Andy Patrizio
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Andy Patrizio
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Many data-center workloads staying on premises, Uptime Institute finds
Another study finds that the data center is far from dying. That's not surprising to learn from the Uptime Institute's annual data center survey. However one trend that did stand out in the research is that power efficiency has "flatlined" in recent years.Uptime says big improvements in energy efficiency were achieved between 2007 and 2013 using mostly inexpensive or easy methods, such as simple air containment. But moving beyond those gains involves more difficult or expensive changes. Since 2013, improvements in power usage effectiveness (PUE) have been marginal, according to the group.To read this article in full, please click here
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Many data-center workloads staying on premises, Uptime Institute finds
Another study finds that the data center is far from dying. That's not surprising to learn from the Uptime Institute's annual data center survey. However one trend that did stand out in the research is that power efficiency has "flatlined" in recent years.Uptime says big improvements in energy efficiency were achieved between 2007 and 2013 using mostly inexpensive or easy methods, such as simple air containment. But moving beyond those gains involves more difficult or expensive changes. Since 2013, improvements in power usage effectiveness (PUE) have been marginal, according to the group.To read this article in full, please click here
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Switch turns to Tesla batteries for solar-power storage
Data center provider Switch has selected Tesla as the battery supplier for a massive solar project at its northern Nevada data-center facilities.It's a geographically easy alliance as Switch's campus is right near Tesla's Gigafactory Nevada manufacturing facility. While best known for its cars, Tesla has also made quite an entry in the battery space with products such as the Powerwall, Powerpack, and Megapack energy storage products.To read this article in full, please click here
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Data-center survey: IT seeks faster switches, intelligent computing
The growth in data use and consumption means the needs of IT managers are changing, and a survey from Omdia (formerly IHS Markit) found data-center operators are looking for intelligence of all sorts, not just the artificial kind.Omdia analysts recently surveyed IT leaders from 140 North American enterprises with at least 101 employees working in North American offices and data centers and asked them what features they wanted the most in their networking technology.The results say respondents expect to more than double their average number of data-center sites between 2019 and 2021, and the average number of servers deployed in data centers is expected to double over the same timeline.To read this article in full, please click here
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AI startup Graphcore launches Nvidia competitor
A British chip startup has launched what it claims is the world's most complex AI chip, the Colossus MK2 or GC200 IPU (intelligence processing unit). Graphcore is positioning its MK2 against Nvidia's Ampere A100 GPU for AI applications.The MK2 and its predecessor MK1 are designed specifically to handle very large machine-learning models. The MK2 processor has 1,472 independent processor cores and 8,832 separate parallel threads, all supported by 900MB of in-processor RAM. SEE ALSO: Nvidia unleashes new generation of GPU hardwareTo read this article in full, please click here
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Ampere announces 128-core Arm server processor
Ampere – the semiconductor startup founded by former Intel executive Renee James and not to be confused with the new line of Nvidia cards – just introduced a 128-core, Arm-based server processor to complement its 80-core part.The new processor, Altra Max, comes just three months after the company launched its first product, the 80-core Altra. Ampere says the new processor will be fully socket compatible with the existing part so customers can just do a chip swap if they want. Ampere "This is not replacing Altra," says Jeff Wittich, senior vice president of products at Ampere and one of many ex-Intel executives at Ampere. "I expect there will be workloads and customers who will use Altra and Altra Max together for a long time. Anything suited for Max will be suited for Altra for a long time."To read this article in full, please click here
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Intel unveils third-generation Xeon Scalable processors
Intel formally unveiled the third generation of its Xeon Scalable processor family, developed under the codename "Cooper Lake." This generation is aimed at the high end of the performance line for functions such as high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI).The Cooper Lake line is targeted at four- and eight-socket servers. Xeons based on the Ice Lake architecture are due later this year and will target one- and two-socket servers. The latest announcement includes 11 new SKUs with between 16 and 28 cores, running at up to 3.1 Ghz base clock (and up to 4.3 Ghz with Turbo Boost), plus support for up to six memory channels. READ MORE: Data center sales dip amid COVID-19 fallout, but public cloud growsTo read this article in full, please click here
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COVID-19 fallout: Q1 enterprise data center sales dip, but public cloud grows
