It’s the "Dirty Cloud," says journalist John Vidal in a recent tweet. Vidal is referring to energy use by data centers, which he wrote about in an article for Climate Home News.In the story, published this week, the Guardian environment writer reveals a bleak picture of future global climate change emissions. Bleak, in part, because the discouraging projections he writes of are caused not by, as one might expect, fossil fuel power plants and internal combustion engine users, but by communications and data center power use.To read this article in full, please click here
Undersea, internet-carrying cables are not protected well enough and there isn’t an alternative in place should they fail.That's according to a new report from U.K.-based Policy Exchange, which outlines potential catastrophic effects that a simple cut in the hosepipe-sized underwater infrastructure could create.Also on Network World: The hidden cause of slow Internet and how to fix it
Tsunamis, a vessel dragging an anchor, or even saw-wielding Russians could bring down the global financial system or cripple a solo nation’s internet access, Policy Exchange says in its new study (pdf).To read this article in full, please click here
Undersea, internet-carrying cables are not protected well enough and there isn’t an alternative in place should they fail.That's according to a new report from U.K.-based Policy Exchange, which outlines potential catastrophic effects that a simple cut in the hosepipe-sized underwater infrastructure could create.Also on Network World: The hidden cause of slow Internet and how to fix it
Tsunamis, a vessel dragging an anchor, or even saw-wielding Russians could bring down the global financial system or cripple a solo nation’s internet access, Policy Exchange says in its new study (pdf).To read this article in full, please click here
The reality of a self-managing data center is getting closer with HPE’s announcement last week of what it claims to be the first artificial intelligence (AI) predictive engine for trouble in the data center.HPE says next year it will offer an AI recommendation engine add-on that’s designed to predict and stop storage- and general-infrastructure trouble before it starts. It’s one of a number of autonomous data center components that we should expect to see soon from players. Other AI and machine learning systems geared towards data centers will be available from companies such as Litbit (which I wrote about in the summer) and Oracle, among others.To read this article in full, please click here
The reality of a self-managing data center is getting closer with HPE’s announcement last week of what it claims to be the first artificial intelligence (AI) predictive engine for trouble in the data center.HPE says next year it will offer an AI recommendation engine add-on that’s designed to predict and stop storage- and general-infrastructure trouble before it starts. It’s one of a number of autonomous data center components that we should expect to see soon from players. Other AI and machine learning systems geared towards data centers will be available from companies such as Litbit (which I wrote about in the summer) and Oracle, among others.To read this article in full, please click here
With the billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices projected to come on-stream over the next few years, questions are arising as to just where the bandwidth and radio channels are going to come from to make it all work.The sensors need to send their likely increasingly voluminous data back to networks wirelessly to be processed.RELATED: 8 tips for building a cost-effective IoT sensor network
But there’s a finite amount of radio spectrum available, and much of it is already allocated to incumbent primary users, such as public safety agencies. Other spectrum is dedicated to mobile network operators who have licensed chunks of it. Some is leftover in the millimeter frequencies, which is thus far pretty much untested in the real world — it’s going to be used for 5G in the future.To read this article in full, please click here
With the billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices projected to come on-stream over the next few years, questions are arising as to just where the bandwidth and radio channels are going to come from to make it all work.The sensors need to send their likely increasingly voluminous data back to networks wirelessly to be processed.RELATED: 8 tips for building a cost-effective IoT sensor network
But there’s a finite amount of radio spectrum available, and much of it is already allocated to incumbent primary users, such as public safety agencies. Other spectrum is dedicated to mobile network operators who have licensed chunks of it. Some is leftover in the millimeter frequencies, which is thus far pretty much untested in the real world — it’s going to be used for 5G in the future.To read this article in full, please click here
In separate announcements, Microsoft Corp. and Daimler indicated that hydrogen fuel cells could provide significantly better energy solutions for data centers than existing electrical grid and backup power technology.Daimler, best known for its Mercedes-Benz automobile brand, presented this week its latest-generation fuel cell technology, which is 30 percent smaller, has 40 percent more power and is small enough to fit into the engine compartment of Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicles. The company plans to expand the use of that technology in a hydrogen-powered data center power plant, collaborating with HPE, Power Innovations (PI) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).To read this article in full, please click here
