Sierra Wireless selected IBM and Rackforce to host the offering at the recently built GigaCenter(TM) in Kelowna, British Columbia, a new generation of data center which guarantees security, scalability and high availability required by Machine-to-Machine customers to manage more and more wireless-connected devices in the field. Many data centers today are not capable of managing emerging applications and the growth of information being driven by the increasing number of people, places, and things being connected by the Internet every day. Smarter data centers such as the GigaCentre provide greater standardized control over how, where and when data center resources are used, to provide higher levels of service and reliability.

VANCOUVER, Feb. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Sierra Wireless (NASDAQ: SWIR - TSX: SW), has signed a services contract with IBM to host a new services platform dedicated to its software as a service Machine-to-Machine offering (data communication between machines through wired or wireless networks). Under the terms of the agreement, IBM will provide data center collocation facilities and services to Sierra Wireless. In 2008, Sierra Wireless deployed its first platform in France to service the European market. Now it is expanding to support its growth in North America and guarantee stable, secure and worldwide service coverage to its Machine-to-Machine customer base.

Sierra Wireless Solutions and Services provides a truly unique offering to manage any remote equipment, ranging from device management to asset data management based on a comprehensive M2M Services Platform. These hosted and operated machine-to-machine solutions dedicated to operators, device manufacturers and system integrators, have to be supported by an efficient and scalable infrastructure.

Sierra Wireless selected IBM and Rackforce to host the offering at the recently built GigaCenter(TM) in Kelowna, British Columbia, a new generation of data center which guarantees security, scalability and high availability required by Machine-to-Machine customers to manage more and more wireless-connected devices in the field. Many data centers today are not capable of managing emerging applications and the growth of information being driven by the increasing number of people, places, and things being connected by the Internet every day. Smarter data centers such as the GigaCentre provide greater standardized control over how, where and when data center resources are used, to provide higher levels of service and reliability.

"We have been looking for a North American hosting service to grow with our business and provide the highest level of services to our M2M customers," says Emmanuel Walckenaer Senior Vice President and General Manager of Sierra Wireless Solutions & Services. "The GigaCenter(TM) provides flexible space options, metered scalable power, 24/7 remote support, custom security and remote backup. It is perfectly adapted to cover large-scale deployments of machine-to-machine applications and exponential growth of wireless connected devices."

The state-of-the-art GigaCenter(TM) is among the greenest and most advanced data centers in the world, using a scalable and highly efficient modular design. Tapping into British Columbia's abundant supply of clean hydroelectric power, the GigaCenter produces less than 1/50th the carbon footprint of conventional data centers powered by coal-fired or natural gas electrical generation plants.

For more information about the Sierra Wireless Solutions & Services offering, please visit http://www.sierrawireless.com/solutions&services. To contact the Sierra Wireless Solutions & Services Sales Desk, e-mail solution-sales@sierrawireless.com.

About Sierra Wireless

Sierra Wireless (NASDAQ: SWIR - TSX: SW) products connect people and machines to wireless networks around the world. We offer an advanced, comprehensive product line, addressing consumer, enterprise, original equipment manufacturer, and specialized vertical industry markets. We also offer a wide range of professional and operated services. Our solutions are used for mobile computing, transportation, industrial M2M (machine-to-machine), enterprise, residential and consumer communications applications. For more information about Sierra Wireless, visit www.sierrawireless.com.

Product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements relate to, among other things, plans and timing for the introduction or enhancement of our services and products, statements about future market conditions, supply conditions, channel and end customer demand conditions, revenues, gross margins, operating expenses, profits, and other expectations, intentions, and plans contained in this press release that are not historical fact. Our expectations regarding future revenues and earnings depend in part upon our ability to successfully develop, manufacture, and supply products that we do not produce today and that meet defined specifications. When used in this press release, the words "plan", "expect", "believe", and similar expressions generally identify forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current expectations. They are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, changes in technology and changes in the wireless data communications market. In light of the many risks and uncertainties surrounding the wireless data communications market, you should understand that we cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements contained in this press release will be realized.

SOURCE Sierra Wireless, Inc.

PORTLAND, OR--(Marketwire - December 22, 2009) - EthicsPoint, the global authority in integrated hotline and case management services, today announced that it has established an international data center in order to meet growing demand for its software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based offerings for governance, risk and compliance programs. This investment makes EthicsPoint the first hotline and case management vendor with a data center outside the United States.

Meeting Client Needs Globally

The new international data center is part of EthicsPoint's strategic growth plan and the company's continued commitment to addressing customer needs. Currently, EthicsPoint has over 2,300 clients; approximately 40 percent of which have international operations. With demand from organizations headquartered outside of the United States growing, the new data center enables EthicsPoint to better meet the needs of existing and prospective customers with specialized data protection and data privacy demands. For example, the new facility will provide access to a data-privacy-approved location in compliance with the Article 29 Working Party of the European Union.

"The decision to build our new international data center reflects our increasingly diverse global customer base," said David Childers, CEO of EthicsPoint. "This data center will not only allow us to scale to provide reliable and secure on-demand delivery for our clients while addressing their data privacy concerns, but also reflects our strong commitment to protecting Earth's natural resources by implementing sustainable practices throughout our business."

Supporting Sustainable Business Goals

EthicsPoint selected the Canadian RackForce data center in Kelowna, British Columbia as the location for this data center. The facility, which first opened in July 2009, has been recognized as one of the greenest and most advanced data centers in North America. It leverages state-of-the-art server hardware and virtualization to minimize energy consumption. Its power comes from Renewable Hydro Power with an extremely low CO2/kWh footprint -- 1/100th of coal fired electrical generation.

EthicsPoint's application system currently processes an average of more than 100,000 transactions per day with greater than 99 percent system uptime and sub-second average server response time. The expanded storage and processing capacity will help meet current and projected user needs for availability, responsiveness and security.

About EthicsPoint

EthicsPoint enables organizations to foster a business culture of integrity and compliance. We help our clients protect their culture and reputation by facilitating the reporting and identification of issues and events of behavior that may be inconsistent with their code of conduct, to the subsequent investigation and resolution of these cases. Over 2,300 organizations use our telephone hotline, web-based reporting and case management services as a critical component of their overall governance, risk and compliance efforts.

For more information, visit www.ethicspoint.com.

Copyright 2009 EthicsPoint, Inc. EthicsPoint and the EthicsPoint logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of EthicsPoint, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Do a Google search, upload a photograph, or send a short email. We do these things automatically at home or work every day, but how often do we consider the energy costs?

The hardware that makes possible the simplest internet tasks, including servers and the huge data centres that house them, are the growth engine of  information and communications technology (ICT). And the amount of energy these servers demand – 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year – is a huge challenge facing this growing industry.

Rackforce introduces its GigaCenter to the media, the first step towards making the Kelowna data centre the largest in Canada.

Do a Google search, upload a photograph, or send a short email. We do these things automatically at home or work every day, but how often do we consider the energy costs?

The hardware that makes possible the simplest internet tasks, including servers and the huge data centres that house them, are the growth engine of  information and communications technology (ICT). And the amount of energy these servers demand – 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year – is a huge challenge facing this growing industry.

"The ICT industry is a horrible mess and most people don't understand [the energy needs] behind it," says Brian Fry, sales and marketing manager of  Rackforce, which is planning to expand its Kelowna, B.C. 'GigaCenter" into Canada's largest data centre.  "A lot of people think, 'if I use computer program instead of flying out to meetings I'll  teleconference the meeting and save the environment.'

"But they haven't calculated what their service provider is doing behind the scenes to make sure they're not having a heavy impact on the environment."

Bigger is better, but efficient is best

Rackforce, which began by charging $60 a month for data services in 2002, now counts technology leader IBM as its biggest client. And to meet demand, RackForce has just opened an initial 30,000 square feet in what is planned to be a 150,000-square-foot  "GigaCenter" in Kelowna.

When the entire facility opens in two years, it will consume enough energy to power roughly 40,000 homes daily.

That's a lot of power, but Rackforce now claims the most efficient use of power among data centres in B.C. They're currently using their space to serve more than 2,400 business and individual clients, and they've chosen Kelowna in large part due to the availability of power produced not by coal – as is the case in so many other places – but by water. Here's what Rackforce has to say on their website:

"All of RackForce's datacenters are powered by hydro-electric energy, from the Columbia River, provided by two separate providers (BC Hydro and Fortis) via two separate grids for power redundancy. Diesel generators are used only as backup power sources in the unlikely event of a power interruption from both suppliers."

As B.C. grows, so does data centre load

In 2007, BC Hydro estimated that the total server and data centre load in the province was about 800 GW/h a year, based on B.C.'s population. And the forecast was for an annual growth rate of 14%.

That's the reason BC Hydro is offering businesses juicy financial incentives and tools under the Power Smart Partner Program's Data Centre and Server Initiative. And it's why Rackforce is planning to expand its Kelowna facility to 150,000 square feet. 

"With business taking off it requires a much larger capacity than we've ever had before," says Fry. "The business we're in is so necessary, but the other part that's happening is that if you're not big enough, you become inefficient.

"About 70% of data centres run on coal-fired generation, and that's our biggest contributor to greenhouse gas," he says.

 In B.C., Rackforce is avoiding using "dirty" power in favour of hydroelectric power, which also comes at a cost among the lowest for electricity in North America.

"In our business, power is typically our single largest cost, and in B.C. it's quite affordable," he says.

Data centres thrive on efficiency

Conserving energy is important to all businesses, but it's doubly important to data centres.

"Unlike many industries that can't move quickly, our industry is going through a revolution," says Fry. He says that Rackforce moves quickly to  conserve energy by upgrading inexpensive fibre-optic cables and using the gifts of Mother Nature.

According to a recent Wired magazine article, chilly Iceland is the ideal home for data centres. There, the cooling advantage is obvious, and  geothermal and hydroelectric power keep electricity costs down.

Here in Canada, Kelowna seems to be the ideal home for the industry, in part because it's seismically sound and not prone to flooding or extreme weather. And so far, the wildfires of 2009 have not approached the Gigacenter.

Fry estimates that Rackforce, using inexpensive hydro power, is able to limit its carbon footprint to one-twentieth of the average, traditional data centre.

"The facilities are designed so efficiently they can handle the heat for the summer," he says. "And eight months of the year it's cool enough that we don't have to pay for the electricity to do the chilling."

CHBC News from Kelowna shows first video of RackForce's new GigaCenter.

The Okanagan is joining the technology big boys.

The Okanagan is joining the technology big boys.

A data centre of mind-boggling size, capacity and importance, called RackForce GigaCenter, is set to open July 15 in Kelowna to much fanfare - and questions.

Brian Fry, vice-president of sales and marketing at RackForce Networks

Such as: What is a GigaCenter?

"It's a secure place that houses all the racks that hold all the servers that hold all the websites and applications," said RackForce vice-president Brian Fry.

"It also provides all-important backup storage and disaster recovery."

To put into perspective how massive this GigaCenter is, imagine a wide-open space of 150,000 square feet (as big as a Wal-Mart) filled with row upon row of racks (thus RackForce's name) that hold the servers that run websites and computer applications and store data.

A total of 2,860 two-foot-by-three-foot racks that hold 40 servers each will be stacked two high and enclosed.

That adds up to 114,000 servers.

Each server can run or hold 1,000 websites, applications and/or data units for a capacity of 114 million applications.

The infrastructure and equipment cost is estimated to be $75 million, but the ripple effect could hit billions when one considers the value of all the websites, applications and data stored and backed up.

It all makes the GigaCenter the biggest data centre in Canada, outpacing Q9 in Toronto.

"This makes Kelowna an incredible hub of technology," said Fry.

"Almost everything we do, whether we know it or not, is run out of a data centre. This has already brought advanced people and applications to Kelowna, and it will only build and build and build from now. This is the anchor tenant for the entire Okanagan technology industry."

This centre is at 2130 Leckie Place, one of the newer buildings to the side of the former Western Star Trucks factory on Enterprise Way.

Initially, 30,000 square feet and 572 racks of servers will open July 15, with the entire 150,000, 2,860-rack capacity being hit in 2011 with new construction to house the rapid expansion.

Why Kelowna?

"IBM (the giant multinational computer company that's the marketing and sales partner in the GigaCenter) identified RackForce and the Okanagan on its own," said Fry.

"We already have established data centres here (2,700 servers in the basements of two of the Landmark office buildings in Kelowna hosting applications from 100 countries around the world), and the Okanagan fits the stability profile."

For global customers who want to make sure their websites and applications run, and for companies, governments and militaries that want to make sure their data is backed up, a stable location is necessary.

Kelowna fits the bill because it has an abundant supply of clean and cheap hydroelectric power to run the GigaCenter, and the city is in a country that doesn't pose much of a threat for terrorism, coups, civil unrest or lawlessness.

As well, the Okanagan is stable geographically, with little threat of earthquake, flood or other natural disaster.

"This really puts the Okanagan on the tech map," said Okanagan Science and Technology Council executive director Douglas MacLeod.

"This is the first of this scale, magnitude and innovation in the Valley. It's so significant for its capacity and its greenness."

The GigaCenter also uses some of the latest environmentally friendly technology. Its next-generation, high-density servers are at least 30 per cent more energy-efficient than regular servers.

While in operation, servers create heat, which will be captured and put into Kelowna's power grid for use elsewhere in the city.

As well, GigaCenter has come up with a new system to operate servers in an environment of 20 C, rather than 18 C, thus reducing its air-conditioning demand.

With the world moving to virtually all information on computers, there's insatiable demand for data centres.

With IBM's help as marketer and sales representative, the RackForce GigaCenter is well-positioned to fill up quickly with high-quality clients from around the world.

Ironically, while such a big and important operation, the GigaCenter won't create a lot of jobs.

RackForce currently has 28 employees at its head office in the Landmark IV building, and it expects to double in size when it adds all the technical, administrative and security staff needed for the GigaCenter.

RackForce started in 2001 when Tim Dufour and Brian Fry of Rossland brought their tech backgrounds together to set up the first data centres in the basements of the Landmark buildings.

Since then, Jerry Caul of Kelowna and a Kelowna investment company called B.C. Trust have come on board as co-owners.

A new generation of energy-hungry data centres is taking root in B.C.'s Interior as more businesses outsource software duties and hardware to service providers in the Internet "cloud".

