security boundaries, SWG technologies continue to be an important piece of the overall security technology strategy of most organisations.

As we move into that time of the year, when IT security conferences vie for our attention and the same old companies try to sell us the same old ‘solutions’, it is interesting to see how the security landscape around us is morphing.

The venture capitalists who attended the recent RSA security conference in the US are very excited about the proliferation of internet-connected devices. The systems in our homes, our cars and on our persons are all increasingly monitored, with data available to us in real time. The same is

true for industrial infrastructure. Bridges, roads, power plants and airports are all increasingly connected, with large control systems that are becoming automated. This adds even more threat surfaces for cyber criminals, with very scary implications.

Security companies such as ThetaRay are being founded to better protect “operational” networks and industrial systems. ThetaRay is working with GE to secure industrial networks. We discuss SCADA in greater detail later in this feature.

The adoption of public cloud infrastructure and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions in large and mid-sized companies continues at a dizzying pace. IT has less and less visibility of where critical applications are running and sensitive data is being stored. This has created more attack surfaces for cyber criminals. As a result, cyber-security companies building solutions to monitor activity in the public cloud and helping to lock down critical data are gaining traction. Companies such as Palerra and Netskope provide visibility and a modicum of control for others in this area.

Symantec was once again the largest security software vendor by revenue, although the company suffered its second consecutive year of revenue decline, down 1.3 percent to $3.7bn (see Table).

A 6.2 percent decrease in the consumer security software segment (which forms 53 percent of Symantec’s security software revenue) was the primary cause of the decline in overall revenue growth.

Security software revenue for runner-up Intel (McAfee) grew 4.6 percent in 2014 to reach $1.8bn. Revenue declines in two of its major markets (consumer security software and endpoint protection platforms), which

42 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

Symantec suffered a second consecutive year of revenue decline, down 1.3 percent to $3.7bn

Security

that all software and systems are up to date.

In 2014, Dell saw 202,322 SCADA attacks form 75 percent of its security software Too often with industrial companies, systems in Finland, 69,656 in the UK, and 51,258 in the revenue, balanced the relatively good US. Buffer overflow vulnerabilities continue to that are not used every day remain installed performance in other segments. and untouched as long as they are not causing be the primary attack method, accounting for Since many more attacks are emanating problems. However, should an employee 25 percent of the attacks. from a compromised or ill-intentioned one day connect that system to the internet, Because companies are only employee, protecting the endpoint it could become a threat vector for SCADA required to report data breaches has become the focus of security attacks. Remember that the virulent Stuxnet that involve personal or payment specialists. That’s a good thing, malware program used SCADA systems that information, SCADA attacks because the endpoint is now were compromised to worm its way into an often go unreported. As a result, much more complex with the Iranian nuclear reactor and immobilize it. other industrial companies proliferation of mobile devices. increase in IBM Make sure your network only allows within the space might not even In third place, IBM’s security SIEM products connections with approved Internet Protocols. know a SCADA threat exists until software revenue grew 17 percent Follow operational best practices for limiting they are targeted themselves. This in 2014 to reach $1.5bn. Its SIEM exposure, such as restricting USB ports if lack of information sharing, combined software products grew 21 percent, with the vulnerability of industrial machinery they aren’t necessary and ensuring that driven by strong adoption of this category Bluetooth is disabled. due to its advanced age, means that we can of products by organisations and managed In addition, reporting and sharing likely expect more SCADA attacks to occur in security service providers (MSSPs) alike. information about SCADA attacks can help the coming months and years. ensure the industrial community as a whole So how do you protect against SCADA SCADA, or supervisory control and data is aware of emerging threats. attacks? The first thing to do is to make sure acquisition, is a system operating with coded signals over communications channels so as to provide control of remote equipment TOP SECURITY SOFTWARE VENDORS WORLDWIDE – 2013-2014 (using typically one communication channel (MILLIONS OF DOLLARS) per remote station). Unfortunately, SCADA Company 2014 Revenue 2014 2013 2013-2014 attacks have doubled in the past year, MarketShare (%) Revenue Growth (%) according to Dell’s 2015 Annual Threat Report.

In 2014, Dell saw a doubling in the Symantec 3,690 17.2 3,738 -1.3 incidents of SCADA attacks compared with Intel 1,825 8.5 1,745 4.6 2013. International SCADA attacks increased IBM 1,486 6.9 1,270 17.0 from 91,676 in January 2012 to 163,228 in January 2013, and 675,186 in January 2014.

Trend Micro 1,052 4.9 1,110 -5.2 This is worrying. The majority of these attacks EMC 798.0 3.7 760 5.0 targeted Finland, the United Kingdom and the United States, likely because SCADA systems Others 12,571 58.8 12,995 -3.2 are more common in these regions and more Total 21,422 100.0 20,348 5.3 likely to be connected to the internet.

17%

Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 43

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Issue 05, June 2015 • datacenterdynamics.com 45

Viewpoint

Whateverrr...

S

FPGA margins went off the charts and they morphed from a ‘device’ into a ‘market’

46 datacenterdynamics.com • June 2015, Issue 05

oftware-defined networks (SDN) essentially decouple the administrative mechanism of network traffic, forwarding decisions from network systems (switches, routers) to a centralized server, leaving data path elements or packetforwarding mechanisms at the network system.

For a network system, two fundamental elements are critical: network OS and packet forwarding (hardware and firmware). In SDN, network OS is removed from switches and routers to a centralized controller.

Applications such as border gateway protocol (BGP) and open shortest path first (OSPF) can be chained or placed in the same servers through ‘northbound API.’ This creates huge potentials for network virtualization.

Telecom service providers seem to prefer a similar yet distinct instrument of virtualization – NFV (network function virtualization) – the goal of which is to reduce CAPEX while making network functions flexible and scalable without having to relinquish the entire control plane at end devices. Think of such solutions as a mix of SDN and traditional networking concepts. Service providers – at their own discretion, the theory goes – can decide where to virtualize the apps or services they want while answering CAPEX, flexibility, security and scalability questions simultaneously.

This notion of function virtualization gets a helping hand from programmable chip designers that have included the capability of traditional SOC (system-on-chip), high-speed and processing powers with the programming flexibility of their latest fieldprogrammable gate arrays (FPGAs).

FPGAs were originally added to systems at the last minute to make one component talk to another.

Then the folks who design the network switches that power the internet and telephone networks worked out that FPGAs were crucial enablers when it came to routing packets from point A to point B. They built boxes with hundreds of FPGAs, and their appetite for bigger, faster devices became insatiable. Margins went off the charts, and FPGA morphed from a type of device into a ‘market.’

As a result, Xilinx and Altera became multibillion-dollar enterprises in the slipstream of the Big Bandwidth rollout.

As I wrote this article it was announced that Intel had bought Altera for $16bn. We need to examine Altera’s SDx’ (software-defined-whatever) series with real interest.

• Bill Boyle - Global Managing Editor @billboyleDCD

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