I am scheduled to visit the Alcatel-Lucent facility in Plano . Texas next month to take a first hand look at their new modular server rack cooling system. Your first question is probably "Alacatel-Lucent makes a cooling system?!?" This longtime staple of the IT world and particularily the telecom industry decided to design and build their own cooling sytem. The primary reason behind this was frustration with the current state of computer room cooling. Alcatel has made a big investment in IP v... Continue reading ...
Posted by Gary Dunlap on Saturday, June 26, 2010,
Most companies have not looked at their particular cost of IT downtime. What does down time cost YOU? You know it costs something, right? Unfortunately most companies don't really take a hard look at what downtime costs them until they experience an extended outage of some kind. Even then, quite often they don't really do the math they just realize that it was painful and they do not wish to repeat the experience.
The catch phrase Mission-Critical gets used a good bit but understanding what ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Gary Dunlap on Friday, May 21, 2010,
A recent white paper from a company called Zero Nines talks about "The Disaster of Disaster Recovery" The basic premise here is that with even the latest Disaster Recovery solutions there will be a certain amount of downtime and a certain amount of data loss. The words "acceptable amount" come to mind here. Zero Nines operates in the international banking sector where the acceptable amount is NONE but most of the rest of us live in another reality where the cost of a "one to many" multiple r... Continue reading ...
Posted by Gary Dunlap on Monday, April 12, 2010,
In :
Facilities
The case for Scheduled Maintenance has been made over and over, ad nauseum for the last 50 or 60 years since Air Conditioning became popular in the 40s. Many who are far more intelligent and learned have recited all the reasons why this is the way to do things. Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel , I would like to recall some of the reasons that I have heard out in the field for NOT doing maintenance. I promise to try my best to defend these positions.
“We just don’t do maintenan... Continue reading ...
Posted by Gary Dunlap on Wednesday, April 7, 2010,
In :
Facilities
Monitoring,Benchmarking and Data Center Metrics - This is probably the most important part of any energy saving strategy. You cannot fix what you don't know about or understand.
Here's a good real world example: Company A decided to monitor its power usage and see how it was trending. They found several spikes and anomalies one of which they determined was the CRAC equipment fighting amongst themselves - one dehumidifing while another was humidifing while another was reheating. A simple ne... Continue reading ...
 The use of hot aisle/cold aisle configurations had been around for several years and the physics of it make sense - put the cold air in the front where the equipment breathes and put all the hot air in a separate aisle - but in this traditional design in a high-density data center, up to 40% of the cool air is wasted. Hot and cold air mix over the top of racks and around the rows. So doesn't this seem like only part of the solution?
The issue here is air mixing, if you mix hot and co... Continue reading ...
Posted by Gary Dunlap on Thursday, November 19, 2009,
In :
Monitoring
I am couching this discussion in terms of Mission-Critical Infrastructure but this really applies to several different disciplines especially IT. First let's define and qualify each of these items. Remote Access is the ability to access a piece of equipment from a remote location. A remote location can be another part of the building on the same LAN or another part of the world across the internet. The basic premise here is that you can access the device interface without having to connect dir... Continue reading ...
OK the title sounds at the least repetitious and maybe even silly,but I have been thinking a lot lately about value. Gitomer and all my other guru's talk a lot about "building value for the customer". What is valuable to your customer? In my world, I build value on three levels. One with the knowledge and expertise that they gain access to by doing business with me and my company. This knowledge base is not just what's in my head but the cumulative knowledge and experience of all the people th... Continue reading ...
Posted by Gary Dunlap on Saturday, October 17, 2009,
In :
Monitoring
Using the same rationale as we do about our information systems, wouldn’t the best people to watch the power and cooling, the fire suppression system and the physical security be the ones that built and installed the systems and that work on them every day? Continue reading ...
Posted by Gary Dunlap on Saturday, October 17, 2009,
In :
Facilities
Having spent many years around server rooms and telephone offices , the magnitude of the systems that support information technology doesn't surprise me.
What does occasionally give me a start is that all of these diverse processes have "a guy" attached to them who is the sole master of that process. The cooling equipment has "an AC guy" . The power equipment usually has two "guys" , the electrician and sometimes the vendor who sold it to you. The fire system has a "guy" and so on. I don't k... Continue reading ...
In this recent article in "the Register" Intel is floating the concept of data centers being too cool and thus wasting power. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/31/data_centers_run_too_cool/.
I believe that several things need to be researched before we make a mass exodus to 80 degree F+ server rooms. The article mentions warranties from manufacturuers that specifically become null and void if the equipment reaches certain temperature levels. Although Intel is raising the question , th... Continue reading ...
Posted by Gary Dunlap on Saturday, October 17, 2009,
In :
Generators
Here is a good article from facilitiesnet on a much ignored problem with emergency power systems. Always remember , it's the small simple things that get you every time. http://www.facilitiesnet.com/powercommunication/article/Bearing-Problems-Negatively-Impact-EmergencyPower-Systems--10754 Continue reading ...
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About The Editor
| Gary Dunlap , Director of Site Support Services |
| Birmingham , Al |
I am proud to be heading Hardy's Mission-Critical Infrastructure Management. The main purpose of our department is to be a One Stop Single Point of Contact for Mission-Critical Infrastructure Management. We define Mission-Critical Infrastructure as the systems that support Information Technology such as power, cooling, flooring,fire suppression,asset management, physical security,cabling and cable management and many other specialized technologies that support the servers, switches, routers and software that make up a typical data center environment.
My specialties include Mission-Critical Infrastructure Management,
multi-location voice and data projects,
IP Telephony,
WAN design and management
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