A new generation of energy-hungry data centres is taking root in B.C.'s Interior as more businesses outsource software duties and hardware to service providers in the Internet "cloud".

New innovations and technologies are improving data centre efficiency, but some industry veterans and experts say that data centers, which remain major consumers of power, are still far from efficient.

Data centres are often marketed as green alternatives because they consolidate Internet products and infrastructure.

Brian Fry, vice-president of sales and marketing at RackForce Networks: pitching the company's hydro-powered data centre in Kelowna as a green alternative to coal-powered facilities in the U.S.

But, according to Brian Fry, vice-president of sales and marketing at Kelowna-based data centre operator RackForce Networks, in many cases their green branding is inaccurate.

This month RackForce, in a partnership with IBM Corp., opened an initial 30,000 square feet in a 150,000-square-foot "gigacentre" in Kelowna.

When the entire facility opens in two-to-three years, it will consume a daily diet of 40 megawatts, which is enough energy to power roughly 40,000 homes.

Nonetheless, Fry said that it will be one of the most efficient facilities of its kind.

"Everybody is going to claim to be green, but I challenge just about any company to be greener than what this facility will be."

A small number of aging data centres still hum away throughout B.C.

Telus Corp. (TSX:T;NYSE:TU) has run two in Burnaby and Victoria for more than 20 years; the British Columbia Lottery Corp. (BCLC) has operated data centres in Kamloops and Richmond since 1985 and 1988.

Telus wouldn't disclose how much energy its data centres consume annually.

But a BCLC rep said the annual energy consumption of the Crown corporations's Kamloops facility is 2.89 million kilowatt hours (KW/h); its Richmond facility consumes 350,000 KW/h.

At $0.055/KW, the BCLC's energy bill for the two facilities is approximately $180,000 a year.

The power use effectiveness (PUE) at its data centres is 2.2 and 2.0.

Telus' centres have a similar PUE. The standard data centre efficiency measurement is calculated by dividing a centre's energy consumption by the consumption of its computer infrastructure.

A PUE of 3.0 is considered, by today's standards, inefficient, while a PUE of 1.0 is impossibly efficient.

BC Hydro spokeswoman Simi Heer notes that, while new technologies and innovations are reducing the PUE of data centres, newer centres remain heavy energy consumers.

And with data centres being built larger than ever, reducing their PUE has become a major concern for building managers.

Using figures produced in a report to the United States Congress in 2007, BC Hydro estimates that the total server and data centre load in the province is about 800 GW/h a year, based on B.C.'s population.

The provincial government has projected that virtualization and other efficiencies will reduce the power consumption of its planned data centre in Kelowna by approximately 50%.

BC Hydro eliminated 292 servers and saved $61,000 in energy costs in its data centre network last year through server virtualization.

A Telus rep said the company has improved its data centres' PUE by 10% to 15% by upgrading cooling systems and older servers and virtualizing servers.

The vancouver-based telecom is one of several organizations drawing up blueprints for new data centres in B.C. cities in the Interior like Kelowna and Kamloops.

The region's main appeal to data centre operators is the cheap hydro power supplied by the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Not far south of the border, Microsoft Corp., Google, and Yahoo Inc. operate data centres near Columbia River-fed dams.

Telus plans to move some of its more energy-hungry web applications - such as billing and managed e-mail services - from its less efficient data centers to its new facility, the location of which has been short-listed but not selected.

Engineers at IBM designed RackForce's facility to have a PUE of 1.38.

Fry noted that most U.S.-based data centres are powered by coal-fired power plants.

"It makes so much sense to move servers out of those [coal-powered] data-centres and into these new cleaner data centres," he said.

RackForce is compartmentalizing - or boxing - server racks to concentrate and independently control the cooling of each series of racks.

In winter, when the temperature drops, outside air will replace electricity to cool servers.

Fry said RackForce never negotiated an exclusive rate with energy-provider FortisBC, but he added that the company is paying one of the lowest energy rates in North America.

Robert Miggins, vice-president of business development at Peer 1 Network Enterprises Inc. (TSX-V:PIX), said power supply is usually the first consideration when considering data centre expansion.

"It's not necessarily what it costs to expand square footage," said Miggins. "Sometime you will run out of power before square footage."

Vancouver-based Peer 1 opened a data centre in the United Kingdom in April and has announced plans for a new centre in Toronto.

The company is aiming to maintain a sub-2.0 PUE rating at the new facilities.

RackForce has partnered with CANARIE Inc. and the Information Technology Association of Canada to develop best practices for reducing power consumption and the environmental impact of data centres.

Said Fry: "Once it's measured, we would like to stand up on the soapbox and say, 'It's time that our industry got its act together, and this is how you do it."

Is your organization ready for cap and trade? While it's all well and good to build as "green" as possible, data centre operators need to ensure their operations are economically viable as well.

Is your organization ready for cap and trade? While it's all well and good to build as "green" as possible, data centre operators need to ensure their operations are economically viable as well.

Industry observers say data centre owners - and their customers - have to pay attention to where the data centre's power comes from if they really want to walk the line between environmental and financial responsibility.

"Most of the time when you're seeing a green story, it's going be talking about efficiency," says Brian Fry, co-founder and vice-president of sales and marketing at RackForce Networks Inc in Kelowna, B.C. "But look out the back, follow the power lines to the power source, and you'd be surprised."

The power source is the lynchpin, he says. It's great news if your servers run efficiently, and your heating and cooling systems are state of the art - but if they're powered by, say, a coal-fired generating station, how green is that? It isn't necessarily better for the environment - and it could put a big dent in the corporate pocketbook as well.

Bill St. Arnaud is a member of Telemanagement's advisory board and the chief research officer of CANARIE Inc, Canada's advanced research network headquartered in Ottawa. He sees a shift towards power-source scrutiny, both in terms of environmental and economic prudence.

The major concern: emerging cap and trade energy polices. "Many companies are not aware of the consequences," says Arnaud.

It's something the US government is seriously considering. Canadian administrators will probably follow suit, St. Arnaud figures. Cap and trade would force companies to operate below a certain environmental threshold - the amount of carbon dioxide their operations emit would have to be lower than a particular level. Companies producing more than the permitted cap would have to purchase credits from businesses producing less than the maximum carbon dioxide amount. That's the "trade" part of the equation.

What does it all mean for data centre operators? Unless they look forward to shelling out big bucks for credits, they'll need to make sure their power comes from relatively low-carbon sources, such as renewable hydro-electric systems and wind farms.

And that's just stage one. Stage two: higher green energy prices. As companies scramble to secure contracts with hydro companies and solar power providers, you can bet prices for these environmentally friendly services will skyrocket.

What's a data centre operator to do? "Get off the grid ASAP," St. Arnaud says. "It's the only way you can really be certain of your cost of power over the next 20 years."

This is why some data centre operators are looking at old hydro electric stations and generators as strategic investments. If they can produce the power themselves, they'll avoid paying arms and legs to other providers. And if they happen to produce surplus power, it could be returned to the grid for a rebate or sold to other, not-so-forward-thinking businesses.

"The big companies understand this in spades," St. Arnaud says.

Smaller firms step up

But the big companies aren't the only ones concerned about dollars and environmental sense. RackForce, for instance, is all about the green. In July the 27-person company plans to open its first eco-friendly GigaCenter data centre.

Powered by the nearby Columbia River via electricity provider Fortis, this Kelowna BC-located facility will sport "cold aisles" that concentrate the cooling effect of chillers and air conditioners for maximum efficiency. The warmer air that comes out the other side of the centre will be pumped on to help heat local condominium and office buildings. AC economizers will ensure cold air is drawn from outside if the temperature drops below 10 degrees Celsius. Proximity to the main power source - the river generators - helps reduce power-line loss as the electricity travels from the service provider to the data centre.

RackForce is building incrementally, starting with 30,000 square feet with the ability to scale up to 150,000 square feet. This also aids efficiency, because less space spells less heating and air-conditioning required.

Targeting the US as well as Canadian and European customers, RackForce could be well positioned to capitalize on a cap-and-trade system. The firm not only wants to host end-user organizations' computer resources, but it also wants to support other data centres looking to augment their own platforms.

Data centre expertise could be Canada's way out of its hewers-of-wood, drawers-of-water economy. "We need to look at renewable power as valuable as a raw log," Fry says, arguing that Canada could turn this into something more than a basic resource. "We could be the major provider of data centre and IT services."

Fry says the trick is to concentrate Canada's data centres in places that have access to green energy - hydro, for instance, is plentiful along the Columbia River in BC, and in Manitoba and Quebec.

But does that mean places like Nova Scotia, which draws plenty of power from coal, would be left out of the loop? Not necessarily. St. Arnaud mentions Bastionhost Ltd, which is creating data centres in Nova Scotia using wind and tidal energy to power the facilities. Businesses have choices.

"If companies don't take precautions in Nova Scotia, they will be very dirty," St. Arnaud says. And with cap and trade coming, "you'd price yourself right out of the market."

Price is a perpetual sticking point. But technology has an answer: virtualization. You might be hard pressed to find a data centre in North America not using or planning to use it. Virtualization transforms servers into services and essentially chops the hardware requirement, reducing the power need. But it isn't without its hazards. If data centre operators aren't careful, they could find that this energy-saving system ends up costing them in other ways.

"The pitfalls are the same as they'd be for any sizable new project," says Grant Aitken, Toronto-based area VP for VMware Inc, a software company specializing in virtualization. "If you don't plan well, don't train and don't predict the change-management issues, those are the things that are going to bite you."

VMware teams up with other companies to help keep those bites at bay. "We have partners that will go in and do a study," Aitken says. "Whether they're looking at environmental issues - that's usually an element of it, but it's not the only piece." Capital cost avoidance plays a large part as well.

"It may be the poor man's way, but we actually have an ROI tool on our website that any customer can use. If they have extremely detailed data, they can modify the default details," such as the power rates, which are set for a US average, not a Canadian average.

But it's relatively time consuming. "Somebody has to go and get those data points."

The Jevons Effect

Fry from RackForce points to the Jevons Effect as one consideration: the more efficient the technology, the more it's used. "The dilemma with virtualization is it's so easy to create servers, you end up with server sprawl."

Planning and management are important. And it's crucial to consider the physical space for the hardware as well, even if it is somewhat smaller than would have been required in a non-virtualized system. "Virtualization is an awesome idea but you need the data centre underneath to support it," Fry says.

Most industry observers agree that virtualization is a good first step towards a green data centre - but it's only one item on the environmental to-do list. If companies don't pay attention to other energy savers, and if they ignore where, exactly, their power comes from, "you might as well take a brush and paint a green stripe on your PC," St. Arnaud says.

CANARIE is leading the green charge with a $3-million call for proposals for computing and network technologies that reduce carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. Launched in June, the CANARIE Green IT Pilot Program has two objectives: to test the technical viability and usability of relocating computers and clouds to zero-carbon data centres and follow the sun/follow the wind grid; and to test the business case viability of offering carbon offsets (and/or equivalent services) to universities who reduce their carbon footprint by relocating computers and instrumentation to zero-carbon data centre. CANARIE expects to hand out $2 million for major data centre pilot projects and $1 million for developing business cases and smaller projects.

The deadline for the call for proposals (June 29) may have come and gone by the time this reaches article publication, but there are plenty of other things for data centre operators to consider. One simple tool may be the least-mentioned of the three "R's" of sustainability (reduce, reuse, recycle): reuse. It can be difficult to see the benefits of reusing old servers through the greenwash of new technologies purporting to save energy.

St. Arnaud says many data centre operators already reuse as much as possible, moving former state-of-the-art boxes down the line to support less critical applications. "It's only when servers get to be a decade old that they throw them into the recycling pile."

Aitken says older technology can only take you so far in a virtualized environment. Last-gen servers weren't designed for virtual systems. "You might be limiting the ratios you can pull, because you're going to run into bottlenecks," like memory and IO.

Sometimes it's best to break off ties with earlier technologies. That's what RackForce is doing. The company is shutting down one of its older data centres, because beside the green GigaCenter, it's relatively expensive to run and it lacks efficient designs such as cold aisles. "Back then, you'd take an open space and push a bunch of cold air into it," Fry says. "You end up with hot spots."

But the data centre in question isn't exactly ancient. It was built in 2001. Still, over the years, RackForce has worked with IBM Corp's Big Green engineering and consulting team to develop a practical formula for green data centre operation. "I think we're going to be the greenest data centre on the planet," Fry says.

Virtualization is no longer a concept merely pondered by IT departments. Instead, it's a strategy - one in which Canadian companies are fully investing. A September 2008 study of the Canadian enterprise market by IDC Canada found that 33 per cent of servers are already running in a virtualized environment and 40 per cent of companies plan to deploy virtualization at some point over the next 12 months.

Virtualization is no longer a concept merely pondered by IT departments. Instead, it's a strategy - one in which Canadian companies are fully investing. A September 2008 study of the Canadian enterprise market by IDC Canada found that 33 per cent of servers are already running in a virtualized environment and 40 per cent of companies plan to deploy virtualization at some point over the next 12 months.

That data should come as little surprise, given the potential cost savings, productivity and return-on-investment benefits of virtualization. These include a reduction in server room cooling costs, optimized server capabilities and the ability to forge stronger disaster recovery plans due to the quick restoration times made possible by a virtualized environment.

Managing an infrastructure in which physical and virtual servers co-exist, however, is not without challenges; a smooth transition to a virtualized environment requires careful upfront planning. To lay the groundwork, IT managers need to determine the exact usage requirements for each physical server and, because usage rates fluctuate throughout the day, they also require a mechanism to track the changing workloads. Management tools can help with this tracking, as well as identifying inefficient servers and acting as an extra set of eyes to help users proactively spot problems before they affect daily operations.

This level of insight into the server room is critical to any virtualization plan. Without it, companies run the risk of "virtual machine sprawl," where an excess of virtual machines actually add needless complexity to the IT environment.

Management In Action

To be truly effective, management solutions should be part of the initial discussion when all stakeholders are at the table. One organization that successfully followed this process is RackForce Networks Inc., a Kelowna-based hosting service provider. RackForce was the first hosting service provider to bring Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2 to market, and this early entry into virtualization allowed the company to understand some of the associated challenges, including how best to monitor and maintain a virtual and physical server environment while managing patch updates and application deployment.

