Coping with Data Centers in Crisis

(page 3 of 3)

Cisco recently forked over $50 million to buy 80% of Nuova Systems, which, sources say, plans to come up with a simpler, one-size-fits-all way to connect diverse kinds of hardware, rather than force data-center operators to deal with a half-dozen different ways to connect devices.

Basic computer architecture is evolving too. Besides just making chips that are faster and more power-efficient, Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD) are designing chips tuned to run virtualized software, rather than just programs built for a specific operating system such as Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows or Sun's Solaris, says VMWare President Diane Greene.

This fast-growing unit of EMC, along with a host of giants including IBM (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and Cisco, are working on software that will orchestrate the efforts of all these technologies from one console. "We don't expect to be the only player in the data center," says Jayshree Ullal, a Cisco senior vice-president. "But we hope to be the anchor in the data center."

Lifeline may be more like it. While companies used to struggle to handle the processing load, they can now pack a few dozen "blade" servers featuring powerful multicore chips from Intel and AMD into a rack that might have held a single server of similar strength in the past. The trouble is, line up too many of these racks and it becomes cost-prohibitive, if not impossible, to crank up the air-conditioning high enough to keep them from overheating.

Indeed, market researchers at IDC expect companies to spend more money to power and cool servers by 2009 than they will spend on the servers in the first place. "The cost of technology is going down, but the cost of power is going up—so the cost structure of data centers is changing," says Steven Sams, vice-president of IBM's Site & Facilities Services unit.

Housing the Hot Gear

This shifting cost structure is causing major changes in the way data centers look. While most companies have been trying to get by with the same facilities used to house their old mainframe, they're now having to install expensive new air-conditioning gear and generators.

For example, rather than cool the entire facility, some data centers have "hot rows" and "cool rows." Since so much heat is generated in such small places because of those densely packed blade servers, a new trend is to enclose just those racks in their own air-conditioned housings.

"Research shows that more than 70% of customers are in crisis mode," unable to properly cool the gear they need to meet their business goals, says IBM's Sams, who says his unit plans to increase its staff by 25% this year to meet demand for a range of new services announced on Oct. 10.

Indeed, data-center construction is no longer an IT backwater left to facilities managers—the folks whose job has long included tasks such as making sure there's enough soap in the bathrooms. CIOs are taking over and thinking harder about what their computing systems need to meet the demands of the burgeoning Internet economy—right down to making sure it is terrorist-proof.

FedEx, for example, is working on a massive new data center that will employ very few people and will be hardened to withstand earthquakes, tornadoes, or even light artillery or small bombs. "With the pulse of the world so oriented toward information, bits are as relevant to making the world hum as are atoms," says FedEx's Carter. "So smart companies need to take a 'that could happen' kind of mindset."

Asked where this new facility will be, he's mum: "That's a need-to-know kind of thing."

Burrows is a senior writer for BusinessWeek, based in Silicon Valley.