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Archive for the 'Reliability' Category
June 11th, 2008 [by Doug Alder]
The datacenter is moving forward. Operational in Q2, 2009 it will be the most advanced, and , datacenter in North America.
- 150,000 sq. ft of and datacenter space
- 70,000 sq. ft.
- , , , 300sq.ft.+ , 5000sq.ft. , and 20,000 sq. ft. of () .
- Extremely . No earthquakes, no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no floods. Kelowna is rated as one of the very to build a datacenter
- Fully , and
- Lowest () in the business. Most datacenters require 3+ Watts of incoming power for each Watt a server needs (PUE 3). The other 2 Watts are consumed in cooling the servers and other IT tasks. gigaCENTER has a PUE of 1.3, that is it only requires three tenths of a Watt more than what the servers and IT infrastructure requires.
- to maximize cooling capacity. Reduces power consumption.
- Uses IBM’s revolutionary to store excess cooling capacity during off-peak hours for use during peak hours. Reduces power consumption.
- . Water cools the front of the rack enclosure to further reduce power usage. 300+ Watts per sq.ft. power density compared to the standard 100 to 200 W/sq. ft.
- : gigaCENTER is fed by dual hydroelectric power suppliers coming from two separate substations to gigaCENTER’s own dedicated substation. Hydroelectric power is zero carbon power. In addition gigaCENTER has an excess capacity of standby bi-fuel generators (natural gas and diesel/biodiesel) to ensure no interruptions to service should the need ever arise.
- gigaCENTER is a . This allows for expansion as needed, further as only the modules in use need power and HVAC.
As you can see from above, this is a datacenter like none other you’ve experienced before. RackForce is now pre-selling colocation space in gigaCENTER so don’t miss out on this opportunity, we expect it to sell out fast. Contact Doug Alder (dalder at rackforce.com) or Jay Robinson (jrobinson at rackforce.com) on our gigaCENTER sales team now to get started.
[Update June 11, 1:28pm]
IBM has issued a press release on its help building gigaCENTER
Canada’s Largest Green Data Center Being Built by gigaCENTER With Help of IBM
KELOWNA, BC and MONTREAL – 11 Jun 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) has signed an agreement to help build a $ CDN 75 million, 150,000 square foot “green” data center in the heart of British Columbia with gigaCENTER Services Corporation, in partnership with RackForce Networks.
The new facility called gigaCENTER Services Corp will be among the most efficient and “greenest” large-scale data centers in Canada. It is being developed using IBM’s modular approach and will include power and cooling capabilities to support a variety of technologies from high-density blade servers to mainframes.
“We are building a data center with IBM in a safe and secure location to respond to growing issues about natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods,” said Tim Dufour, CEO of both RackForce and gigaCENTER. “This center will support the latest technologies using ‘green’ hydro-generated power and the most efficient, environmentally friendly design. The IBM design is calculated at a Power Usage Effectiveness rating of 1.38, which will mean our facility will be among the most efficient in the industry.”
IBM products and services will be delivered over the three-year construction, with the first phase scheduled to open in Q2 2009. When completed, the facility will support 70,000 square feet of raised-floor data center space and create jobs for up to 100 employees.
Customers of the new center will be able to rent space in increments as small as one cabinet, up to dedicated cages and private rooms. The center will provide facilities to support on demand server capacity services and Business Continuity and Resiliency Services, delivered through RackForce and IBM Global Services.
“A year ago when IBM launched Project Big Green, one of its goals was to help identify ways to optimize data center usage and reduce energy consumption needs,” said Steve Sams, IBM vice president, Global Site and Facilities Services. “This new data center is an example of this initiative. By offering ‘green’ colocation and data center services, gigaCENTER and IBM will enable enterprises to meet their corporate and IT environmental goals.”
About RackForce
RackForce is a leading provider of green data center infrastructure and network services from its strategically located facilities in the heart of British Columbia, Canada. Through its superior data center design, automated systems and virtualization expertise it provides highly reliable On Demand servers, colocation and connectivity to a worldwide customer base.