Taking advantage of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), IT staff at RackForce gained better visibility into the company's infrastructure, getting the insight they needed to make the necessary changes to physical and virtualized server loads as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

This has helped RackForce better manage its internal systems and support its clients. Today, RackForce manages an average of four customer systems per physical server, far more efficient than the one-to-one customer per physical server model previously supported.

Greater Server Capacity

Improved client service was another unexpected bonus. The company receives hundreds of customer calls per day and the support team spent much of its time manually logging into servers to resolve issues. The team would also have to copy multiple gigabyte images between servers and configure each client's virtual environment through the Virtual Server Web interface.

With VMM, the IT team can automate this task and easily identify which server has capacity for additional workloads, allowing them to configure them as necessary.

The bottom line, however, is that virtualization can indeed lower server costs and reduce sprawl if all factors are considered and planned from the outset. With a deeper understanding of the proper balance between virtualization and management tools, business today are positioned to realize the promised cost and productivity benefits.

With cooling systems eating up half your data centre dollars, it makes sense to slash your cooling costs any way you can. But can data centres use cold weather to their advantage? The case for, and against, free cooling

With cooling systems eating up half your data centre dollars, it makes sense to slash your cooling costs any way you can. But can data centres use cold weather to their advantage? The case for, and against, free cooling

Skyrocketing energy costs and the corporate world's need to go green have compelled many data centre administrators to begin looking at new ways to cut their cooling and power spending.

Of course, we've seen the meteoric rise of system virtualization and cloud computing as a response to this issue, and most of the IT industry has reached a consensus that these technologies are indeed a viable way to consolidate and save on energy costs.

New to the power-saving debate is the notion of free cooling. Some have speculated that cold-weather countries like Canada might offer an advantage in what analysts will agree is one of the most expensive aspects of keeping a data centre up and running.

Some countries are even encouraging international businesses to consider setting up IT shops within their borders.

Last year, the Invest in Iceland Agency touted its country as one of the most competitive locations in the world for data centre operations. The country cited cheap and abundant power, low corporate taxes and an overall chilly climate as lures.But it's not as easy as simply opening up the windows and letting the cold air come in. Taking advantage of "free cooling" might actually take some time, effort, and money to achieve.

We talked to a variety of industry players about free cooling, how it fits in our increasingly cash-strapped IT organizations and whether or not the technology is an actual game-changer

The case for free cooling

According to recent data compiled by American Power Conversion Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Emerson Network Power, half of all data centre energy consumption goes to cooling systems.

Other sources have said that cooling often fits a one-to-one ratio. "For facilities cost, which is mostly cooling and energy costs, a company spends about one dollar on cooling for every one dollar it spends on computing," said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT Research Inc.

With numbers like that, the benefits of cutting down on energy consumption is unquestionable. But, despite this opportunity, the idea of free cooling has not yet garnered much interest around the world.

"Not a lot of customers have taken an interest in free cooling because they really don't know about it yet," said Brian Fry, vice-president of sales and co-founder at RackForce Hosting Inc. of Kelowna, B.C. "There's a very small percentage of the world that even understands carbon footprints in the first place."

Fry's company has teamed up with IBM Corp. to construct a 150,000-square-foot green data centre in Kelowna. The Gigacentre, which opens this spring, will allow companies to rent out space in what RackForce is calling one of the most energy-efficient data centres in the world.

A key part of the new facility, Fry said, is its free cooling mechanism. "The chiller technology has enough intelligence to know that, once it gets below 10 degrees Celsius, it will automatically shut down the evaporative cooling systems - a technology used to evaporate water through cooling machines," he said. "It just starts to take the cold air from the outside, and filter it into the data centre. We don't have to use the normal chiller processes."

Fry said that, while a company might spend up to twice as much on the chiller systems to be able to harness the outside air, the savings can be seen fairly quickly and the technology will essentially pay for itself.

And, if new U.S. President Barack Obama has his way, he added, a world of carbon credits will boost the demand for free cooling.

“You’re going to have a substantially smaller carbon footprint,” Fry said. “In the next few years, when carbon credits become a part of Obama’s world — and hopefully Prime Minister Harper’s as well — the investment will pay off even more.

“If you have to buy a whole bunch of carbon credits, it’s going to cost a fortune to choose a location in Texas, Virginia or Alberta, because you’re going to have up to 100 times the carbon footprint in those places.”

One of the biggest arguments against building a data centre in a remote, cold-weather location is that “you won’t have the network up in those places,” Fry said. “But that’s really an old wives’ tale now,” he added. “You’ve got fibre networks that run just about everywhere. As long as you deal with redundant networks coming from two directions, and you put the right electronics on each end of that fibre, you can do just about anything.”

King agreed, saying that the availability of high throughput networking is so common now that proximity to company headquarters is not really an issue.

Darin Stahl, lead analyst with Info-Tech Research Group, added that, while many in the industry believe that the data centre “air-handling” market is now stagnant and has reached its peak, the truth is that huge efficiencies have been gained in recent years. “The average life span of a server room is between 10 and 15 years,” Stahl said. “During that time, equipment and technology will change two to three times.”

He said an air conditioning unit in a data centre 15 years ago would have a maximum heat removal capacity of seven watts per square foot. “But, today, it’s about 50 watts per square foot, and more high-end precision and balanced solutions can achieve up to 250 watts.”

Free cooling is just another redundant system that Canadian-based data centres might be able to take advantage of during a substantial portion of the year, he added.

Why you don’t need free cool to be cool

But companies will, however, have to carefully examine whether the technology will save more than it will cost.

“You’ll probably save some energy costs, but what you don’t really do is achieve a full offset,” Stahl said. “Because now you’ve got to introduce a whole bunch of other operating and power mechanisms before bringing the air into the data centre.”

In the case of data centres located around the Pacific west coast, Stahl said that unfiltered sea air can bring unacceptable levels of static and humidity into the data centre.

“The basic premise that you’re just going to open the windows and take advantage of cooling is (foolish),” he added. “We also don’t know the total cost of ownership and the kind of maintenance issues you’re going to see, because free cooling hasn’t been around that long.”

John Smith, vice-president at the Minneapolis, Minn.-based engineering consulting firm Michaud Cooley Erickson, said that companies with data centres in cold-weather climates would be wise to consider water-side economizers rather than air-side economizers.

“If you live in a milder climate, where you don’t have really dry winter conditions, air-side probably makes some sense,” he said. “In Minnesota, for example, it doesn’t, because the humidification costs would kill you. You are bringing in that cold dry air that you have to humidify.” The water-side economizer uses a both a cooling tower outside the building, and a shell-and-tube heat exchanger inside the facility. During the winter months, the system can provide water that’s chilled using outside air.

For the Minnesota area, installing a water-side economizer system for data centre cooling can potentially save an average of US$37 a year per usable kilowatt of IT electrical load, based on an average electrical rate of $0.06 per kilowatt-hour, Smith said. In a large data centre with usable IT electrical loads of over 10,000 kilowatts, this could result in a savings of around $370,000 per year.

“This yields a simple payback of less than three years for the required mechanical equipment,” he added. “Operating costs would be slightly higher for the water-side economizer system, due to the fact that there is more equipment to maintain.”

Not cool at all

Osama Arafat, chief executive officer at data centre hosting firm Q9 Networks Inc., said that free cooling represents good engineering practice, but he doesn’t believe the technology is truly a game-changer for the industry. “It’s not really something that’s going to dramatically alter the cost of your co-location or hosting,” he said.

Arafat said that he would always rank data centre location ahead of the climate itself, meaning that, while free cooling is a neat feature that can save companies a little bit of money, proximity to the customer takes precedence.

Because of this, trying to take advantage of free cooling year-round and building a data centre in an extremely remote location is extremely unwise, Arafat said. “The savings won’t justify doing something crazy like that just to utilize the free cooling feature a few extra months.” Telecommunications expenses alone could offset most of the savings, he said.

Stahl added that most of the customers he’s spoken with have demanded that their primary data centre be within 75 kilometres of their company headquarters.

In addition to maintenance costs, there’s the cost and potential impracticality of integrating free cooling into an existing building. “You need to have a building or a structure that’s conducive to doing that, and, obviously, if you’re not in a standalone building, it’s much more difficult to build this feature into your data centre,” Arafat said.

Smith said that implementing a free cooling system requires additional valving and a heat exchanger. Implementing this feature into an existing facility could potentially be a nightmare, he added. “To design it for a data centre would require significantly more wall area for air intakes, and then you’d have to construct more relief area as well,” Smith said. “Even on a new design, it can be somewhat of a challenge, but on an existing facility, it’s definitely a challenge.”

According to other data centre experts, such as King, the cost of staffing a data centre in remote cold weather environments is typically higher because companies will have to ask employees to relocate.

“Depending on how remote it is, you are probably looking at additional transportation costs for bringing in new equipment,” he added. Companies would also have to plan for new threats such as ice storms, King said.

Overall, while the cooling issue is obviously a critical one, the proximity to cheap and plentiful power is a much bigger issue, said King. “There are stories of Google opening up data centres in very rural areas that are just down the road from very large power-generating facilities.”

With cooling systems eating up half your data centre dollars, it makes sense to slash your cooling costs any way you can. But can data centres use cold weather to their advantage? The case for, and against, free cooling

With cooling systems eating up half your data centre dollars, it makes sense to slash your cooling costs any way you can. But can data centres use cold weather to their advantage? The case for, and against, free cooling

Skyrocketing energy costs and the corporate world's need to go green have compelled many data centre administrators to begin looking at new ways to cut their cooling and power spending.

Of course, we've seen the meteoric rise of system virtualization and cloud computing as a response to this issue, and most of the IT industry has reached a consensus that these technologies are indeed a viable way to consolidate and save on energy costs.

New to the power-saving debate is the notion of free cooling. Some have speculated that cold-weather countries like Canada might offer an advantage in what analysts will agree is one of the most expensive aspects of keeping a data centre up and running.

Some countries are even encouraging international businesses to consider setting up IT shops within their borders.

Last year, the Invest in Iceland Agency touted its country as one of the most competitive locations in the world for data centre operations. The country cited cheap and abundant power, low corporate taxes and an overall chilly climate as lures.But it's not as easy as simply opening up the windows and letting the cold air come in. Taking advantage of "free cooling" might actually take some time, effort, and money to achieve.

We talked to a variety of industry players about free cooling, how it fits in our increasingly cash-strapped IT organizations and whether or not the technology is an actual game-changer

The case for free cooling

According to recent data compiled by American Power Conversion Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Emerson Network Power, half of all data centre energy consumption goes to cooling systems.

Other sources have said that cooling often fits a one-to-one ratio. "For facilities cost, which is mostly cooling and energy costs, a company spends about one dollar on cooling for every one dollar it spends on computing," said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT Research Inc.

With numbers like that, the benefits of cutting down on energy consumption is unquestionable. But, despite this opportunity, the idea of free cooling has not yet garnered much interest around the world.

"Not a lot of customers have taken an interest in free cooling because they really don't know about it yet," said Brian Fry, vice-president of sales and co-founder at RackForce Hosting Inc. of Kelowna, B.C. "There's a very small percentage of the world that even understands carbon footprints in the first place."

Fry's company has teamed up with IBM Corp. to construct a 150,000-square-foot green data centre in Kelowna. The Gigacentre, which opens this spring, will allow companies to rent out space in what RackForce is calling one of the most energy-efficient data centres in the world.

A key part of the new facility, Fry said, is its free cooling mechanism. "The chiller technology has enough intelligence to know that, once it gets below 10 degrees Celsius, it will automatically shut down the evaporative cooling systems - a technology used to evaporate water through cooling machines," he said. "It just starts to take the cold air from the outside, and filter it into the data centre. We don't have to use the normal chiller processes."

Fry said that, while a company might spend up to twice as much on the chiller systems to be able to harness the outside air, the savings can be seen fairly quickly and the technology will essentially pay for itself.

And, if new U.S. President Barack Obama has his way, he added, a world of carbon credits will boost the demand for free cooling.

“You’re going to have a substantially smaller carbon footprint,” Fry said. “In the next few years, when carbon credits become a part of Obama’s world — and hopefully Prime Minister Harper’s as well — the investment will pay off even more.

“If you have to buy a whole bunch of carbon credits, it’s going to cost a fortune to choose a location in Texas, Virginia or Alberta, because you’re going to have up to 100 times the carbon footprint in those places.”

One of the biggest arguments against building a data centre in a remote, cold-weather location is that “you won’t have the network up in those places,” Fry said. “But that’s really an old wives’ tale now,” he added. “You’ve got fibre networks that run just about everywhere. As long as you deal with redundant networks coming from two directions, and you put the right electronics on each end of that fibre, you can do just about anything.”

King agreed, saying that the availability of high throughput networking is so common now that proximity to company headquarters is not really an issue.

Darin Stahl, lead analyst with Info-Tech Research Group, added that, while many in the industry believe that the data centre “air-handling” market is now stagnant and has reached its peak, the truth is that huge efficiencies have been gained in recent years. “The average life span of a server room is between 10 and 15 years,” Stahl said. “During that time, equipment and technology will change two to three times.”

He said an air conditioning unit in a data centre 15 years ago would have a maximum heat removal capacity of seven watts per square foot. “But, today, it’s about 50 watts per square foot, and more high-end precision and balanced solutions can achieve up to 250 watts.”

Free cooling is just another redundant system that Canadian-based data centres might be able to take advantage of during a substantial portion of the year, he added.

Why you don’t need free cool to be cool

But companies will, however, have to carefully examine whether the technology will save more than it will cost.

“You’ll probably save some energy costs, but what you don’t really do is achieve a full offset,” Stahl said. “Because now you’ve got to introduce a whole bunch of other operating and power mechanisms before bringing the air into the data centre.”

In the case of data centres located around the Pacific west coast, Stahl said that unfiltered sea air can bring unacceptable levels of static and humidity into the data centre.

“The basic premise that you’re just going to open the windows and take advantage of cooling is (foolish),” he added. “We also don’t know the total cost of ownership and the kind of maintenance issues you’re going to see, because free cooling hasn’t been around that long.”

John Smith, vice-president at the Minneapolis, Minn.-based engineering consulting firm Michaud Cooley Erickson, said that companies with data centres in cold-weather climates would be wise to consider water-side economizers rather than air-side economizers.