In separate announcements, Microsoft Corp. and Daimler indicated that hydrogen fuel cells could provide significantly better energy solutions for data centers than existing electrical grid and backup power technology.Daimler, best known for its Mercedes-Benz automobile brand, presented this week its latest-generation fuel cell technology, which is 30 percent smaller, has 40 percent more power and is small enough to fit into the engine compartment of Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicles. The company plans to expand the use of that technology in a hydrogen-powered data center power plant, collaborating with HPE, Power Innovations (PI) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).To read this article in full, please click here
Servers should be stored in vats of cooling, non-conductive oil instead of elaborate, outfitted structures, say engineers who are working on a radical, building-free, data center concept.French company Horizon Computing is one of the developers behind the project and provides support. It proposes using stacks of 10-gallon barrels filled with Shell DIALA dielectric mineral oil or natural equivalent. Dielectric oil doesn’t have any water in it, so it won’t conduct electricity, but it cools just like water. The computers function as normal and aren’t subject to rust either.Benefits of RuggedPOD containers
The idea is that common servers are fully submerged in the barrels where they are chilled by the immersion. Expensive humidity control and air conditioning thus become irrelevant, as do buildings.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Servers should be stored in vats of cooling, non-conductive oil instead of elaborate, outfitted structures, say engineers who are working on a radical, building-free, data center concept.French company Horizon Computing is one of the developers behind the project and provides support. It proposes using stacks of 10-gallon barrels filled with Shell DIALA dielectric mineral oil or natural equivalent. Dielectric oil doesn’t have any water in it, so it won’t conduct electricity, but it cools just like water. The computers function as normal and aren’t subject to rust either.Benefits of RuggedPOD containers
The idea is that common servers are fully submerged in the barrels where they are chilled by the immersion. Expensive humidity control and air conditioning thus become irrelevant, as do buildings.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The demise of retail grocery stores might be just around the corner.The founders of Russian grocery delivery company Instamart claim to have signed non-binding memoranda with consumer goods giant Unilever, major Dutch dairy co-op FrieslandCampina, and U.S. food products manufacturer Mars, among others. INS’s objective is to build a blockchain-based food-supply network to connect manufacturers with consumers — thus bypassing retailers and wholesalers altogether. Massive consumer price cuts are promised.Also on Network World: Blockchain: You’ve got questions; we’ve got answers
“INS is a decentralized ecosystem that enables consumers to buy directly from grocery manufacturers, bypassing retailers and wholesalers, at prices up to 30 percent lower than in supermarkets,” the company says in its press release. The firm will be releasing a token sale at the end of this month — the first stage of its launch planned for Q4 2018.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Production downtime’s days are limited thanks to the industrial Internet of Things (IoT). Machine-embedded, network-connected sensors along with the collection of massive amounts of data will allow for self-healing manufacturing, scientists say.That’s the concept behind an enthusiastic research project called SelSus currently being explored by multiple European academic institutions and manufacturers, including Ford.Also on Network World: How industrial IoT is making steel production smarter
The idea that the team proposes is to not just detect weaknesses during production, but to also fix the potential issues automatically through a kind of mathematically calculated self-healing. The scientists say diagnostics should supply recommendations before a piece of equipment has failed. That self-healing aspect would take equipment monitoring to the next level.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What does it take to open the world’s first self-powered data center? For Aruba S.p.A., it involved three elements:
Flowing river water
Photovoltaic solar panels
Always cold, pumped-to-the-surface underground water as the principal cooling source
Aruba’s newest data center, named the Global Cloud Data Center (IT3) is located near Milan, Italy, and claims to be 100 percent green. The 49-acre ANSI/TIA-942 Rating 4 standard facility (at 200,000 square meters) opened earlier this month.Also on Network World: Space-radiated cooling cuts power use 21%
Low-impact credentials at the site come largely because the data center has its own dedicated hydroelectric plant. The facility is located on the banks of the River Brembo, an Aruba representative told me. Electricity is generated from the running river water through the operation of turbines. That power is stored and then injected into the national grid infrastructure. Electricity is supposedly guaranteed for the campus by the national grid in exchange for the input.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What does it take to open the world’s first self-powered data center? For Aruba S.p.A., it involved three elements:
