Best of the Data Center Blogs: Nov. 15

Here are some of the notable items we came across in this week's surfing of the data center blogs:

Solar at Scale: How Big is a Solar Array of 9MW? - James Hamilton of Amazon looks to a vast new solar farm in Japan to illustrate a point about solar power: "I frequently get asked 'why not just put solar panels on data center roofs and run them on that.' The short answer is datacenter roofs are just way too small."

Google Compute Engine and Live Migration - From Gartner's Lydia Leong at CloudPundit: "Google Compute Engine (GCE) has been a potential cloud-emperor contender in the shadows, and although GCE is still in beta, it’s been widely speculated that Google will likely be the third vendor in the trifecta of big cloud IaaS market-share leaders, along with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Windows Azure. A critical question has remained, though: Will Google be able to deliver technology capabilities that can be used by mere mortals in the enterprise?"

Exascale Progress Meter: Are We Moving in the Right Direction? - At InsideHPC, Mike Bernhardt looks at our current progress towards the future milestone of supercomputing 1018 flops.

Anonymity is Crucial to Data Center Maturity Model Success - At the Schneider Electric blog, John Tuccillio provides an update from The Green Grid: " (TGG) has been having with its Data Center Maturity Model, and how more than 400 unique organizations have signed on and are actively using the tool to begin an assessment. "

It’s Getting’ Hot in Here…. - At Compass Points, Chris Crosby reflects on Seattle's plans to use data center exhaust heat to warm offices: "My interest in the prospects for data centers as a heating source was peaked when I found out that Switzerland is tapping into an IBM data center to heat a swimming pool. Now that’s a game changer."