“If you live in a milder climate, where you don’t have really dry winter conditions, air-side probably makes some sense,” he said. “In Minnesota, for example, it doesn’t, because the humidification costs would kill you. You are bringing in that cold dry air that you have to humidify.” The water-side economizer uses a both a cooling tower outside the building, and a shell-and-tube heat exchanger inside the facility. During the winter months, the system can provide water that’s chilled using outside air.

For the Minnesota area, installing a water-side economizer system for data centre cooling can potentially save an average of US$37 a year per usable kilowatt of IT electrical load, based on an average electrical rate of $0.06 per kilowatt-hour, Smith said. In a large data centre with usable IT electrical loads of over 10,000 kilowatts, this could result in a savings of around $370,000 per year.

“This yields a simple payback of less than three years for the required mechanical equipment,” he added. “Operating costs would be slightly higher for the water-side economizer system, due to the fact that there is more equipment to maintain.”

Not cool at all

Osama Arafat, chief executive officer at data centre hosting firm Q9 Networks Inc., said that free cooling represents good engineering practice, but he doesn’t believe the technology is truly a game-changer for the industry. “It’s not really something that’s going to dramatically alter the cost of your co-location or hosting,” he said.

Arafat said that he would always rank data centre location ahead of the climate itself, meaning that, while free cooling is a neat feature that can save companies a little bit of money, proximity to the customer takes precedence.

Because of this, trying to take advantage of free cooling year-round and building a data centre in an extremely remote location is extremely unwise, Arafat said. “The savings won’t justify doing something crazy like that just to utilize the free cooling feature a few extra months.” Telecommunications expenses alone could offset most of the savings, he said.

Stahl added that most of the customers he’s spoken with have demanded that their primary data centre be within 75 kilometres of their company headquarters.

In addition to maintenance costs, there’s the cost and potential impracticality of integrating free cooling into an existing building. “You need to have a building or a structure that’s conducive to doing that, and, obviously, if you’re not in a standalone building, it’s much more difficult to build this feature into your data centre,” Arafat said.

Smith said that implementing a free cooling system requires additional valving and a heat exchanger. Implementing this feature into an existing facility could potentially be a nightmare, he added. “To design it for a data centre would require significantly more wall area for air intakes, and then you’d have to construct more relief area as well,” Smith said. “Even on a new design, it can be somewhat of a challenge, but on an existing facility, it’s definitely a challenge.”

According to other data centre experts, such as King, the cost of staffing a data centre in remote cold weather environments is typically higher because companies will have to ask employees to relocate.

“Depending on how remote it is, you are probably looking at additional transportation costs for bringing in new equipment,” he added. Companies would also have to plan for new threats such as ice storms, King said.

Overall, while the cooling issue is obviously a critical one, the proximity to cheap and plentiful power is a much bigger issue, said King. “There are stories of Google opening up data centres in very rural areas that are just down the road from very large power-generating facilities.”

December 2, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Under increasing pressure to manage its growing virtual environment, dynamic dedicated server provider RackForce (www.rackforce.com) has installed Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager to centralize and streamline the management of its virtual machines developed through Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

December 2, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Under increasing pressure to manage its growing virtual environment, dynamic dedicated server provider RackForce (www.rackforce.com) has installed Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager to centralize and streamline the management of its virtual machines developed through Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

The first hosting service provider to bring Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 technology to market, RackForce is one of many hosting providers that have been looking for effective solutions to better manage their new virtualized IT environments, according to its Monday announcement. With hundreds of customers steadily expanding the company's data centre, RackForce found it difficult to manage the company's growing virtual environment.

RackForce's new, simplified IT management lets it maintain an average of four customers to each physical server, rather than the tradition one-to-one ratio. This lightens the company's operating costs enormously, and it also maximizes existing IT infrastructure as it grows.

Designed to help administrators configure and deploy new virtual machines and to centrally manage their virtualized infrastructure on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMware ESX Server, Microsoft officially released its first public beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 in April. It was generally released in October.

The early adopters in the green data centre market are generally companies that operate and run the facilities as their core source of revenue. In Canada, data centre firm RackForce is working with IBM on a new facility called gigaCentre, based in Kelowna, B.C.

The early adopters in the green data centre market are generally companies that operate and run the facilities as their core source of revenue. In Canada, data centre firm RackForce is working with IBM on a new facility called gigaCentre, based in Kelowna, B.C.

Although RackForce’s customer base is worldwide, “we also started to see a lot more localized demand from people across the country who wanted a safe place to put their equipment,” said RackForce vice-president Brian Fry. This was especially true of B.C. companies, who were worried about using data centres near the San Andreas fault.

IBM had already identified Kelowna as a particularly suitable place for data centre location before it began working with RackForce. Being close to water in a cool climate and away from the wildfire-prone territory often found in the province’s interior made the location a low-risk, low-overhead affair. Also, the facility was a new one, which gave RackForce more energy efficiency options. It is easier to build efficiencies into data centres designed from the ground up than it is to retrofit existing centres with green modifications.

But the company didn’t build the facility entirely from scratch. Instead, it decided to use a 20-year-old manufacturing plant as the shell for its construction. “Building a new building takes a lot of emissions,” said Rick Ellery, territory services leader for B.C. at IBM Canada, who is working on the project with RackForce. “By working with an existing building, we’re able to use recycled or lower grade materials and avoid using the high-end wood products that are becoming threatened in our forests.”

RackForce is kitting out the building as a 150,000-square-foot data centre using the modular approach pioneered by IBM. “The beauty of this model is that we can build on demand,” Fry said. “With most centres like this, on day one you’re cooling this complete, massive space. This is modular, so we only cool what we have to cool. Our expenses and costs are much lower.”

The company included a range of innovations in the data centre’s construction, including reducing the length of high voltage cables to increase efficiency, and placing uninterruptible power supplies directly in the rack instead of in more centralized locations. Those racks of servers were also turned sideways, so that cooling air passed over a shorter distance from side to side rather than from front to back, which made the cooling process more efficient. Variable speed motors were put on all of the air pumps to avoid expending too much energy on pumping when it wasn’t necessary, and the company also relied heavily on cold-aisle containment.

“You put doors and a ceiling in front of two rows of cabinets to enclose them, so that cool air from the underfloor is pulled through the equipment and the warmer air is exhausted out of the back,” Ellery said. “That only cools certain rows of equipment that need the higher capacity.”

Perhaps one of the most significant parts of the data centre’s operation is the source of that cool air. Instead of relying entirely on energy-intensive air conditioning systems, the facility will use external air as much as possible. Cold air is drawn from the outside of the building and removes heat from inside the facility via heat exchangers. Thanks to Canada’s cooler climate, RackForce believes it can use this technique, known as free-air cooling, for seven or eight months of the year.

Canada’s cooler climate isn’t the only thing that makes it an attractive site for data centres. Fry said its abundant water supply and hydroelectric energy make certain parts of the country much more environmentally friendly sources of energy in terms of carbon emissions. “We found that the Yukon, Vermont, Quebec and B.C. sit by far at the lowest,” he said, arguing that whereas energy from coal-fired plants creates more than a thousand grams of carbon per kilowatt hour, hydropower produces about 10 grams.

The first phase of the data centre won’t be completed until December, but IBM has already crunched the numbers to come up with an efficiency rating. It uses the power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating from the Green Grid consortium, which measures the ratio between the energy needed for the data centre and the energy used to run the equipment within it. The data centre will have a PUE rating of 1.38, meaning that the facility will need 1.38 watts of electricity for every watt used to power the IT equipment. The ideal is a PUE rating of 1.0, although this is impossible to attain in real-world conditions.

When both IBM and major data centre players such as RackForce start pinpointing areas in Canada as low-risk, low-cost areas for data centre production, it represents an opportunity for the country to reinvent itself as a green computing location.

The early adopters in the green data centre market are generally companies that operate and run the facilities as their core source of revenue. In Canada, data centre firm RackForce is working with IBM on a new facility called gigaCentre, based in Kelowna, B.C.

The early adopters in the green data centre market are generally companies that operate and run the facilities as their core source of revenue. In Canada, data centre firm RackForce is working with IBM on a new facility called gigaCentre, based in Kelowna, B.C.

Although RackForce’s customer base is worldwide, “we also started to see a lot more localized demand from people across the country who wanted a safe place to put their equipment,” said RackForce vice-president Brian Fry. This was especially true of B.C. companies, who were worried about using data centres near the San Andreas fault.

IBM had already identified Kelowna as a particularly suitable place for data centre location before it began working with RackForce. Being close to water in a cool climate and away from the wildfire-prone territory often found in the province’s interior made the location a low-risk, low-overhead affair. Also, the facility was a new one, which gave RackForce more energy efficiency options. It is easier to build efficiencies into data centres designed from the ground up than it is to retrofit existing centres with green modifications.

But the company didn’t build the facility entirely from scratch. Instead, it decided to use a 20-year-old manufacturing plant as the shell for its construction. “Building a new building takes a lot of emissions,” said Rick Ellery, territory services leader for B.C. at IBM Canada, who is working on the project with RackForce. “By working with an existing building, we’re able to use recycled or lower grade materials and avoid using the high-end wood products that are becoming threatened in our forests.”

RackForce is kitting out the building as a 150,000-square-foot data centre using the modular approach pioneered by IBM. “The beauty of this model is that we can build on demand,” Fry said. “With most centres like this, on day one you’re cooling this complete, massive space. This is modular, so we only cool what we have to cool. Our expenses and costs are much lower.”

The company included a range of innovations in the data centre’s construction, including reducing the length of high voltage cables to increase efficiency, and placing uninterruptible power supplies directly in the rack instead of in more centralized locations. Those racks of servers were also turned sideways, so that cooling air passed over a shorter distance from side to side rather than from front to back, which made the cooling process more efficient. Variable speed motors were put on all of the air pumps to avoid expending too much energy on pumping when it wasn’t necessary, and the company also relied heavily on cold-aisle containment.

“You put doors and a ceiling in front of two rows of cabinets to enclose them, so that cool air from the underfloor is pulled through the equipment and the warmer air is exhausted out of the back,” Ellery said. “That only cools certain rows of equipment that need the higher capacity.”

Perhaps one of the most significant parts of the data centre’s operation is the source of that cool air. Instead of relying entirely on energy-intensive air conditioning systems, the facility will use external air as much as possible. Cold air is drawn from the outside of the building and removes heat from inside the facility via heat exchangers. Thanks to Canada’s cooler climate, RackForce believes it can use this technique, known as free-air cooling, for seven or eight months of the year.

Canada’s cooler climate isn’t the only thing that makes it an attractive site for data centres. Fry said its abundant water supply and hydroelectric energy make certain parts of the country much more environmentally friendly sources of energy in terms of carbon emissions. “We found that the Yukon, Vermont, Quebec and B.C. sit by far at the lowest,” he said, arguing that whereas energy from coal-fired plants creates more than a thousand grams of carbon per kilowatt hour, hydropower produces about 10 grams.

The first phase of the data centre won’t be completed until December, but IBM has already crunched the numbers to come up with an efficiency rating. It uses the power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating from the Green Grid consortium, which measures the ratio between the energy needed for the data centre and the energy used to run the equipment within it. The data centre will have a PUE rating of 1.38, meaning that the facility will need 1.38 watts of electricity for every watt used to power the IT equipment. The ideal is a PUE rating of 1.0, although this is impossible to attain in real-world conditions.

When both IBM and major data centre players such as RackForce start pinpointing areas in Canada as low-risk, low-cost areas for data centre production, it represents an opportunity for the country to reinvent itself as a green computing location.

KELOWNA, BC - The recipients of the seven 2008 Business Excellence Awards were announced last evening (October 22) at the Delta Grand Okanagan Lakefront Resort as the 16 finalists, their guests and community leaders celebrated 21 years of business excellence in Kelowna.

KELOWNA, BC - The recipients of the seven 2008 Business Excellence Awards were announced last evening (October 22) at the Delta Grand Okanagan Lakefront Resort as the 16 finalists, their guests and community leaders celebrated 21 years of business excellence in Kelowna.

Roger Sellick, former General Manager of Kelowna International Airport, was honoured as the 2008 Business Leader of the Year, the prestigious award sponsored by UBC Okanagan.

Wildwood Media Ltd. (David and Marghanita Hughes) was the recipient of the 2008 Rising Star award sponsored by the FortisBC. This award is for new companies that have been in business less than three years. Finalists: Beyond 50 Magazine, My Mobi Media Inc., SNAP Okanagan Newspaper Group

A panel of judges selected four outstanding Kelowna area businesses as the 2008 recipients of the Category Awards:

• CATEGORY 1 (1 - 5 employees) sponsored by TD Canada Trust Small Business Banking
  Recipient: Kelowna Farmers & Crafters Market (Bob Callioux and Errol Redman)
  Finalists: Twin Creek Media Inc.
• CATEGORY 2 (6 - 20 employees) sponsored by BDO Dunwoody LLP
  Recipient: Kitchenhaus Cabinets Ltd. (Jason Corory and Brooke Nicholas)
  Finalists: Avalon Event Rentals Inc., Chevy's Source for Sports
• CATEGORY 3 (21 - 40 employees) sponsored by BMO Bank of Montreal*
  Recipient: Rackforce Networks Inc. (Tim Dufour)
  Finalists: Kimco Controls Ltd.
• CATEGORY 4 (41+ employees) sponsored by MacKay LLP
  Recipient: Formashape (div. of Whitewater Composites Ltd.)
  Finalists: The Daily Courier, Westwood Fine Cabinetry
• YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR (individual under 34 years of age) sponsored by Prospera Credit Union
  Recipient: Renee Wasylyk, Troika Developments
  Finalists: Andrew Gaucher, Green Solutions Inc.

"We salute those who have recognized a business opportunity, seized it and prospered," says Weldon LeBlanc, CEO, Kelowna Chamber of Commerce. "The accomplishments and dedication of all the finalists honoured last evening are impressive and their stories inspire us all. We are proud of the contributions these exceptional business leaders have made in our community."

Presented by the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce and Gold Sponsors the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) and Farris, Vaughn, Wills and Murphy LLP, the popular Kelowna event is part of the annual Small Business Week® activities (October 19-25, 2008).

For the past 29 years, Small Business Week® has paid tribute to Canadian entrepreneurs and created opportunities for them to share success stories and innovative ideas with the active participation of members of the Chambers of Commerce and BDC branches across the country.

* bold and color added

British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, long known for its award-winning vineyards, picturesque golf courses and sparkling lakes, is bolstering its reputation with a decidedly unromantic venture - electronic data storage.

