Top 5 Data Center Stories, Week of July 2nd

NYSE’s Data Fortress Powering the Financial Cloud - There are few data centers in the world that are more difficult to get into than the new NYSE Euronext facility in Mahwah, New Jersey. The huge building features extremely strong access control, a substantial security perimeter, and is built to survive … well, just about anything. The 400,000 square foot data center has been engineered for security, speed and reliability to support its mission as the nerve center for the NYSE”s electronic trading operations. Starting tomorrow it will add a new role: powering the financial industry’s first cloud computing platform, which will let traders lease computing power at the new data center.

Is a Sea Change Coming in the Server Market? - Is the growing influence of huge cloud data centers driving a “sea change” in server design and processor technology? Or will x86 offerings from Intel and AMD continue to dominate, despite the current excitement about new architectures and custom server design? Four companies debated the future of the server and processor market last week at Structure 2011, including executives from AMD and three newer players in the server game – SeaMicro, Tilera and Calxeda. All agreed that huge purchases by cloud computing providers are changing the server market.

A Closer Look at the Hot Cloud Startups - GigaOM Structure offers an opportunity for tech start-ups to showcase their ideas through the Launchpad competition. The 11 finalists, representing some of the most promising new companies in the cloud computing sector, each made a four-minute pitch in front of the conference attendees and four judges.

Fire Threatens Los Alamos, Supercomputing Lab - A fast-moving wildfire has closed the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a Department of Energy facility that houses several of the world’s most advanced supercomputers. The Cielo and Roadrunner supercomputers were shut down as a precauition.

‘Digital Universe’ to Add 1.8 Zettabytes in 2011 - More than 1.8 zettabytes of information will be created and stored in 2011, according to the latest IDC Digital Universe Study sponsored by EMC. That’s a mind-boggling figure, equivalent to 1.8 trillion gigabytes -enough information to fill 57.5 billion 32GB Apple iPads. It also illustrates the challenge in storing and managing all that data.