Best of the Data Center Blogs: March 13th

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

High vs. Low Density Data Centers - From Mark Thiele at SwitchScribe: "There has been a religious war raging in the data center community for several years now on the subject of server cabinet densities. The question is whether high density server cabinets (typically 15-30kW) should be installed versus distributing your compute over a larger area in low density (typically 4-10kW) cabs. The basic argument is that the overhead of designing for high density, doesn’t justify the benefits. I’m here to say that high density is the best answer, but probably not for the same reasons that most have been arguing."

Can CAD drawings and Excel spreadsheets substitute for DCIM? - From Soeren Jensen at the Schneider Electric data center blog: "By the end of March, it will be two years since the publication of David Cappuccio’s seminal Gartner white paper “DCIM: Going beyond IT”. So how has this pronouncement by one of the industry’s most influential analysts changed attitudes towards data center software in the intervening 24 months? Judging by the continued reliance by data center managers on CAD drawings and Excel spreadsheets to manage their facilities, you’d have to conclude, not a lot."

Health Checking On Load Balancers: More Art Than Science - From Tony Bourke at The Data Center Overlords blog: "One of the trickiest aspects of load balancing (and load balancing has lots of tricky aspects) is how to handle health checking. Health checking is of course the process where by the load balancer (or application delivery controller) does periodic checks on the servers to make sure they’re up and responding. If a server is down for any reason, the load balancer should detect this and stop sending traffic its way."

Fujitsu hints at scale-out storage technology - From Jack Clark at ZDNet UK: "Fujitsu aims to develop a platform for scale-out massive storage based on standard servers with PCIe-linked flash cards, ZDNet UK understands. Fujitsu Technology Solutions' chief technology officer, Joseph Reger, hinted at the plans on Wednesday when asked by ZDNet UK about the company's plans for using basic servers to take on some of the tasks commonly handled by networking equipment with custom silicon."