Top 5 Data Center Stories, Week of July 7th

google-data-ship

As a practical joke, Google displayed a Photoshopped image of a “prototype data center ship” as part of its Data Center Efficiency Summit in 2009.

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

AOL Gets Small With Outdoor Micro Data Centers - What might the outer limit for modular data centers look like? It could resemble the micro data center prototype unveiled this week by AOL. The rack-sized enclosure, which will live outdoors, is the first step in AOL’s ambitious plan to reshape its infrastructure using small, unmanned IT facilities that can be managed remotely.

Still No Sign of Data Ships on the Horizon - Whatever happened to floating data centers? Over the years we’ve highlighted a number of unusual approaches to data center design. Some of these offbeat strategies have developed into real-world technology. But floating data centers are not among them, and there’s no sign that will change anytime soon.

Multiple Generator Failures Caused Amazon Cloud Outage - Amazon Web Services says that the repeated failure of multiple generators in a single data center caused last Friday night’s power outage, which led to downtime for Netflix, Instagram and many other popular web sites. The generators in this facility failed to operate properly during two utility outages over a short period Friday evening when the site lost utility power, depleting the emergency power in the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems.

The Hugeness of Jim Cramer's Data Center Miss - This week’s mid-year update of our Data Center Investor leaderboard showed Equinix (EQIX) leading the pack with a gain of 73 percent in the first half of 2012. The colocation company has had its share of skeptics over the years, but none more prominent than Jim Cramer, the colorful CNBC stock market pundit. That got me wondering how Cramer’s sell calls on the data center sector have worked out.

Dell Buys Quest for $2.4 Billion to Boost Data Center Management - After weeks of rumors, Dell this week confirmed that it has a definitive agreement to acquire Quest Software for $2.4 billion in a deal which will strengthen Dell’s offerings for data center management software. The acquisition is part of Dell’s broader strategy to increase its enterprise IT business, which offers better growth and profit margins than the consumer PC business.