This should come as no surprise, but spending on data-center hardware and software dipped in Q1 and cloud sales grew, but neither as much as you would think.Q1 figures from Synergy Research Group show that spending on enterprise software and hardware shrank globally by a modest 2% year on year to $35.8 billion, with the biggest non-cloud players, such as Microsoft, Dell, HPE, Cisco and VMware, down 4%.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] When it comes to public cloud infrastructure, sales rose 3% to $9.66 billion year on year. The top vendors were Chinese ODMs that hyperscalers like: Dell, Microsoft, Inspur and Cisco.To read this article in full, please click here
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Startup lands $100 million to build floating data centers
Data centers and water seem to go together, despite the fact water is bad for electronics. Many hyperscale data centers are built near rivers for use as hydroelectric power sources, liquid cooling is growing in popularity, and in one extreme case, Microsoft sunk a mini data center off the coast of northern England.The next step, it seems, is the floating data center, one on the water and easily accessible but also mobile. A startup called Nautilus Data Technologies has lined up $100 million in funding to build a six-megawatt floating colocation facility that it says will be cheaper and more efficient than traditional facilities.To read this article in full, please click here
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Fujitsu delivers exascale supercomputer that you can soon buy
Fujitsu has delivered all the components needed for a supercomputer in Japan that is expected to break the exaFLOP barrier when it comes online next year, and that delivery means that the same class of hardware will be available soon for enterprise customers.The supercomputer, called Fugaku, is being assembled and brought online now at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science. The installation of the 400-plus-rack machine started in December 2019, and full operation is scheduled for fiscal 2021, according according to a Fujitsu spokesman.10 of the world's fastest supercomputers All told, Fugaku will have a total of 158,976 processors, each with 48 cores at 2.2 GHz. Already the partially deployed supercomputer’s performance is half an exaFLOP of 64-bit double precision floating point performance and looks to be the first to get to a full exaFLOP. Intel says its supercomputer Aurora being built for the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago will be delivered by 2021, and it will break the exaFLOP barrier, too.To read this article in full, please click here
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Lenovo doubles down on AMD support, adds liquid GPU cooling
Last year, Lenovo Data Center Group (DCG) announced single-socket ThinkSystem servers using the AMD Rome generation, which has up to 64 cores per processor. Dual-socket systems are de rigueur in enterprise servers, but that's because those processors have just 20-odd cores. AMD's pitch, which Lenovo and its competitors embraced, was that it could offer more compute in a one-socket, 64-core processor than two 22-core processors, and for less money.This year Lenovo DGC is following up that launch with the 1U ThinkSystem SR645 and 2U ThinkSystem SR665 two-socket servers, featuring enhanced performance and I/O connectivity for higher performance workloads. With 128 cores/256 threads in a 1U/2U design, a whole lot of computation power can be squeezed into a small space.To read this article in full, please click here
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Schneider Electric and Aveva announce solution for multi-site data center management
Schneider Electric has partnered with systems management company Aveva to put together a package for managing multiple and hyperscale data centers with a single view to enable and expand visibility into day-to-day operations.The package combines Aveva Unified Operations Center with Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure for control and monitoring systems to offer predictive maintenance, staff training and financial aspects of large data centers. The combined software provides a homogenous view of engineering, operations and performance and improves workforce productivity by standardizing and de-siloing systems and processes across multiple sites for real-time decision making.To read this article in full, please click here
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Nvidia unleashes new generation of GPU hardware
Nvidia, whose heritage lies in making chips for gamers, has announced its first new GPU architecture in three years, and it’s clearly designed to efficiently support the various computing needs of artificial intelligence and machine learning.The architecture, called Ampere, and its first iteration, the A100 processor, supplant the performance of Nvidia’s current Volta architecture, whose V100 chip was in 94 of the top 500 supercomputers last November. The A100 has an incredible 54 billion transistors, 2.5 times as many as the V100.10 of the world's fastest supercomputers Tensor performance, so vital in AI and machine learning, has been significantly improved. FP16 floating point calculations are almost 2.5x as fast as V100 and Nvidia introduced a new math mode called TF32. Nvidia claims TF32 can provide up to 10-fold speedups compared to single-precision floating-point math on Volta GPUs.To read this article in full, please click here
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For sale: Used, low-mileage hyperscaler servers
A company that specializes in creating second lives for IT hardware is expanding its initiative to reengineer and sell decommissioned data-center equipment from the major hyperscale operators that are aggressively replacing relatively new hardware.ITRenew announced the plan at the recent Open Compute Project (OCP) conference, promising to sell full servers previously owned by the big operators, reengineered, warrantied, and configured for turnkey uses like web serving and Kubernetes. ITRenew launched its first server racks two years ago and is now making the initiative more broadly available to all industries so more potential customers can buy OCP-certified hardware. To read this article in full, please click here
