Best of the Data Center Blogs for April 8th

Here’s a roundup of some interesting items we came across this week in our reading of data center industry blogs.

Are You Asking the Right Questions: Standards - At the Compass Points blog, Chris Crosby looks at the devolution of industry standards: " Failure to ask for, and receive, objective evidence of a provider’s adherence to the standards that underlie their performance claims places the customer in the position of having to make their decision based more on the sizzle rather than the steak."

Meet DSSD, Andy Bechtolsheim’s secret chip startup - An interesting startup profile from Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm: "For almost three years many of the creators of Sun’s Zettabyte File System have been slaving away in a Menlo Park, Calif. building trying to build a chip that would improve the performance and reliability of flash memory for high performance computing, newer data analytics and networking. Funded by Andy Bechtolsheim, the startup is called DSSD, and a recent hiring campaign plus the release of several patents offers some clues as to what this stealthy startup is about."

5 Ways to Fool-Proof Your Data Backup Strategy - At the RagingWire Enterprise blog, Jerry Gilreath shares tips on backup: "In honor of World Backup Day, I’d like to give you five points, of advice. These are by no means complete. They’re just common-sense notes from the perspective of someone that has been in the thick of it."

Honey, I Positively Pressurized the Hot Aisle! - Aisle containment is an extremely effective efficiency strategy. But it pays to get the right expertise, as Data Centers Unclouded notes in looking at a project that didn't: "The end result was a hi tech-looking pod that looked like a duck, walked like a duck.... but it didn't quack like a duck."

Cutting Confusion over Open System Software in the Data Center - At the Schneider Electric blog, Damien Wells looks at the various meanings of open: "With the use of data center management software and DCIM on the rise, the requirement for applications to be Open System is increasing. However, there has been some confusion in the use of terminology, especially between Open System Software and Open Source Software which has also confused the specific benefits that each type presents for the end user."