Best of the Data Center Blogs: April 2nd

Here's a roundup of some interesting items we came across in our weekend reading of data center industry blogs.

Attacking the Cruft - At Loose Bolts, Mike Manos writes about the challenges of overseeing AOL's infrastructure: "One of the first things I encountered at AOL was the cruft. In any organization, everyone always wants to work on the new, cool, interesting things. Mainly because they are new and interesting..out of the norm. Essentially the fun stuff! But the ability for the organization to really drive the adoption of new technologies and methods was always slowed, gated or in some cases altogether prevented by years interconnected systems, lost owners, servers of unknown purpose lost in the distant historical memory and the like. This I found in healthy populations at AOL."

Fiberopoly - James Henry, Senior Managing Director of Bank Street Group, has a fun post at Telecom Ramblings: "In recognition of April Fool’s Day, I thought the readers at Telecom Ramblings might enjoy this Monopoly-inspired Fiberopoly board game."

Cloud-Powered, Low-Latency Pizza Delivery - From Rob Powell at Telecom Ramblings: "Until now, the wonders of the cloud revolution and low latency connectivity have been targeted at niche industries like gaming, high speed trading, and hospitals. But now the true power of fiber and the cloud is coming to the mass markets, as major telecommunications companies quickly move beyond server instances and backup infrastructure to standardize a revolutionary new cloud service with real potential to stem those landline revenue declines: high speed pizza delivery." Please note this was published Sunday.

Cloud Data Centers and the Art of Feng Shui - From Lisa Kuk at the Schneider Data Center blog: " Those creating concepts for next generation data centers to provision public, private and hybrid Cloud architectures would do well to look back and draw upon the precepts of the ancient art of Feng Shui. Three elements that are highlighted all have special relevance to data centers; wind (airflow), water (chilled water) and energy (power). Just as in data centers, equilibrium is sought in Feng Shui between the three elements to produce an optimum environment in which to operate. Taking this metaphor further, we can apply the laws of Feng Shui to the data center."