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Backblaze challenges dominance of cloud-storage vendors
Backblaze, the cloud-backup vendor legendary for its quarterly hard-drive-failure reports, has decided to kick Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in the shins with a much cheaper and more customer-friendly storage offering.Like other cloud backup services, Backblaze used a small app to backup and restore on a PC. In 2015, in response to repeated requests for direct access to its storage services, the company introduced an API and service under the name Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage and now claims more than 100,000 customers.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The company has released beta versions of S3-compatible APIs that allows customers to redirect data workflows from S3 to Backblaze’s B2 Cloud Storage. The company says through its services, customers will have infinitely scalable, durable offsite storage at a quarter of the price of S3, Azure, and Google Cloud Storage.To read this article in full, please click here
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Global VPN use exploded in March
With millions of people working from home, the coronavirus outbreak has seen global VPN demand surge. Demand for commercial virtual private networks in the U.S. jumped by 41% between March 13 and March 23, according to research from Top10VPN.com, a VPN research and testing company in the U.K.VPNs were already a growth industry before the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent shutdown of workplaces. The global VPN market was forecast to grow 12% year-on-year and be worth $70 billion by 2026, according to a Global Market Insights 2020 survey. North America was forecast to remain the leader in VPN usage, with around 30% market share.To read this article in full, please click here
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Dell EMC, Pure Storage upgrade storage offerings
While many functions have migrated to the cloud, data storage remains very firmly on premises due to the cost of cloud storage, regulations or simply the desire to retain control over a firm’s data. That’s reflected in two new announcements.Dell EMC launched PowerStore, a storage-array line that unifies its overlapping midrange products that Dell owned, along with products from EMC. PowerStore hardware and software has been redesigned from the ground up and comes with new consumption business models, a reflection of the growing popularity of pay-per-use hardware.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] Much as HPE unified its multiple storage acquisitions under the Primera brand, PowerStore unifies multiple storage-hardware products over the years, including Dell’s EqualLogic and EMC’s Compellent and XtremIO, not to mention Dell’s own acquisition of EMC. And PowerStore comes with migration tools to help move the contents of old Dell EMC hardware to PowerStore.To read this article in full, please click here
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Data centers are shrinking but not going away
The cloud will not kill the data center, but it will transform it. That's one of the takeaways from the 2020 State of the Data Center report from AFCOM, the industry association for data center professionals.In the near term, construction will slow way down, which aligns with what IDC analyst Rick Villars told me about data center construction slowing after a big buildout. More than 60% of respondents to the AFCOM report said they have no plans to build a new facility in the next 12 months, although 53% said they'll have at least one data center in the works over the next 36 months. READ MORE: Supply-chain woes put the brakes on hyperscale data centersTo read this article in full, please click here
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Supply-chain woes put the brakes on hyperscale data centers
While data-center staff have been classified as essential, like medical staff and grocery store staff, construction is taking a bit of a hit. In recent weeks, Facebook, Google, and Apple have announced a slowing of construction of major new data centers in the U.S. and Europe.The problem, as it turns out, is not because construction is being ordered halted, or even due to a lack of IT equipment, but because other components of the supply chain like fiber optics, batteries, and racks are scarce, according to Rick Villars, vice president of data center and cloud research at IDC.To read this article in full, please click here
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IT vendors offer new financing options for cash-strapped enterprises
Enterprise equipment vendors are rolling out financing and relaxed payment plans in an effort to keep customers buying during the COVID-19 lockdown that might be stressing their budgets.For example, Nutanix, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software provider, announced the Nutanix Special Financial Assistance Program (NSFAP) that provides its partners extended payment terms to give them more financial flexibility. Nutanix also offers financing options for customers through Nutanix Financial Solutions (NFS). [Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The program runs through May 31, and participating partners can offer the extended payment terms to their customers. The length of the term extensions will be based on individual partner’s needs, according to the company.To read this article in full, please click here