British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, long known for its award-winning vineyards, picturesque golf courses and sparkling lakes, is bolstering its reputation with a decidedly unromantic venture - electronic data storage.

Thanks to its stable environment, abundant network bandwidth and proximity to a talented work force and cheap power, high-tech experts predict the Okanagan will become a major information storage shed for companies.

The area's sixth data centre is set to open in Kelowna in December and local entrepreneurs and high-tech experts are confident others will follow.

The key feature that makes the Kelowna area ideal for data storage is the robust fibre-optic pipeline in place, says Dr. Ian Stuart, dean of the Faculty of Management at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus in Kelowna.

Brian Fry

"The second most important factor is people ... the Okanagan has a high level of sophisticated knowledge workers, graduates of computer science degree program or engineering" from UBC's Kelowna campus, he adds.

Equally important is the area's stable environment, according to others familiar with the region. Geologic surveys indicate that the Okanagan is about 240 kilometres from the nearest earthquake zone; and it is safe from other natural disasters, such as floods, tornadoes and major storms, which could knock out the computers that are the backbone of the data storage sector.

Robert Fine, director of economic development for the Regional District of the Central Okanagan Valley, says the burgeoning data storage sector is a bonus for Kelowna, which underwent a "crisis moment" in 2001 when Western Star Trucks Holdings Ltd. closed its manufacturing plant there.

"The companies we are attracting, including IBM, are a sign to the world that this is a safe place to do business," he says. "We are not earthquake prone, we have an international airport with a runway that is being expanded to 8,900 feet, we have a safe climate and we are not a big city that is vulnerable to terrorist attacks."

The most recent addition to the area's information storehouses is the conversion of the former truck plant into a data centre by Gigacenter Services Corp. of Kelowna. The $75-million, 225,000-square-foot structure is being engineered by IBM Canada Ltd. in partnership with Kelowna-based RackForce Networks Inc., which specializes in server hosting and currently runs three data centres.

IBM will lease 70,000 square feet of space in the facility, which is being marketed as GigaCenter, to provide data processing and storage services to as many as 500 of its customers, beginning in December.

IBM considers the Okanagan one of the most preferable locations in Canada for data storage, largely because the area's climate and seismic conditions ensure that it can serve its clientele without interruption, says Rick Ellery, IBM's Vancouver-based territory services leader for B.C.

"When you look at Canada's geographies and those with minimal amounts of risk ... the Okanagan stands out as an area free from those kinds of issues," he says.

IBM is also high on the GigaCenter because its use of renewable hydroelectric power from the nearby Columbia River, Mr. Ellery says. As well, a handful of features built into the complex mean the building will be more energy efficient and "greener" than most data centres, a key consideration as the environment becomes a bigger issue.

"A green data centre focus has emerged in the last year or two, so it is important for our customers to be good corporate citizens by minimizing their IT carbon footprint. The basis of green IT is the use of non-dirty power that is hydro generated," as is the case at the GigaCenter, he says.

Brian Fry, vice-president of sales and marketing for RackForce Networks and Gigacenter Services, says cooling hundreds of computers and the facility's workspaces will be five times more efficient by using a high-capacity water system rather than traditional electrically powered air conditioners; in addition, backup generators will be fuelled 85 per cent by natural gas rather than diesel fuel, meaning less air pollution.

These and other energy-saving features, when combined with the use of hydroelectric power, mean GigaCenter will use nearly 66 per cent less energy, reducing costs for its customers and at the same considerably reducing the building's environmental footprint, says Tim Dufour, chief executive officer of RackForce and Gigacenter Services.

Another Kelowna data storage company that's meeting the demand for less expensive and green data stores is Iron Diamond Systems, which provides outsourced data centre infrastructure services, such as network disaster recovery, data backup and data replication.

Like IBM, the company was drawn to the Okanagan because of its seismic stability and cheap power, which means it can offer the safe and green data storage demanded by companies that are sensitive to the environment and cognizant of the need to safely store data, says president and CEO David Tarasenko.

Mr. Fine says data centres are not the only companies he is attempting to lure to the Okanagan.

Green electricity at rates that are among the cheapest in Canada, access to an updated highway system, direct flights to Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto and plenty of engineering and technology graduates from the three-year-old UBC Kelowna campus make the area attractive to a wide variety of industries, he says.

These and other attributes - including proximity to prime vacation country and the fact that Kelowna is seen as a great city to raise a family - are already propelling the area's growth.

"Data centres are obvious for the region but at this point we are working our way through the planning process to decide our priority ... should data centres be a priority? How does it match to our labour pool? We are now doing an analysis to decide on the Okanagan's future economic direction."

Hyper-V Hosting News - Kelowna, BC, Canada - RackForce Networks announced the launch of "DDS-V", the latest in its virtual server line of Dynamic Dedicated Servers. The DDS-V is a robust "cloud computing" environment that combines Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technology, IBM SAN based storage and powerful IBM x3950 servers.

Hyper-V Hosting News - Kelowna, BC, Canada – RackForce Networks announced the launch of “DDS-V”, the latest in its virtual server line of Dynamic Dedicated Servers. The DDS-V is a robust “cloud computing” environment that combines Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technology, IBM SAN based storage and powerful IBM x3950 servers.

RackForce’s General Manager Randall Robinson explained, “RackForce has long been touted as the ‘virtualization experts’. Since RackForce’s launch of its Dynamic Dedicated Services strategy in 2003 we have been providing advanced hosting solutions through virtual server technology to a global market. With the DDS-V initiative we asked our solutions/product team to build an enterprise class solution with complete ON Demand scalability. We believe we are the first to market with such a powerful and scalable solution that is based on technology from major vendors.”

DDS-V separates storage, CPU and memory resources from the physical server. Unlike traditional virtual server solutions DDS-V resources can be scaled instantly since the data is stored on a SAN and not on traditional hard drives contained within the physical server hardware.

James Bothe, one of RackForce’s server virtualization experts and Chief Solutions Architect commented, “We have been working with Hyper-V in its various incarnations since the first alpha version came out. Microsoft did a great job getting out a solid virtualization technology. When we combined it with the IBM SAN and x3950 servers it all came together. I believe we have hit it out of the park with the DDS-V solution.”

The DDS-V was designed for SaaS and hosting requirements and is available now by going to RackForce’s web site at http://www.rackforce.com. Discounts are available for qualified resellers.

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 advanced data center design, automated systems and virtualization expertise it provides highly reliable On Demand servers, collocation and connectivity to a world-wide customer base.

RackForce Networks rolls out Microsoft Hyper-V as way to speed on-the-spot scalability.

Hosting provider RackForce Networks expects that Microsoft's just released Hyper-V virtualization technology will give it a chance to take a major step in its business strategy.

The company, which hosts dedicated and virtual private servers for e-businesses, application providers and hosting resellers, has been working toward providing resource upgrades on the fly. Today, the company accomplishes that to a varying degree, but Hyper-V takes it to another level.

RackForce provides services up to the operating-system level, while customers load and manage their applications. Its Dynamic Dedicated Servers (DDS) give users a virtual space on a physical host, but now it wants to provide DDS-V, or virtualized DDS, where the data storage is pushed off to a storage-area network (SAN), allowing instantaneous scaling of applications.

Given Hyper-V's support for SANs, RackForce can scale its platform to add more processing power without having to worry about moving or copying data.

"The model we are rolling out relies on SANs," says Tim Dufour, CEO of RackForce. "[SAN support] does an incredible thing. It allows us to move capacity in seconds, so scalability is instantaneous."

In addition, Microsoft's new Virtual Machine Manager tool eventually will let RackForce find and allocate resources located anywhere in its forthcoming GigCenter data center, not just within a single DDS platform. RackForce currently has three British Columbia-based data centers that tap into hydropower.

Diagram of use of Hyper-V by RackForce

Today RackForce has 2,500 server customers, 60% of which run on virtualized environments within DDS platforms. The other 40% are on traditional dedicated servers. Of the 60% using virtualization, just less than half are running Windows.

Dufour says the other major enhancements important in Hyper-V are the removal of limitations on processor support and elimination of the 4GB restriction imposed on RAM by Hyper-V's predecessor Virtual Server. Removing those limitations means customers won't "bump their heads" as they try to expand, he says. RackForce runs Hyper-V on IBM x3950 servers with four quad-core processors, and stacks four machines to create a platform with 16 processors and 64 cores.

While Hyper-V will help push RackForce forward, Microsoft's virtualization platform still is missing some needed elements, such as a complete set of provisioning tools, Dufour says. RackForce will offer its instantaneous scalability via a portal so users can service their own needs, but the company will have to tie that into its billing, ticketing and inventory systems. Currently RackForce has to do that integration itself.

The big ticket, however, is live migration, a feature Microsoft cut from the first version of Hyper-V. "That is important, and we are looking forward to it," Dufour says. "If we wanted to move from the x3950 platform and scale up beyond the current processor power, we could do that migration without any downtime." 

Dufour knows the luxury of such a move because RackForce can do live migrations with its Linux-based virtualization platforms. "But our Hyper-V technicians are telling us it has come a long way and they are impressed. And these guys are typically Linux techies."

A partnership between IBM Canada and RackForce will see an energy-efficient facility built for the customers of gigaCenter Services Corp. Why location matters as much as the technology.

A partnership between IBM Canada and RackForce will see an energy-efficient facility built for the customers of gigaCenter Services Corp. Why location matters as much as the technology.

A collocation startup is using Kelowna, B.C. as the location for a $75 million data centre that promises to make extensive use of so-called "green IT" and other energy-efficient techniques.

The data centre will be built by IBM Canada and Rackforce, which is also based in B.C. Due to be set up before the end of this year, the facility will be operated by gigaCenter Services Corp., which is partly owned by RackForce and a private equity company. It will comprise 70,000 sq. ft. of raised-floor data center space and create jobs for up to 100 employees, the company said. Like Q9 Networks, Peer One and Fusepoint Managed Services, enterprise firms will be able to rent out space in the gigaCenter facility to house their server equipment and provide business continuity, on-demand computing and other services.

Rick Ellery, IBM territory services leader for general business in B.C., said the company is using its Rear Door Heat xChanger and other products to cut down on power costs, while recognizing that the gigaCenter's customers needs could range from 80 watts per square foot to 200 watts. The green IT emphasis goes all the way from sizing the generators with UPS, the switch gear and even simple details such as the length of the electrical cables between the UPS systems and the computer cabinets.

"That may sound like a fairly mundane detail, but it's amazing the amount of power loss you can experience over those high-voltage cables," he said, adding such fine-tuning isn't always possible with older data centres encumbered with legacy configurations. "We had the luxury with the gigaCenter to start with a clean slate."

RackForce vice-president of sales and marketing Brian Fry said the data centre will be more than 60 per cent virtualized, which will mean gigaCenter can help customers take equipment running at 20 per cent capacity and bring it up to nearly 80 per cent.

“As we work through this process, we’ll keep coming up with ways to accommodate those requirements. We know that not every customer is going to use virtualization, but there’s a great deal of savings for the customer,” he said. “Even if you look down to the network design, you can turn bandwidth up on demand.”

Fry said RackForce and others involved in gigaCener got together more than a year and a half ago to determine where the data centre would be located. Kelowna met all the requirements perfectly, though it took some long-range thinking.

“There are lots of things people don’t take into consideration. Besides green power, you have to look at the seismic rift, wind threats. What’s the climate like – does it go to extreme colds? Do you have railways nearby that would take out the whole facility? Does it just cut off power?”

In Kelowna’s case, the grid is independent, which means it can’t be taken down by other grids the way some Ontario facilities were affected by the blackout of 2003. And unlike Alberta, Ellery added, where coal generated fossil fuel-based power is the norm, the gigaCenter will be fuelled by hydro. “By it’s nature it’s green power,” he said.

One of the biggest factors in Ellery’s mind was the ability to get out of the earthquake zone. “We live on a fault line. It’s almost inevitable that there will one day be a major earthquake,” he said. “It could be catastrophic, it could affect businesses in a major way. Kelowna has a 24/7 airport – there are direct flights from other locations. It has a four-lane highway. All these things are important.”

Even the backup power will be more energy-efficient, Fry said. Normally in an emergency data centres rely on diesel-powered generators, but the gigaCenter’s machine will quickly switch to 85 per cent natural gas.

“We’re putting a lot less of the ugly stuff into the air,” he said.

Once the Kelowna data centre is complete, gigaCenter will possibly be developing additional sites in the Okanogan Valley.

New details have been made public about a GigaCenter to be built in Kelowna. It will be even bigger and better than initially thought.

New details have been made public about a GigaCenter to be built in Kelowna. It will be even bigger and better than initially thought.

"This is so significant," said Brian Fry of Kelowna-based RackForce, which is in partnership with IBM on the project.

"Previously, we thought the data centre would be 85,000 square feet (as announced in February). Now, it will be 150,000 square feet, cost $75 million and be able to house 80,000 high-speed, very advanced servers and will become the biggest in the country."

Currently, the biggest data centre in Canada is Q9 in Toronto.

To put this in perspective, 150,000 square feet is larger than even Kelowna's largest store -- the 140,000 square foot Rona Home & Garden.

Every one of the 80,000, two-feet-by-three- feet servers is positioned on its own rack (thus RackForce's name).

Every server can accommodate about 1,000 websites or applications, which means the Kelowna GigaCenter will route, store and backup the activity of up to 80 million websites and applications.

Why is Kelowna getting such an important international facility?

"Kelowna is unique in the world when it comes to places to have a data centre," said Fry.

"Kelowna has a good, green, reliable power source (hydro-based electricity), has no threat of earthquake or flood and is in the stable and free country of Canada."

These factors are important to companies and Internet providers that want to make sure their websites, data storage and computer applicants are secure and have no service interruption.

Servers create a lot of noise and heat and require a lot of power and engineering expertise to run. They need to be housed in a specialized environment.

In the GigaCenter's case, that means a reinforced building with a raised floor so miles of cables and cooling pipes can be run underneath.

It will have its own substation to deliver electricity and have 12 room-sized generators as backup power.

The location for the GigaCenter hasn't been disclosed, but Fry says it will be in an existing building that will be disclosed in a few weeks.

An existing building that has to be at least 150,000 square feet leads to speculation that it must be either the former Western Star Trucks factory on Enterprise Way, or the former Hiram Walker distillery in Winfield.

