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I came across an interesting article in Data Center Knowledge about a device known as a heat wheel, or Kyoto Cooling, that takes advantage of outside air to cool a datacenter. I’m pretty familiar with the concept of air-side economization but I had never heard of this technology before. Sounds pretty cool. My datacenter location probably has the right climate profile to take advantage of this type of technology.
Google apparently runs its datacenters hotter than most companies achieving millions in cost savings. Industry standard datacenter temperature ranges were recently adjusted upward to between 68 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit (20 to 25 degress Celsius). I’ve oftentimes had polite disagreements with customers that tour my datacenters and balk at the 70-72 degree average temperature reading. Most people don’t realize that datacenter operators have gradually been raising acceptable temperature limits over the past decade. And it’s with good reason: that 5 degree temperature difference could mean as much as 20% energy savings.
I sat down with fellow Minnesota entrepreneur and Internet strategist Steve Borsch this week to talk about my company VISI. He wrote a very nice summarization of our conversation on the increasingly popular Minnov8 blog. Thanks Steve!
Every day a new vendor or service provider touts their new cloud computing technology and strategy. But what is cloud computing? It is quickly becoming one of those catch phrases which hosting marketing groups morph into every product pitch.
The origins of cloud computing stem from grid computing. You generally find grid computing in academic institutions and research laboratories. You’ve probably read articles about schools that build supercomputers using hundreds of off-the-shelf desktop machines. They use grid computing architectures and technologies to tie all those computers together. Think Borg. You can’t install Windows XP on this sort of massive cluster. These types of systems only support custom applications that are designed to take advantage of the distributed computing architecture.
Cloud computing incorporates the horizontal scalability of grid computing and packages it into a service that is delivered from a datacenter. The idea is that you can install your applications in a datacenter computing environment with little regard to the underlying infrastructure. Your applications live in the cloud. Cloud computing environments generally utilize virtual servers, networked storage, and significant software automation. Amazon’s EC2 is a good example of a modern cloud computing strategy. Their hosting service allows users to load applications on virtual servers and then scale those virtual servers — even across datacenters — to meet increased performance requirements. Google’s App Engine is another example of a cloud computing strategy. Do users really know where their applications live within Google’s infrastructure? No. And it doesn’t really matter. Google’s massively distributed infrastructure ensures that applications survive and thrive within the cloud.
The biggest challenge with cloud computing is that the specialized architecture requires specialized application development. It requires re-engineering time that most businesses don’t want to invest in. Many of Amazon’s bigger EC2 customers are companies that have strategically focused their application development on Amazon’s platform.
I believe that cloud computing will one day replace common hosting services such as shared websites, virtual private servers, and dedicated servers. But it will take a few more years before we see a standardized platform that both hosting providers and businesses can support.