About gigaCENTER
gigaCenter Services Corporation is a leader in the design, construction and operation of premium green data centers engineered to support the rigorous computing demands of today and the future. gigaCENTER will provide power and cooling capabilities to support a variety of technologies including high density blade servers, virtualized server clusters and mainframes.
About IBM
For more information about IBM, go to www.ibm.com.
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July 25th, 2007 [by Jay Robinson]
RackForce is joining the select crowd of service providers who offer an to meet its customers enterprise backup storage needs. We chose the on our IBM () using an N5200 SAN controller with 4700 disk arrays capable of over 50 Terabytes of storage as the best solution for all of our customers. TSM will allow our customers to their , , and to tape or disk and retrieve those backups when they need them, from a complete backup restore to individual file restores. This next step allows RackForce to provide abilities and to be a .
The following is info from IBM’s site about their .
The 24×7 availability of mission-critical data and applications is no longer a goal—it’s a business necessity. The IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is designed to provide centralized, automated data protection that can help reduce the risks associated with data loss while also helping to reduce complexity and address compliance with regulatory data retention requirements.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager enables you to protect your organization’s data from failures and other errors by storing backup, archive, space management and bare-metal restore data, as well as compliance and disaster-recovery data in a hierarchy of offline storage. Because it is highly scalable, Tivoli Storage Manager can help protect computers running a variety of different operating systems, connected together through storage area networks (SANs). It uses Web-based management, intelligent data move-and-store techniques and comprehensive policy-based automation.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager’s core functions include:
~ Backup and Recovery Management and Archive Management ~ Disaster Preparation Planning and Recovery ~ NDMP Backup for Network Attached Storage ~ Small and Large Tape Libraries ~ Compliance with the most stringent regulatory requirements ~ Invisible, real-time file replication protectionAttributes that set Tivoli Storage Manager apart:
~ Easy Management of Multiple Types of Inactive Data in a Hierarchical Repository ~ Lower Storage Cost through Intelligent Hierarchy of Storage ~ Centralized, Comprehensive Management ~ Reduced Network Bandwidth through Intelligent Data Movement ~ Policy-Based Automation
For more on TSM features, please contact RackForce directly and our customer experience team will be happy to assist you.
Phone 1-866-468-1158 or +1-250-717-2340
www.rackforce.com
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June 5th, 2007 [by Doug Alder]
First let me say this post is not about whether Linux or Windows is better, both, when used properly by knowledgeable administrators, are excellent operating systems for servers.
When we started selling (Virtual Private Server) plans we only offered Linux and we chose RedHat 7.3 as the OS then went to RedHat9. When RH9 reached end-of-life we switched to Fedora Core 1 (FC1) and followed that through to FC4 when we switched to . At all times we stuck with the most stable product. Stability is paramount because the amount of work required to maintain stability is always a consideration for sysadmins. Sticking with a single in offerings is also important for streamlining an operation.
Control panel makers like , and always stay with the stable releases and because they need to wait until the release is stable before they upgrade their products they often appear to be be way behind current technology. Well yes they might be but again it is a matter of stability. Control panels are meant for production servers and as such you don’t put bleeding edge software on them, at least not if you want to retain your customers (or perhaps your job).
If you need a server with the latest version of Apache (2.2.4 at time of writing), or the latest and greatest PHP (5.2.1) or MySQL (6.0 -Alpha) you need to get it without a control panel and install these items yourself. It will be a long time before the makers update their software to those versions and even then it will depend on the Linux distro as well.
I have been asked a number of times why we dropped Fedora and went with CentOS. Well the reason is simple. Fedora has a 6 month life cycle and whether you have 10 servers or thousands of servers to maintain, trying to upgrade each one to the latest and greatest stable release every 6 months becomes Herculean task. For that reason, Fedora should not be used for production servers, it’s really a desktop Linux.
maintains any particular release of Fedora for a month after final release of the second following release. For example, Fedora 7 will be maintained until a month after Fedora 9 is released. Since new releases of Fedora occur approximately every 6 months, this translates into approximately 13 months of updates for every release. This schedule allows end users to optionally skip every other release and directly upgrade from Fedora N to Fedora N+2 release.
In short there is always a good reason for these decisions even if they are not obvious to a casual observer.
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