The GigaCenter is expected to partially open in December with full capacity in about three years.

RackForce has about 2,600 servers in data centres housed in the basements of the Landmark office buildings in Kelowna and has purchased a lot of the servers from IBM.

Because of that, RackForce caught IBM's attention and led the multi-national to partner with the local company to engineer and market the GigaCenter.

While IBM is a partner, the GigaCenter is owned by RackForce founders Fry and Tim Dufour.

A varied, worldwide lists of clients is expected to take server space at the centre, ranging from huge companies that need vast data storage, e-commerce and network capabilities to Internet providers that sell and manage websites to individual clients.

Kip Frasz / The Okanagan Saturday

RackForce now has 25 employees in Kelowna and will have 100 by the time the centre is running at full capacity.

They will work on infrastructure maintenance, engineering and network and technical support.

A $75 million GigaCenter is being set up in Kelowna by local company RackForce and international conglomerate IBM. Randall Robinson of RackForce is seen in the company's existing server centre in the basement of one of the Landmark buildings in Kelowna.

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.

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 December 2008. 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.

Pristine lakes and sunny skies may be what brings the tourists to Kelowna, but it’s the ability to withstand natural disasters that just brought a major
IBM presence here.

Pristine lakes and sunny skies may be what brings the tourists to Kelowna, but it’s the ability to withstand natural disasters that just brought a major IBM presence here.

Jay Robinson, account executive for Rackforce

By the end of this year, a partnership between local company Rackforce and IBM will come to fruition, with the completion of a 85,000 square-foot data centre that has the capacity to store 35,000 terabytes of data, explained Brian Fry, Rackforce’s vice-president and co-founder.

“This is a big project,” said Fry. “With such a large facility, there will be large companies that will want to be located in Kelowna to be closer to their data centre.”

Put simply, the Rackforce-named “Gigacentre” will  have an enormous storage capability for critical data that comes from government agencies and corporations all across North America.

Currently, many of these organizations house their data within their corporate headquarters, usually located in urban hubs like Vancouver and Victoria.

With the impending threats of various of natural disasters looming over those cities, finding a spot where data can be safely protected has become paramount, and that’s where Kelowna fits in.

This region of the valley is very geographically stable, said Rick Ellery IBM’s territory services leader “The number one factor is that it’s out of the earthquake zone,” Ellery said.

“If there is a seismic event the operations of (major corporate) data centres would be jeopardized.”

Further conditions that this region is protected from are windstorms and ice storms, Ellery noted, all of which can knock out power systems and subsequently cause havoc for computer data server sources.

Ellery also said that the Okanagan is ideal because it’s a central locale between Vancouver and Calgary, and nicely positioned to serve customers within Western Canada.

Yet another key factor is that Kelowna is hydroreliant and IBM is keen on the cleaner and cheaper form of energy.

“Kelowna has an abundance of hydro-driven power, and although reliable power is important, it’s equally important that it’s considered green power,” Ellery said.

Other things that drew the company to the region were that Kelowna has an international airport with direct flights to international centres, a four-lane highway to Vancouver, an abundance of amenities and a sizeable high-tech workforce.

According to Robert Fine, the executive director of the Economic Development Commission, the news that IBM has turned its focus in this direction, and the influence that it, in turn will have on major IT companies, is another step in the right direction.

“Every community wants to have high tech industry,” Fine said.

“It’s clean and it’s a high yield, high pay industry.” 

And, he explained that it was reassuring that there is continued growth—about five to 10 per cent a year— in the high-tech segment of our local economy.

“We had significant technology growth, then the tech industry imploded, but we mostly held our own in terms of maintaining some growth,” he said.

“As we continue one of our strategic targets is working OSTEC around high tech, and I think this is another great opportunity for us to broaden the region’s image as a tech-friendly area because we are attracting high tech companies.”

It's Kelowna, British Columbia, says IBM, which is working with Rackforce to open a huge data center in this small city far from earthquake and flood zones, close to cheap power sources and just a short flight from Vancouver.

Wed, February 13, 2008 — CIO — As far as vacation destinations go, popular hotspots such as Honolulu and California's Wine Country have nothing on British Columbia's Okanagan Valley.

A view Kelowna, British Columbia. Photo by J. F. Bergeron via Tourism Kelowna

The area offers award-winning vineyards, tasty organic produce, a 68-mile freshwater lake and nearly 50 golf courses, all within an hour's drive. The city of Kelowna, the de facto capital of the region that boasts gourmet restaurants, world-class real estate, an international airportand a cultural district complete with museums, theater groups and a ballet.

But what most tourist brochures don't mention is that the Okanagan also is becoming known in IT spheres for something else: data processing and storage.

Thanks to its seismic stability, cheap and accessible power and a talented workforce, the Okanagan recently has seen a proliferation of data services vendors and has attracted interest from at least one major international corporation to build one of the biggest data centers in the world.

When it opens later this year, this $100 million data center—appropriately dubbed the Gigacentre—will total 85,000 square feet and will have the capacity to store nearly 35,000 terabytes of data. Put differently, the Gigacentre will generate more than 700 watts per square foot, while most data centers currently generate a maximum of 300 watts per square foot.

The Gigacentre is a joint venture between IBM and Rackforce, a local hosting service provider. It will be IBM's first data center in British Columbia and is powered by hydroelectric energy from the Columbia River. Interestingly, it's not the first North American data center to be powered by the Columbia, as the map below shows. Other data centers from Google in The Dalles, Ore., and Microsoft in Quincy, Wash., and Spokane, Wash., get their energy from the same waterway.

Safe, Yet Close to the U.S.

Brian Fry, vice president and cofounder of Rackforce, says the center, expected to open by this summer, will cement the Okanagan's position as the new data capital of the West—a position that could be particularly intriguing for U.S. companies who are looking to keep mission-critical information offsite.

"There's a lot of data out there," he says. "The Okanagan provides a safe yet close place to store it for U.S. companies to keep it under watchful eye."

Rackforce isn't the only local data storage company to meet this demand; currently, there's also a company named Iron Diamond Networks, which provides outsourced data center infrastructure services such as disaster recovery, data backup and data replication.

Similar businesses are on the way—statistics from the local economic development office indicate that nearly 20 percent of the 12,800 new business licenses doled out in 2007 were to high-tech firms.

This growth is contagious. Robert Fine, director of economic development for the regional district of the central Okanagan Valley, which covers the cities of Kelowna, Westbank and Peachland, says that according to a Canadian growth index that measures factors including unemployment rate, business starts and building permits, the Okanagan economy has grown by a staggering 11.1 percent since 2005, in step with growth in other Western Canadian cities such as Vancouver and Calgary.

"We think the local economy is going to slow down, but everything around here keeps growing," he says. At a time when real estate is slumping in the U.S., Okanagan real estate is skyrocketing—the current median price is $539,000, up from $469,000 in 2006 and $374,000 in 2005.

Capitalizing on Environmental Stability

All this growth is fine and good, but what makes the Okanagan such a great spot for data services? Environmental stability, for one.

Geologic surveys indicate that the Okanagan is at least 150 miles from the nearest earthquake zone. Climate experts also have said that the region's location in the high desert makes it safe from other disasters such as floods, tornadoes and major storms.

Perhaps the only natural risk: wildfires, which ravaged the local countryside in the summer of 2003 but left most of the urban areas relatively unscathed.

"We considered the threat [of fire], but when we assessed it against threats in other geographies and other regions, it was far down on the scale," says Rick Ellery, territory services leader for the British Columbia division of IBM Canada. "Even with the fires, the Okanagan is one of the safest spots in North America to build a data center."

Cheap and Plentiful Power

The area offers another key ingredient to large-scale data storage: cheap and plentiful power.

Just about all of the energy in the region is hydroelectric, with two companies—FortisBC and BCHydro—pulling power from a series of dams along the Columbia River (yes, the same Columbia that empties near Astoria, Ore., starts in the Kootenay Rockies region and eventually runs near the Okanagan, too).

While this energy is cheaper than traditional alternatives such as coal or oil—hydro power can be as low as 2 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to as much as 20 cents per kilowatt hour for other means —it's also "greener," meaning the process does not rely on renewable resources at all.

Furthermore, David Tarasenko, president and chief executive of IronDiamond, says that by virtualizing certain accounts, data storage providers can cut back on energy use by as much as 50 percent.

"As the environment becomes a bigger issue, green IT is going to become a huge consideration for companies looking to store data offsite," he predicts. "Here in the Okanagan, we can provide that."

IT Labor Supply

A third and final reason data storage companies have flourished in the Okanagan is that the area is home to a young and talented workforce of IT professionals to keep things going.

Local high-tech companies such as Club Penguin, which was recently sold to Disney for roughly $365 million, are always bringing in workers from big cities like Vancouver and Calgary. The relatively new University of British Columbia at Okanagan also has a computer science program (14 graduates in 2007).

All told, the triumvirate of stability, power and smart people create a perfect atmosphere for data storage in the beautiful Okanagan Valley. The local economic development director jokes that if this high-tech boom continues, the region might just have to build a marketing campaign around its new data center and IT.

"We used to call the area 'Silicon Vineyard' because we felt the nickname perfectly captured the Okanagan's mixture of natural beauty and high-tech," he says. "We haven't used it in a while, but who knows? It's never too late to bring it back."

September 12, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Wednesday that is has launched an enterprise grade backup service using IBM Tivoli Storage Manager in line with storage area networks and LTO4 tape systems.

September 12, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Wednesday that is has launched an enterprise grade backup service using IBM Tivoli Storage Manager in line with storage area networks and LTO4 tape systems.

RackForce says enterprise products like IBM Tivoli have traditionally not been available to small to medium-sized businesses. But now that larger hosting infrastructure providers have the economies of scale to attract vendors like IBM they can provide the technology as a service and make it affordable for everyone. Now solutions providers, ISVs and hosting companies can provide first class backup for their customers, says the company.

"Tivoli is a system administrator's dream. With the RackForce implementation our reseller customers will be able to store up to 14 versions per month of backup to RackForce's SAN and LTO4 tape systems," says James Bothe, system administrator for RackForce. "They will have access to a graphical user interface and will be able to customize which data is backed up. Even live databases can be backed up and long-term data archived. This is exactly what today's online business needs to keep constantly changing data safe and secure."

RackForce will begin providing its Tivoli backup service on its 5000, 5100, 5300 and 5350 server models with Windows or Linux operating systems and DDS Windows virtual private servers. It will be priced on a monthly flat rate plus overages.

VMware Inc. may have the market share and, with its recent successful IPO, all the momentum.

But the server virtualization leader lacks one thing that second banana Microsoft Corp. has as of Thursday: a system management platform that gives IT administrators a single simultaneous view of their physical and virtual servers.

VMware Inc. may have the market share and, with its recent successful IPO, all the momentum.

But the server virtualization leader lacks one thing that second banana Microsoft Corp. has as of Thursday: a system management platform that gives IT administrators a single simultaneous view of their physical and virtual servers.

That's key, say analysts, as users realize that implementing virtualization tactically to save money can -- without proper management tools to aid them -- create a confusing infrastructure mess.

"It's just like when client-server computing got hot two decades ago," said IDC analyst Stephen Elliot. "There's no need to repeat that mistake again."

As the name of Microsoft's new release implies, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 works closely with Microsoft's other management and provisioning products, such as System Center Configuration Manager (formerly Systems Management Server, or SMS) and System Center Operations Manager (formerly Microsoft Operations Manager, or MOM).

For instance, through its integration with MOM, VMM users such as RackForce Networks Inc. sysadmin James Bothe can get a quick snapshot rating of each physical server based on a combination of factors. Those include parameters such as CPU utilization, RAM usage, and hard drive space.

That information gives Bothe quick insight into how many more virtual machines he can deploy onto a given physical host, and what kind. "It's a unique and nice feature," Bothe said.

RackForce has been testing VMM since the first round of beta. The Kelowna, British Columbia-based hosting provider plans to use VMM to manage its 600-plus Windows servers -- it has another 1,800 Linux servers -- that each host 4-6 virtual machines created by Microsoft Virtual Server 2005.

VMM "is really easy to use.... I don't have to log into 10-15 servers a day anymore. I can just log into one and run everything from there," said Bothe, who has worked with many Linux management tools in the past, though not VMware's VirtualCenter (that company's counterpart to VMM).

VirtualCenter 2.0, VMware's latest edition, does not help administrators manage physical servers. Instead, VMWare has released a software development kit that allows other systems management software providers such as HP's OpenView or IBM's Tivoli or Director to pull data from VirtualCenter in order to manage both physical and virtual servers from their console.

But Elliott says that VMM sales will benefit from Microsoft's large base of SMS and MOM users, in addition to the technical benefits it enjoys from being part of the same family of products.

VirtualCenter manages only virtual instances created by VMware software. That's likewise true for Microsoft-created virtual machines and VMM, formerly codenamed 'Carmine,' today.

However, Microsoft says it already has in the works a version of VMM that will be able to manage virtual guests created by VMware or Xen (best known for creating Linux VMs) in addition to Microsoft-created virtual machines.

Beta one of that product is promised for release in the first quarter next year.

Took a licking and...

Microsoft has taken many licks this year in virtualization, having been forced to delay features and product releases multiple times.

But with VMM, Redmond came out swinging. Not only did it announce the application's release just days before VMware's VMWorld show in San Francisco next week, but Microsoft also heavily undercut VMware on price.

A Workgroup edition of VMM available in January will cost $499 per physical server, with an unlimited number of VMs on top. Because it is aimed at small to mid-sized businesses, companies are allowed to buy only five copies.

By contrast, single licenses of VirtualCenter cost about $5,000 each.

Microsoft is also offering a bundle that includes 2007 versions of VMM, Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, and another new product, Data Protection Manager, for $860 per server plus a subscription to Software Assurance that adds an additional $215 -- 25% per year. Small companies can buy SA contracts as short as two years. Enterprises can choose the length, typically between 2-4 years.

By contrast, VMware's equivalent bundle, the Infrastructure Enterprise Edition version 3, costs about $6,500.

Other applications necessary for server virtualization from both vendors, such as Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 or VMware Server, are free.

At its VMworld show next week, VMware may announce plans to upgrade VirtualCenter to make it a heterogeneous management platform. Or it may choose to execute on a previously planned price cut.

