geekism's blog

Have you ever wondered what is on the mind of Data Center End Users? Why they make the decisions they make? What problems they are trying to solve?  What keeps them up at night? Back in 2009, Data Center Pulse took a shot at capturing those thoughts through the 2009 Top 10. Over the last three years, this list has morphed as the interests, challenges and solutions emerged.

Today we are pleased to release the 2012 Top 10 that I was able to present at the Green Grid Technical Forum on March 7, 2012 in San Jose, CA. The 2012 Top 10 was vetted with the attendees of the DCP Summit held in conjunction with the Green Grid. DCP members discussed and debated the Top 10 along with the primary topics selected by attendees - The Green Grid Case Study on Project Mercury (video) and the Service Efficiency Metric Proposal. You can see the results from the Summit on my latest blog entry, DCP 2012 Summit Results.

2012 Top 10

1. Facilities & IT Alignment
2. Top Level Efficiency Metric
3. Standardized Stack Framework
4. Move from Availability to Resiliency
5. Renewable Power Options
6. "Containers" vs Brick & Mortar
7. Hybrid Data Center Designs
8. Liquid Cooled IT Equipment Options
9. Free Cooling "Everywhere"
10. Converged Infrastructure Intelligence.

The Top 10 is the current pulse of what is hot, interesting, challenging or emerging from the DCP community. We were able to record the Top 10 presentation I gave at the Green Grid Technical Forum closing session. The presentation showed how the Top 10 list has morphed over time as End User interests and challenges have changed, as well as provide context on each of the entries.

The DCP charter is to influence the industry through end users. We hope this latest Top 10 will give you insight into what is important right now - i.e. The Pulse.

In December of 2011 we hosted an exclusive Data Center Pulse collaboration session one day before we held the opening of the eBay Data Center, Project Mercury. The goal of this collaboration session was to bring 50 of our Data Center peers together to deep dive into the project, the lessons learned and discuss/debate the relevance of these concepts being applied to their data centers. We also did something new in this session - we allowed 5 vendors to participate. Wait, before you cry foul and question why we would go against our charter, I need to lay out some context. We invited the design and construction teams (EDI Ltd, AHA Consulting Engineers, Winterstreet Architects & DPR) to participate in the closed door session with members. These were the engineers that did the actual work, not sales, marketing, etc. They had very relevant insight and learnings into the challenges and lesson learned. That session went very well with lots of people discussing and debating the implementation and practicality to application in their environment. Once we finished that session, we had parallel deep dives with the Dell and HP technologists who were directly responsible for the Container, Server and Storage designs and implementations in Project Mercury. It was engineers talking to engineers.

This collaboration session turned out be one of the most productive we've had to date. Below is a video with footage from the event, a quick tour of the Project Mercury Data Center and Interviews with some of the attendees.

We are hosting our next DCP Summit on Monday, March 5, 2012 in San Jose. You can email membership@datacenterpulse.org to receive the password to register. View the summit details here. One of the topics at the summit will be the Project Mercury Case Study published by the Green Grid on February 27, 2012.

I'll get straight to the point. I have a simple request directed to the personal and professional contacts I have established over the last 23 years. I need your help to raise $25,000 to buy a school bus for Dalit children in Patna, India. You can make your tax deductible donation through this PayPal Link:

 

Huh? Why do you need to buy a school bus for an area literally on the other side of the planet? Don't you just build and operate data centers for eBay? Yes, my day job is to build and operate the foundation that enables 100 million people to buy and sell products all over the planet...but there is something else that is equally as important. Just like Data Centers are the foundation that allow on-line businesses like eBay to grow, compete, and thrive - Education is the foundation that allows CHILDREN to grow, compete, and thrive. If children do not have access to education, then they are always at a disadvantage.

Let me explain my connection here. Earlier this year, thieves in Northern India stole a bus from the Emmanuel School in Patna. I'm sure the first question coming to your mind is why couldn't they just use their insurance to get it replaced? Sure, that sounds logical, but that's not how it works in poverty stricken areas like Patna. It can take more than nine months to get a claim paid. The payment would also not pay for a new bus. The reason this theft is personal to me is that three years ago a group of my family, friends and business contacts bought the school bus that was stolen. That simple gift enabled hundreds of extremely poor kids from remote villages to go to school. My wonderfully giving group of friends helped those kids have a shot at the future. Hundreds of Dalit children used that bus to get to the only school that would take them. Sounds like an exaggerated story, but it is not. I met many of these kids personally when I visited Patna with my mom. I know it has made a big difference in their lives. You can see the original website we published here. (please do not use the links there to donate, just use PayPal button above)

Normally, I keep my personal and professional lives separate, but I believe this is story will resonate with many in my network. We're not just going to replace the stolen bus, we're going to buy a larger one to get even more kids to school!  If you want to be a part of this, just click the PayPal donate button and give what ever you can. You can also keep up to date on the progress through our new website, Just Let Me Learn.

It is tax deductible and I will be including your name (and your company if applicable) in the new plaque we will give to the school leaders when we purchase the bus (you can also opt out of the plaque if you wish). Remember, that most companies match charitable donations by employees, so keep that in mind if you are donating personally. For corporations, please contact me directly (dean.nelson@mac.com) if you need a differnet payment method to donate. My sincerest thanks in advance!

In technology, competition truly is the mother of innovation.

The first round of the Project Quicksilver competition is complete! Through the months of August and September we received 68 requests to participate in eBay's second public Data Center RFP codenamed Project Quicksilver. 61 companies qualified, and 20 submitted design proposals by the October 7th deadline. Today we have selected the 5 finalists based on a comprehensive and balanced scoring system that rated each companies submission based on the design concept, team capabilities, overall operational efficiency, sustainability and cost.

Last month, we killed our first eBay data center. Don’t worry, it had it coming...

I arrived early at the eBay San Jose campus as the rain continued to drench northern California. I joined a group of lively eBay employees from technology operations, product development and IT on a bus headed to Sacramento. We were on a journey to put our oldest data center to rest. This journey had started over a year and a half earlier, long before I had joined eBay. At that time, an aggressive plan was put into motion. The goal was to consolidate the data center portfolio to decrease costs, increase our availability and take eBay to the next level of Operational agility. It was a lofty goal.

eBay, like many of the rising star Silicon Valley companies, had been in constant react mode to keep up with demand. They had amassed a data center portfolio that spanned three states and in twelve different data center sites. Eight years earlier, the Sacramento data center (SMF) was the first to be brought online as a disaster recovery location and it was supposed to be temporary. It quickly expanded to become much more than that. When the idea of shutting it down was raised, the feeling was it was too big a task, too complex and too costly to execute. It would be like rebuilding the engine of a jumbo jet while you were in flight.