Top 5 Data Center Stories, Week of December 3rd

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An illustration of the Switch Macro Mod design that will be used in the company's new campus in north Las Vegas, which was announced this week.

For your weekend reading, here’s a recap of five noteworthy stories that appeared on Data Center Knowledge this past week:

New Study Reinforces Case for DC Power Savings - It’s been five years since a study by Lawrence Berkeley National Labs outlined the potential for DC power distribution to cut data center energy use by 10 to 20 percent. But adoption of DC in data centers remains limited, even as the industry aggressively pursues a wide array of other energy savings strategies. The recent Data Center Efficiency Summit featured a case study showing gains over AC systems, and discussion of whether global efforts to establish a standard for 380 volt systems might build momentum for DC power.

Switch Plans Major New Campus in North Las Vegas - Switch plans to build a new data center campus in northern Las Vegas, which will add more than 300,000 square feet of mission-critical space for customers seeking redundant IT infrastructure, the company said today. The Switch Las Vegas-North Campus will be located near the intersection of Cheyenne and Buffalo, roughly 15 miles north of the Las Vegas Digital Exchange Campus (LVDEC), the home of Switch’s massive SuperNAP data center.

Terremark Expands Data Center in Santa Clara - Santa Clara, Calif. continues to be a hotbed of data center activity. Today Terremark said it has completed an expansion of its Network Access Point (NAP) West data center in Santa Clara, which now features 100,000 square feet of raised floor space. Terremark, a Verizon company, said the expansion in Silicon Valley was driven by strong customer demand for enterprise-class IT services.

Strong Online Retail Lead-In for Cyber Monday - Early data from the holiday weekend highlight three trends: strong overall year-to-year growth in online sales, the emergence of Thanksgiving evening as a major event for retail (both online and off) and the increasing use of mobile phones and tablets on retail sites. The growth in mobile traffic appears to include comparison shopping by deal-seekers in stores, as well as an increase in “couch commerce” by surfers seeking virtual doorbuster sales.

Puppet Labs Raises $8.5M from Tech Heavyweights - Three tech giants — Cisco, Google Ventures and VMWare — have joined in another funding round for Puppet Labs, contributing $8.5 million to the Portland-based provider of IT automation software for system administrators, according to Luke Kanies, co-founder and CEO of Puppet Labs.

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