VMware may have a commanding lead of the market today, but analysts such as Chris Voce at Forrester Research Inc. point out that the market is also very young. Many large corporations still remain on the sidelines, waiting to see how this battle between Microsoft and VMware plays out over the next several years before committing themselves to either vendor, he said.

Servers are the power-thirsty heart of every corporate IT system. So software and new processors that make them more efficient are good news for business—and the planet

May 10, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- IBM (ibm.com) announced on Wednesday it is spending $1 billion in an effort to make corporate data centers more energy efficient.

May 10, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- IBM (ibm.com) announced on Wednesday it is spending $1 billion in an effort to make corporate data centers more energy efficient.

According to reports, not unlike many other large companies in the technology industry, IBM has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and will upgrade its data centers as well as help its customers redo their own facilities with multiple power-saving approaches.

IBM says it expects to make data centers more energy efficient through heavier use of virtualization technologies as well as deploying more provisioning software. It is also planning on launching new liquid-cooling systems that capture power in off-peak times and store it for peak use.

Reports say the $1 billion is being reallocated from other purposes and is not an increase in the company's investment or capital expenditure plans and that the company sees this initiative as a massive effort that reflects how energy issues are a higher priority for its customers.

Rackforce also recently announced it has deployed new quad-core servers from IBM.

April 3, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider Rackforce (rackforce.com) announced on Tuesday it has deployed new quad-core servers from IBM (ibm.com) to give its customers more processing power and reliability while reducing its electricity costs.

April 3, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider Rackforce (rackforce.com) announced on Tuesday it has deployed new quad-core servers from IBM (ibm.com) to give its customers more processing power and reliability while reducing its electricity costs.

The new servers are three times faster than the servers Rackforce had been previously using, while using 30 percent less electricity, says the company. Interestingly enough, Rackforce is following a large trend of Web hosting providers today that are attempting to reduce electricity usage not only for cost efficiency but also to reduce carbon emissions and thus help with the fight against greenhouse gases.

Rackforce has purchased 320 IBM System x servers in 2006 for $1.2 million and expects to purchase 600 more this year.

"One of our highest costs is powering our data centers and anything we can do to save electricity makes a big impact on costs," says Tim Dufour, president of Rackforce. "Our first priority is to provide our customers with the best value and the most reliable hosting available and the second is being as environmentally responsible and energy efficient as possible. Our new IBM quad-core servers help us achieve those priorities."

December 1, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Canadian Web hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Thursday it has launched a new 5100 series of power servers.

December 1, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Canadian Web hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Thursday it has launched a new 5100 series of power servers.

Each 5100 series IBM server comes with a new Woodcrest Xeon processor, dual SCSI drives and 10Mbps unmetered bandwidth for a limited time introductory price of $299 per month. The Woodcrest processor is reported to give 150 percent to 300 percent greater processing power than standard Xeon CPUs. The 5100 series servers also come with a large number of options, says RackForce, including dual CPUs and six operating system choices.

"RackForce has a reputation for offering the latest technology for the best possible price. This is the best price and performance package we have ever put together," says Tim Darfour, RackForce president. "They are ready now to handle the extra load caused by the holiday rush."

RackForce provides wholesale server rentals to e-businesses, application providers and hosting resellers. It operates its own fully equipped data centers and servers. RackForce currently has three data centers with two additional facilities in the planning stages.

October 12, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting automation software provider Ensim (ensim.com) announced on Thursday that Web hosting provider Rackforce Hosting (rackforce.com) has selected Ensim Pro X as the preferred control panel for its dynamic dedicated server brand of Windows virtual servers.

October 12, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting automation software provider Ensim (ensim.com) announced on Thursday that Web hosting provider Rackforce Hosting (rackforce.com) has selected Ensim Pro X as the preferred control panel for its dynamic dedicated server brand of Windows virtual servers.

Earlier this year, RackForce launched a new virtual private server based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. The Web host decided to deploy Ensim Pro X for secure architecture, simplified management controls, customization features and its certification for both Windows and Linux operating systems.

"Rackforce is known for being an innovator in the Web hosting market, particularly for bringing new hosting solutions and technologies to market," says Dave Wippich, CEO of Ensim. "Pro X provides Rackforce with the tools to continue its reputation of building innovative hosting plans for shared, reseller and dedicated server customers."

Released in June, Ensim Pro X is the newest version of the server management and automation control panel. Certified for both Linux and Windows, Ensim Pro enables Web hosting providers, their resellers and their site owners to centrally control and automate shared hosting tasks.

May 30, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Tuesday it has lowered its prices on unmetered dedicated server bandwidth by up to as much as 50 percent.

May 30, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Tuesday it has lowered its prices on unmetered dedicated server bandwidth by up to as much as 50 percent.

With the new pricing, a dedicated 10Mbps connection on a 3GHz Xeon server is priced at $324 per month. The same server at 5Mbps costs $249 per month. To deliver the unmetered model, RackForce uses multi-homed connections to multiple providers. All its Internet connections are dedicated and each customer receives its bandwidth as allotted, regardless of what bandwidth other customers use.

"RackForce is one of a few hosting companies offering dedicated unmetered bandwidth," says Tim Dufour, president of RackForce. "We have avoided the ambiguous 'two terabytes of transfer on a 100Mbps shared bandwidth' model even though actual network performance only allows for a fraction of that. Our flat rate, unmetered model is clear, simple and predictable."

Due to its location in British Columbia, Canada, says the company, RackForce has access to redundant hydro power feeds and world-class carrier networks. RackForce provides dedicated servers, virtual private servers and colocation services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

March 17, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider RackForce Hosting (rackforce.com) announced on Friday it has launched its new virtual private server based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2.

March 17, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider RackForce Hosting (rackforce.com) announced on Friday it has launched its new virtual private server based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2.

"Virtualization changes the economics of the hosting industry," says John Zanni, director of the communications sector at Microsoft. "Windows Virtual Server lowers hardware and system management costs, enabling RackForce to focus its resources on the services and features that its customers truly want and need."

The Windows platform along with Virtual Server 2005 R2, says RackForce, provides security and isolation without the cost of a dedicated physical server. RackForce's new DDS200-W also supported a variety of applications and tools for Web hosts on the Windows platform.

Virtual Private Server for Windows divides the resources of a dual Xeon processor server into eight separate environments, with each environment acting as a dedicated Windows server. The package also includes Windows Server 2003 Web Edition, a 10Mbps connection, an optional Plesk for Windows and FortiGate Firewall Intrusion Protection.

September 28, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web host provider RackForce Hosting (rackforce.com) announced on Tuesday it has opened K3, its third data center facility in Kelowna, British Columbia with build-out capacity for up to 6,000 rack-mounted servers. The new data center will provide significantly more space for its dedicated servers, virtual private servers and colocation services.

September 28, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web host provider RackForce Hosting (rackforce.com) announced on Tuesday it has opened K3, its third data center facility in Kelowna, British Columbia with build-out capacity for up to 6,000 rack-mounted servers. The new data center will provide significantly more space for its dedicated servers, virtual private servers and colocation services.

The high availability facility features redundant dual hydropower substation connections allowing for complete power fail-over in the event that a substation fails.

"Due to high demand we have expanded to a third data center as we are rapidly gaining customers who are looking for a safe environment with a low threat to natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes," says Brian Fry, RackForce's vice president.

K3's first major tenant is the Kelowna Transit Exchange, which is managed by BCNET. With the ability to operate at speeds up to 10,000 GB per second, this new facility will link the University of British Columbia Okanagan, Okanagan College, Kelowna General Hospital, Interior Health Authority and the BCIT Aerospace Facility, as well as other members to the Optical Regional Advanced Network enabling advanced Internet-supporting projects in education, health, physics, the arts and science.

June 1, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider RackForce (www.rackforce.com) announced on Wednesday that it is now using Dell servers for its hosting services. The Dell PowerEdge SC1425 servers will be equipped with single or dual Intel Xeon processors incorporating Intel's NetBurst micro-architecture and Hyper-Threading Technology.

June 1, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider RackForce (www.rackforce.com) announced on Wednesday that it is now using Dell servers for its hosting services. The Dell PowerEdge SC1425 servers will be equipped with single or dual Intel Xeon processors incorporating Intel's NetBurst micro-architecture and Hyper-Threading Technology.

"Up until a short time ago RackForce assembled these customized servers from brand name components but our suppliers were having trouble keeping up," says Tim Dufour, presidnet of RackForce. "Dell went out of its way to meet our needs. Now we have the best technology and can have the servers customized and online in half the time."

The Dell servers are priced starting at $129 per month. They also come with dual 1Gbps NIC cards and the OS options of Fedora, Red Hat 9, and Red Hat Enterprise operating systems. Users can also choose the Windows Server 2003 (Web or Standard) version, which is available for a higher monthly fee.

April 28, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- As a result of increasing customer demand for more powerful and versatile virtual private servers, hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) has built upon its line of VPS models with two new additions: the dds500 and dds1000.

April 28, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- As a result of increasing customer demand for more powerful and versatile virtual private servers, hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) has built upon its line of VPS models with two new additions: the dds500 and dds1000.

The company first debuted its own line of VPS servers under the name Dynamic Dedicated Server in November 2003. "We call them Dynamic Dedicated Servers because of our ability to dynamically migrate customers from one DDS to another", explains Brian Fry VP of sales for RackForce. "Even to a fully dedicated server seamlessly and with virtually no downtime and zero cost."

Integrating Virtuozzo with RackForce's DDS technology, the two new servers result in a superior standard of performance and reliability. The dds500 is merely a step away from a fully dedicated server, with a minimum 512MB of RAM and 40GB of hard drive space, while the dds1000 is a fully dedicated server (a single virtual environment on a single physical host) that still incorporates all the features of RackForce's DDS technology.

Both models include a choice of either CPanel or Plesk control panels. According to the company, a new server can be fully operational within minutes of ordering.

Brian Fry, Co-founder and Vice President, RackForce

In our March featured interview, HostSearch.com talks to Rackforce.com Co-founder and Vice President Brian Fry. Brian shares how RackForce helped track Al Qaeda through Shareeah.org and the RackForce automation strategy.

Brian Fry, Co-founder and Vice President, RackForce

In our March featured interview, HostSearch.com talks to Rackforce.com Co-founder and Vice President Brian Fry. Brian shares how RackForce helped track Al Qaeda through Shareeah.org and the RackForce automation strategy.

HOSTSEARCH: Could you please briefly tell us about yourself and your role for RackForce.com?

BRIAN FRY: I have a dual role in the company. I am a co-founder and the Vice President and I manage the marketing and sales department for RackForce. My job is to take the sales goals set by the Board of Directors and turn them into reality. The marketing/sales department works closely with operations to ensure our servers, both dedicated and VPS, are meeting the demanding needs of hosting and application resellers.

HOSTSEARCH: Can you tell me about your relationship with SW Soft and their Plesk Enterprise Manager (PEM)?

BRIAN FRY: RackForce has an excellent relationship with SW-soft. We meet with their top executives on a regular basis. When we launched our dedicated server line three years ago we started with Plesk. We built a strong relationship with them and that carried into SW-Soft after the acquisition. We were the first company to launch PEM after extensive testing and planning. Unfortunately it was at the same time that SW-soft was acquiring Plesk and we decided, with SW-soft, to stop the launch since there was some uncertainty about the product’s future. PEM is doing well now and we continue to watch the product and it is still expected to make it part of our product line in the future.

HOSTSEARCH: Recently Rackforce discontinued service to the Shareeah.org website after it was made known their possible connections with Al-Qaeda and the jihad oriented message of the site. What exactly was it that put the site over the line and can you tell me about the process you went through in making your determination to quit hosting the site?

BRIAN FRY: Hosting Service Providers are much more complicated entities then some people realize. Our customers resell what we provide them and we don’t sell to the end user. However since we own our own netblocks some people think that we are also aware of every web site on our system. With more than 80,000 web sites we can’t supervise every site nor can we respond to every abuse report. We have a strict Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) and react to qualified reports and take the appropriate steps. In the Shareeah.org site we were made aware of the site by the RCMP (Canada’s main law enforcement agency) and asked to leave it operating so that it could be tracked. We then removed it when the RCMP asked that it be removed.

There was an amazing amount of pressure put on the company by the press and special interest groups over this site. The CNN and the National News in Canada picked up the story. We stuck to our policies and procedures and the President and I were really pleased with the RackForce teams’ performance.

HOSTSEARCH: 4. What level of responsibility do web hosting providers have for the content they are hosting? I.e., where do you draw the line in terms of what is acceptable in terms of adult hosting, illegal(viral) adware ala MCI’s hosting of send-safe.com, spammers, political and racially motivated sites vs. allowing freedom of speech?

BRIAN FRY: We feel Freedom of Speech is a right that everyone should have but they do not have the right to break the law. We use “Applicable Laws” to determine what should be removed from RackForce systems. By applicable laws we use Canadian law, which we feel is a very fair legal system.

We remove sites that promote injury or physical harm, promote or teach illegal activities, exploit children in a negative or sexual way, infringe on copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, or other intellectual property. There are a few other things that would cause us to remove a site but that pretty well sums it up.
We do not promote adult hosting but we allow it on specific servers that have the network and computing power necessary to support such a high demand requirement. This falls under freedom of speech and as long as it is legal we allow it.

HOSTSEARCH: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to you or your customers that you are based in Canada vs. the United States?  

BRIAN FRY: Our location in Kelowna, BC, Canada is a significant advantage to anyone in North America. Consider the following:

Network Quality - The network is the same network that all the big players are plugged into. Our network engineers are really good at making sure our performance is high and we continue to add more capabilities.

Electrical Power Quality – Data centers are all about reliable power. We take advantage of the abundant, clean hydropower resources that are available where we are. Most important of all is we have no threat of a grid failure like we saw two summers ago in Eastern North America. Our systems are plugged into redundant power grids. We don’t know of any other data centres that can boast this.

Human Resource Quality - Canada’s education system is solid and we have an abundant choice of well-qualified people who want to live in beautiful Kelowna. Our President sits on the advisory committees for the Okanagan College/University of British Columbia. We are able to hire great people who want to be part of an exciting company.

Seismic Stability – We are in western North America but we are one of the few Pacific Time Zone data centers not located on an earthquake fault. If you think about this for a moment, earthquakes threaten a large portion of the world’s computing power between Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles. When you are dependent on computer systems for your financial well-being why would you locate in one of these areas. Kelowna is great choice. It is stable with very little chance of experiencing an earthquake or major disaster.

