Study Reveals Green Data Center Focus

Symantec have released their 2009 Green IT Report looking at the actions taken by data center managers to "green up" their operations.

Almost all are claiming they are doing something:

"Ninety-five percent reported that they are replacing old equipment with new energy efficient equipment, 94 percent that they are monitoring power consumption, 94 percent said they were adopting server virtualization, and 93 percent said they were implementing server consolidation."

The sceptic in me says that these are things they would be doing anyway in terms of being more productive and the normal equipment life cycle.

The non-sceptic points out that these things are the foundation of improving (or mitigating) effects on the environment.

What would be useful is an idea of how many are doing radical things rather than just replacing old equipment with new, or simply changing the light bulbs.

Study Reveals Green Data Center Focus - Web Hosting Industry News | Daily Web Hosting News and Web Host Interviews:

What is Uptime?

What is Uptime? | Dedicated Server Hosting:

"Here’s a handy list to gauge how much downtime one may experience over the course of a year, based on a web hosting company’s uptime guarantees:

* 99.9%: 8 hours 46 minutes
* 99.5%: 43 hours 50 minutes
* 99.0%: 87 hours 39 minutes
* 98.0%: 175 hours 19 minutes"

It just shows how much a (relatively) small outage can affect your business!

The True Foundation on IaaS

What?? IaaS isn't just a marketing positioning statement??

I thought this article was excellent at presenting some of the more technical aspects of IaaS rather than benefits/features etc. It underlined for me the change needed in design and management to deliver a true cloud infrastructure.

Building a Real-World IaaS Cloud Foundation
— I recently gave a talk at the Cloud Computing Expo in New York about where to begin if you’re building a cloud infrastructure or “Infrastructure-as-a-Service.” The response was great, so I’ll try to summarize the high points here for others who are interested. Whenever we see a “stack diagram” of cloud architectures, most conversation centers on higher-level layers like defining what “Platform-as-a-Service” or “Software-as-a-Service” is.

Rackspace in One Place

I've never understood why companies acquire other companies and don't immediately integrate them from a marketing perspective. It seems to waste some of the benefits that are gained by the acquisition.

So it's good to know that Rackspace is integrating it's cloud and email-hosting capabilities - The Rackspace Cloud (Mosso) and Rackspace Email (formerly known as Mailtrust).

Rackspace in One Place | The Official Rackspace Blog

Digital Realty Trust Buys Land in Virginia

This is in my back yard so it's certainly of interest.

DRT seem to know what they're doing, so this signals strong growth in data centers in the future.

Digital Realty Trust Buys Land in Virginia - Web Hosting Industry News | Daily Web Hosting News and Web Host Interviews

Google Traffic Falls Off a Cliff

The chart speaks for itself. A massive drop in traffic from US ISPs to Google.

Here's the official Google explanation. You have to be flying to get over that drop!

When Google Goes Down, It Falls Hard | Epicenter | Wired.com

Web-hosting firms defy recession

Believe me, I really want to believe this. The notion that technology areas that reduce customers' costs are recession-proof isvery attractive.

However, two points:

1. The medical industry is supposed to be resession proof, yet my cardiologist has had to lay people off, and the number of unclaimed prescriptions has dramatically increased. The latter indicates that people are willing to take higher risk if it means lower costs.
2. Moving to a hosting provider involves management time and people investment to analyze the bids and to migrate infrastructure. Something that can be hard to justify in lean times.

I suspect that firms who had already decided to outsource in some way accelerated those plans, but it's yet to be seen if the number of firms outsourcing in the long-run will increase.

Web-hosting firms defy recession - Network World

Federal Budget Hastens Cloud Adoption

The Obama administration is pushing to increase pilot programs to demonstrate that shared infrastructure is the way to go, meaning "cloud computing" will have a lot of potential just as it comes of age.

I've always thought that the issue with Federal projects of this sort is not the technology, but the willingness of federal agencies to give up control, even with improvements in cost and efficiency.

Federal Budget Hastens Cloud Adoption | BNET Technology Blog | BNET

Verio Launches Website for SMBs

Verio are launching a website for SMBs that not only touts their offerings, but actually combines a set of resources to help customers set up their website effectively, an also allows them to interact and learn from each other.

Whether there will be enough interest to form a core community will be interesting to see!

Verio Launches Website for SMBs - Web Hosting Industry News | Daily Web Hosting News and Web Host Interviews