Top 5 Data Center Stories, Week of February 5th

For your weekend reading, we present a recap of five noteworthy stories that appeared on Data Center Knowledge this past week.

LinkedIn Designs Own 100G Data Center Switch - Following examples set by other web-scale data center operators, companies like Google and Facebook, the infrastructure engineering team behind the professional social network LinkedIn has designed its own data center networking switch to replace networking technology supplied by the major vendors, saying the off-the-shelf products were inadequate for the company’s needs.

Google Open Sources Data Center Load Balancing Software - Google says Seesaw was designed to provide easy management and the ability to automate configuration changes. That makes it ideal for large enterprises that need a flexible load-balancing solution.

Equinix Turns to Fan Walls for Data Center Cooling - There’s been a lot of debate over the years about the various pluses and minuses of using raised floors for data center cooling versus simply dropping cold air onto the data center floor from ducts on the ceiling. But there’s a third option: the fan wall.

The fan wall at Facebook's Lulea, Sweden, data center (Photo: Facebook)

Cloud Underwater? Microsoft Tests Submarine Data Center - Continuing its long tradition of data center experimentation in the name of efficiency, Microsoft announced it has been testing an unusual new data center concept: placing servers underwater out in the ocean.

Project Natick, Microsoft's experimental underwater data center, being deployed off the coast of California (Photo: Microsoft)

Hong Kong Data Center Market Growing Thanks to China Effect - Hong Kong may be one of the world’s tiniest nations, but its importance on the internet’s global map is huge, and, if the Hong Kong government plays its cards right, that importance is only going to grow.

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