The four points above combine to give our customers the best possible hosting experience.

HOSTSEARCH: With over 75% of email estimated to be spam and an increasing variety and severity of viruses being released what priority level do you place on providing security vs. customer service or management applications to your clients?

BRIAN FRY: Security and management applications have to work seamlessly together. RackForce’s complete data center is protected by a hardware (ASIC based) perimeter firewall, which is used to manage network threats. It also gives Network management the ability to see and manage things that smaller data centers could not. For a small fee ($25 or less) customers can then choose to have additional levels of protection added to their specific server to manage security threats, viruses and spam

HOSTSEARCH: Can you tell me a bit about your datacenter and your hardware?

BRIAN FRY: We operate two data centers in Kelowna with up to two more planned for this year. The NOC is manned 24/7/365 by expert technicians. We promote 99.99% uptime and are aggressively moving to carrier grade levels of service while maintaining very affordable pricing.

Our core routing equipment is state-of-the-art but we don’t mention brand or models for security reasons. Needless to say we have a great deal of flexibility in how we support our customers due to the good equipment and design. We run multiple redundant backbones with 1.7Gbps capacity and we continuously add more. Our edge routers are layer 3 and Gbps capable.

Our power systems are second to none. We have the standard UPSs and diesel generators but with the dual power grid I mentioned earlier the most serious threat to a hosting service provider is eliminated.

HOSTSEARCH: With technology advancing so rapidly in terms of data storage, processing speed and network speed how do you see the role of web hosting providers changing in the next 5-10 years?

BRIAN FRY: The hosting provider must evolve from making the majority of their revenue from hosting web sites to hosting applications and providing storage and disaster recovery solutions. The Internet first leveled the playing field for small to medium size companies but now the IT costs are taking it back out of reach. The hosting service provider has the ability to create the “Economies of Scale” to make computing affordable for every business. We see this as an integral part of our role in the Internet business.

HOSTSEARCH: What is your company’s forte as compared to other web hosts?

BRIAN FRY: Automation! We have our own development/integration team and we automate everything we can so there is less human intervention and best possible support. For example: Our Instant Activation System will put a most servers online within 10 minutes after the customer orders and passes the fraud check. Our monitoring systems will place a ticket automatically for the customer and the support team will often fix the problem before the customer is aware there is a problem.

HOSTSEARCH: In terms of server operating systems, how do you see the Microsoft vs. Unix war going in the next few years?

BRIAN FRY: Microsoft will continuously take market share in the data center as more and more applications are centralized. People are used to seeing Microsoft on their desktop and Small and Medium size Enterprises will want Windows servers running them.

HOSTSEARCH: What can we expect to see from Rackforce in 2005?

BRIAN FRY: We will be adding 2 more data centers to accommodate our growth and need for enterprise class services. We’ll also be adding network and collocation to New York (Newark, New Jersey) to provide “single hop” performance from the East Coast. We will launch Windows hosting and VPS (Virtual Private Servers) by April and a short time later we will launch the first Windows applications. We will also be adding Oracle database support.

2004 was a great year for the company and we expect 2005 to be even better.

January 21, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Canadian wholesale Web host RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Friday it has enhanced its managed FortiGate ASIC accelerated antivirus firewalls, enabling its managed security services to handle increasing volumes of traffic.

January 21, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Canadian wholesale Web host RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Friday it has enhanced its managed FortiGate ASIC accelerated antivirus firewalls, enabling its managed security services to handle increasing volumes of traffic.

"Two things really fueled the decision to upgrade so quickly - our rapid growth in the VPS and dedicated server markets," says Davin Overland, GM of RackForce, which first introduced FortiGate Services in its data centers in September 2004. "Perhaps more importantly to meet the increasing demands resulting from expanded use of real time applications."

RackForce offers a variety of managed security services including firewall with intrusion detection and virus filtering or spam tagging. The services can be ordered individually, in any combination, or as a complete package.

December 15, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Canadian Web hosting and Internet service provider RackForce (rackforce.com), a Canadian hosting and Internet service provider, launched on Wednesday the new ddsStorm to meet the demand for cPanel based Virtual Private Servers.

December 15, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Canadian Web hosting and Internet service provider RackForce (rackforce.com), a Canadian hosting and Internet service provider, launched on Wednesday the new ddsStorm to meet the demand for cPanel based Virtual Private Servers.

Rackforce says the new Dynamic Dedicated Server offering couples Virtuozzo VPS technology with CPanel and WebHost Manager, and features 20GB of space and unmetered bandwidth.

"Our original cPanel VPS server, the ddsHurricane, has been very popular and we needed another server to bridge to our fully dedicated ddsServers," says Brian Fry, VP of sales. "The value of the dds scaleable hosting concept is starting to be understood now and hosting companies welcome the cost savings, flexibility and security."

In November 2003, RackForce introduced its lineup of VPS servers under the brand name dds for Dynamic Dedicated Server, enabling clients to upgrade from any dds account to another dds server, with the same control panel, no downtime and no cost.

A new server can be fully operational within minutes of starting the ordering process, says RackForce. The company's dds servers are instantly activated once a new customer order is verified by its fraud check system.

December 1, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Wednesday that it has added a dedicated 3Mbps unmetered bandwidth option for dedicated services, in response to increasing bandwidth demands on hosting and content providers.

December 1, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Wednesday that it has added a dedicated 3Mbps unmetered bandwidth option for dedicated services, in response to increasing bandwidth demands on hosting and content providers.

The new 3Mbps option, says RackForce, will fit in among the company's existing 1.5Mbps, 5Mbps and 10Mbps unmetered bandwidth options, filling a gap the company says had become apparent.

"We have had many clients who have outgrown the 1.5Mbps unmetered plan but were not quite ready for the 5Mbps" says Brian Fry, VP of sales at RackForce. "The new 3Mbps option will fill an important gap in our client's natural growth and progression, and is very affordable at only $75 per month. Best of all, there'll be no surprises on their bandwidth bill at the end of the month."

According to the company, the unmetered bandwidth model has always been a part of RackForce's strategy, providing customers with the predictability of a fixed monthly cost, along with the ability to scale quickly and accommodate growth.

"The challenge I see with bandwidth," says Craig Skelton, RackForce network manager, "is much of the time you don't need a lot. But it's those peak times where traffic spikes and when most e-business is conducted that you need the headroom. If your bandwidth connection becomes saturated during one of these peaks, your Website or online service essentially becomes inaccessible. Not a very pleasant experience at perhaps your most valuable time."

October 7, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- RackForce (rackforce.com), announced on Wednesday the launch of rackforcetraining.com, a live online classroom led by an expert RackForce instructor who teaches the fundamentals of Plesk 7 Reloaded.

October 7, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- RackForce (rackforce.com), announced on Wednesday the launch of rackforcetraining.com, a live online classroom led by an expert RackForce instructor who teaches the fundamentals of Plesk 7 Reloaded. Attendees will be invited to ask questions by phone or instant messenger and see the solutions on their screen via an online classroom tool that displays the instructor's screen.

"I have been helping people get their Web sites online for eight years," says instructor Shar Houlihan. "Now, with online training tools and the easy to use Plesk interface, we will be giving customers the ability to completely manage their online businesses. No longer just Internet passengers, they will be the drivers. Who knows what horizons this will open to them?"

The classes will run for an hour with the first class beginning on Monday October 11th at 9:00 a.m. PDT. Each day will cover a new topic with an open session on Friday for more advanced questions. Interested parties can sign up online for free training sessions.

September 9, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Canadian Web hosting provider Rackforce (rackforce.com), announced on Wednesday that it has expanded its line of managed security services with the FortiGate (fortigate.com) series of ASIC accelerated antivirus firewalls.

September 9, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Canadian Web hosting provider Rackforce (rackforce.com), announced on Wednesday that it has expanded its line of managed security services with the FortiGate (fortigate.com) series of ASIC accelerated antivirus firewalls.

"Our customers are looking to us for leadership in network threat reduction. We needed a product powerful enough to be placed at the network edge and flexible enough to keep pace with ever-changing Internet threats," says Craig Skelton, network manager at RackForce. "The FortiGate platform closes the door to spam, viruses, and network attacks in real-time without affecting server or network performance. The FortiGate products can be deployed in a matter of minutes for any RackForce customer. Many of our customers see instant benefits."

RackForce's managed security services now include firewall with intrusion detection, virus filtering or spam tagging. The services are available in any combination or as a full package. According to Rackforce, with the full package, the system can detect and eliminate the most damaging content-based threats originating from email and Web traffic.

Rackforce recently unveiled a new dedicated server offering.

August 25, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Canadian Web hosting provider Rackforce (rackforce.com) announced on Wednesday that it has launched ddsHurricane, its newest dedicated server.

August 25, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Canadian Web hosting provider Rackforce (rackforce.com) announced on Wednesday that it has launched ddsHurricane, its newest dedicated server.

"As with other servers in the DDS family, customers can start with an entry level virtual server, like the ddsHurricane, and upgrade to a fully dedicated server like our ddsVenom, with no configuration changes, no downtime and no cost for the transition," says Brian Fry, vice president of sales for Rackforce. "We know that success oriented resellers need scaleable servers this is why we have put so much effort into engineering our 'DDS' model. We believe it's the next generation in hosting solutions."

The ddsHurricane dedicated server comes with the cPanel (cpanel.net) automation solution pre-installed and includes 2 IPs, 10 GB of disk space, an unmetered Internet connection providing more than 400 GB of transfer and a guaranteed minimum of 256 MB of RAM and 300 Mhz of CPU cycles. The servers, priced at $49.95 per month, are immediately available.

December 17, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider Rackforce (rackforce.com) announced today that it has deployed SWsoft's (sw-soft.com) Virtuozzo, its server virtualization software, to engineer a hosting solution for its reseller partners. SWsoft's Virtuozzo partitions servers into virtual private servers (VPS) that function exactly like a stand-alone dedicated server.

December 17, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider Rackforce (rackforce.com) announced today that it has deployed SWsoft's (sw-soft.com) Virtuozzo, its server virtualization software, to engineer a hosting solution for its reseller partners. SWsoft's Virtuozzo partitions servers into virtual private servers (VPS) that function exactly like a stand-alone dedicated server.

"One of our goals was to deliver instantly scaleable hosting solutions," said Tim Dufour, president of Kelowna, Canada-based RackForce. "In the past, we've seen customers struggle for weeks and spend thousands of dollars trying to migrate domains from one server to another. In our business of low cost, high availability hosting this was unacceptable. Through the creative application of SWsoft's leading edge Virtuozzo technology we have solved this problem at a price no different than traditional dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting."

According to Rackforce, resellers can deploy a virtual dedicated server for $24.95 per month and move to larger virtual dedicated servers as they grow.

"RackForce and SWsoft are on the cutting edge of Web hosting automation carving out unique and powerful solutions to hosting specific issues," said Serguei Beloussov, founder and CEO of SWsoft, Inc. "Innovation is what SWsoft and Virtuozzo are all about and this partnership with RackForce reinforces our commitment to developing the finest automation products in the world."

July 10, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- RackForce (rackforce.com) announced today it is now offering Plesk PSA 6.0 (sw-soft.com) as its standard hosting control panel.

July 10, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- RackForce (rackforce.com) announced today it is now offering Plesk PSA 6.0 (sw-soft.com) as its standard hosting control panel.

"Plesk (SWsoft) has delivered another quality product that provides all the features necessary for a successful hosting company," said Tim Dufour, president of RackForce. "The new customizable interface, anti-spam, security, and traffic counting are key features every hosting reseller will appreciate. RackForce's mandate is to provide the best customer service at the lowest prices possible and we see the Plesk (SWsoft) line of products as the best way to do this."

Rackforce also announced it is offering free upgrades to all existing clients using earlier versions of the Plesk PSA control panel.

"Offering the Plesk PSA 6.0 upgrade for free is part of our commitment to our customers to provide the very best customer service," said Brian Fry, vice president of sales. "We need to make sure they have the right tools to grow their hosting business. Their growth is our growth."

RackForce is a Web hosting provider based in Kelowna, Canada.

Plesk was recently acquired by SWsoft, a provider of Web hosting automation solutions.

February 27, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- RackForce Hosting Inc. (rackforce.com) announced today that it has selected Plesk's (plesk.com) Enterprise Manager (PEM) to automate its data center infrastructure.

February 27, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- RackForce Hosting Inc. (rackforce.com) announced today that it has selected Plesk's (plesk.com) Enterprise Manager (PEM) to automate its data center infrastructure.

The software's ability to manage everything from their switch and router hardware to the deployment of entire corporate hosting infrastructures corresponds with RackForce's aggressive forward looking corporate outlook.

"Up until now RackForce has relied heavily on its talented development team to evolve its hosting services, administration and sales systems. I think we are known as a company that provides high quality dedicated servers and support for a great price. Now, with the addition of PEM, we will be giving our customers the ability to provide a privately branded suite of hosting services with unmatched service and support," said Tim Dufour, President & CEO of RackForce Hosting Inc.

In addition to its current Reseller customer base, RackForce will be marketing its new automation services to Web hosting and design companies that are looking to provide state-of-the-art hosting and support while simplifying all aspects of the process.

AirTreks, a software developer and solution provider in the global travel industry, is conducting a four to six-month evaluation of the Okanagan to determine if it is a suitable area to set up shop. The California firm is attracted to the Okanagan by the stable power supply, high-performance Internet/telecom infrastructure and business costs that are significantly lower than in San Fransisco.

AirTreks, a software developer and solution provider in the global travel industry, is conducting a four to six-month evaluation of the Okanagan to determine if it is a suitable area to set up shop. The California firm is attracted to the Okanagan by the stable power supply, high-performance Internet/telecom infrastructure and business costs that are significantly lower than in San Fransisco. "Kelowna and the Okanagan appear to have everything a growing Internet technology-related company could want," says AirTreks founder and president Jim Pilaar. "Plenty of high-speed bandwidth, a reasonable cost of doing business, and perhaps best of all, a lifestyle that is attractive to young computer engineers, with skiing, mountain biking and the lakes to play in when not coding or networking." The company is already doing business with Kelowna's RackForce.com, which now hosts some of AirTreks' servers in the Landmark Technology Center. If all goes as planned, the San Fransisco firm will launch its technology development effort in Kelowna by September.