Flowing river water
Photovoltaic solar panels
Always cold, pumped-to-the-surface underground water as the principal cooling source
Aruba’s newest data center, named the Global Cloud Data Center (IT3) is located near Milan, Italy, and claims to be 100 percent green. The 49-acre ANSI/TIA-942 Rating 4 standard facility (at 200,000 square meters) opened earlier this month.Also on Network World: Space-radiated cooling cuts power use 21%
Low-impact credentials at the site come largely because the data center has its own dedicated hydroelectric plant. The facility is located on the banks of the River Brembo, an Aruba representative told me. Electricity is generated from the running river water through the operation of turbines. That power is stored and then injected into the national grid infrastructure. Electricity is supposedly guaranteed for the campus by the national grid in exchange for the input.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Over a half of worldwide Internet of Things (IoT) adopters say they’re making money out of the technology, according to a new report from Vodafone. Hiked revenue and a burgeoning return on investment (ROI) is becoming widespread, the telecommunications company says.In Vodafone's fifth annual IoT report, the company says the share of companies with over 50,000 devices has doubled in the past year and that 51 percent of adopters are experiencing “increasing revenues and [IoT is] opening up new revenue streams.”In the Americas, that jumps to a whopping 64 percent that are seeing significant action.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Optical data can be too fast for its own good. While the speeds obtained are great for carrying information over distances and into chips, when the light-carried data lands there it’s often moving too fast to be thoroughly processed and analyzed. Data can need slowing down for intense number-crunching and routing.Solutions to this apparent dichotomy have been attempted. They include the obvious one — speeding up microprocessors themselves. However, there’s a problem with that: Faster chips using electronics create more heat, generate interference and use more energy. All bad for data centers.Using sound waves to speed up networks
Scientists say sound waves, though, could present a solution. They say one should convert the light zooming into the chip to sound — creating a kind of acoustic buffer (sound waves travel slower than light waves) — then processes the data and turn it back into zippy light again, to be sent on its way.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Optical data can be too fast for its own good. While the speeds obtained are great for carrying information over distances and into chips, when the light-carried data lands there it’s often moving too fast to be thoroughly processed and analyzed. Data can need slowing down for intense number-crunching and routing.Solutions to this apparent dichotomy have been attempted. They include the obvious one — speeding up microprocessors themselves. However, there’s a problem with that: Faster chips using electronics create more heat, generate interference and use more energy. All bad for data centers.Using sound waves to speed up networks
Scientists say sound waves, though, could present a solution. They say one should convert the light zooming into the chip to sound — creating a kind of acoustic buffer (sound waves travel slower than light waves) — then process the data and turn it back into zippy light again, to be sent on its way.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Optical data can be too fast for its own good. While the speeds obtained are great for carrying information over distances and into chips, when the light-carried data lands there it’s often moving too fast to be thoroughly processed and analyzed. Data can need slowing down for intense number-crunching and routing.Solutions to this apparent dichotomy have been attempted. They include the obvious one — speeding up microprocessors themselves. However, there’s a problem with that: Faster chips using electronics create more heat, generate interference and use more energy. All bad for data centers.Using sound waves to speed up networks
Scientists say sound waves, though, could present a solution. They say one should convert the light zooming into the chip to sound — creating a kind of acoustic buffer (sound waves travel slower than light waves) — then process the data and turn it back into zippy light again, to be sent on its way.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Edge computing and fog networks must be programmed to kick in when the internet fails during disasters, a scientific research team says. That way, emergency managers can draw on impacted civilians’ location data, social networking images and tweets and use them to gain situational awareness of scenes.Routers, mobile phones and other devices should continue to collect social sensor data during these events, but instead of first attempting to send it through to traditional cloud-based depositories operated by the social network — which are unavailable due to the outage — the geo-distributed devices should divert the data to local edge computing, fog nodes and other hardened resources. Emergency officials can then access it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here