Data centers electricity consumption-Amazing facts

Data centers electricity consumption-Amazing facts from AMD

AMD has released some amazing data center facts- servers,data center infrastructure and cooling infrastructure consumed around 1.2% of the electricity consumption of the entire US market

Alternatives to lowering electricity consumption in data centers

Data centers need to seriously look at data center options such as server consolidation and virtualization, in the aim to use data center server CPU as a service

• Data center server consolidation:In a survey of data centers across the US, I can state with confidence that 80% of servers are operating at below 20% capacity. Data center server consolidation will not only save money for data centers in server cost but also help in reducing precious energy resources such as electricity consumption


• Data storage server virtualization:Data storage server virtualization assists data centers in optimally switching between blade servers to create a true CPU and data storage as a service data center. This server virtualization will also mean that optimal electricity consumption is taking place in the data center

Full AMD data center electricity consumption findings

Google publishes hard drive expose!

Hard drive expose by Google-A hard drive white paper study from Google

Google has published a document on hard drive failure rates based on the study of hard drives at Google's data centers

Google's hard drive study makes for very interesting reading-and cannot be taken lightly since the sample size of Google's data centers is very huge

Google's hard drive collapse surprise finding 1:Hard drive failure not correlated highly with temperature

Google's hard drive failure study finds that there is no one on one correlation of temperatures with hard drive failure

Per Google's hard drive research,new hard drives prefer higher temperatures and older hard drives prefer lower temperatures and are susceptible to reverse temperatures

Google's hard drive research is in short suggesting that we shouldn't assume that all drives are equally susceptible to manufacturers

Google uses cheap and a variety hard drives from various manufacturers

Google operates one of the largest data centers in the world, and amazingly uses cheap hard drives with a combination of serial and parallel hard disk drives, with speeds from 5400 to 7200 rpm.

Incredible, that Google's large data centers uses hard drives that may be obsolete elsewhere

Google's hard drive research suggests that SMART hard drive parameters are not the only symptoms that aid in preventing hard drive failures

Firstly,Google extensive use of SMART hard drives (self-monitoring drives) is interesting

Further,Google's conclusion about SMART hard drives is a signal to SMART drive manufacturers that the data monitored is not good enough

Google's hard drive research summary

Get rid of hard drives after the

• Hard drive first scan error


• First hard drive sector reallocation error


• The first hard drive probational count error

Disaster recovery-Should disaster recovery centers be local or geographically dispersed?

Should disaster recovery center be local or geographically dispersed

Disaster recovery centers are typically near shore-close to the geographic region where the core operations data centers are located.

Is this near-shore disaster recovery location a good idea?

Disaster recovery centers at near shore locations to data centers have the disadvantage of being used for actual data center operations as a supplementary data center site

The typical data center scenario: More and more normal operations data center stuff gets pushed to the disaster recovery data center and as a result, the disaster recovery data center begins to resemble a supplementary data center

Disaster recovery disaster-This supplementary data center scenario defeats the very purpose of having a separate disaster recovery data center

Funny disaster recovery job posting

Funny disaster recovery,IS security job posting

An unintentionally funny disaster recovery , IS security job posting,I came across today

Great job for Manager,Disaster recovery,IS security.Great compensation.Bonuses based on number of disaster recovery systems handled through the year

Organizations reward "creating" IT disaster recovery situations

As you can see on the disaster recovery job posting above,organizations reward people for "creating" IT disaster situations and handling the disaster recovery operations as a result

Wonder why there are no IT disasters and disaster recovery situations on Fridays?

There are no IT disaster recovery situations on Fridays :-)

All IT disaster recovery situations tend to occur on Mondays/Tuesdays so that the disaster recovery can be completed by the end of the week. IT Security and disater recovery managers can then "claim credit" for resolving the IT disasters before the weekend and of course celebrate with a blast

No business continuity,disaster recovery situations in December

Do you wonder why there are no IT disaster recovery situations in December and all the IT disasters converge in the second week of January? Well, its after all a question of priorities,would you rather spend time with your family or save the organization millions of dollars due to IT disater recovery,business continuity situations?

From a cynical business continuity, disaster recovery consultant

Spam Thru botnet threaten data centers

A recent article,titledSpam thru Botnet- Biggest threat to cyberspace security talks about the threat to data centers due to the Spam Thru botnets

Botnets are now universally recognized as the biggest security threats to data centers. What is intriguing about the Spam Thru botnet is apparently Spam Thru botnet's own antivirus system. The Spam Thru botnet's antivirus system ensures that Spam Thru remains the dominant botnet on the compromised computer and is not susceptible to other botnet attacks

This Spam Thru botnet story is quite incredible and as fascinating as science fiction

Tackling botnets such as the Spam Thru botnets-Where are the antivirus and antispyware vendors?

Its rather sad that the antivirus and antispyware vendors dominating the market are incapable of detecting and destroying botnets such as the Spam Thru botnet which mock the commercial antivirus vendors by having their own antivirus systems

Data centers are now really vulnerable to cyberspace security issues due to botnets such as the Spam Thru botnet

The only people who will rejoice with the new botnet based internet vulnerabilities are the internet security consultants who will make a fortune 'advising' companies on dealing with botnets such as Spam Thru

Wifi vulnerability- Watch Out-Wifi Networks are very vulnerable to security attacks.

WIfi network are very vulnerable to security risks

WiFi Networks are very vulnerable to security attacks- Recent surveys show that almost 80% of Wifi networks are not even WEP encryption enabled.

Wifi network security carelessness

Why are people so careless when it comes to Wifi vulnerability? Its quite incredible that so-called intelligent people can be so dumb when it comes to Wifi security

Casual survey of Wifi network security vulnerabilities

I did a casual survey of people in my data center department and found that the awareness of Wifi vulnerabilities is incredibly low. In fact, 30% of my data center team did not even know what WEP encryption was. If this is the state of awareness for Wifi network vulnerabilities and security risks among so-called IT-savvy data center professionals, God forbid, the level of knowledge about Wifi security risks among non-IT guys must be incredibly bad.

Why bother locking your doors when you are going to expose your home or office Wifi network to the outside world?

Will Vista destroy the antivirus software industry?

Will Microsoft Vista destroy the antivirus software industry?

A rather interesting antivirus software article suggests that antivirus software such as McAfee and Norton coule be made obsolete after Microsoft Vista's launch

Which antivirus software is worse?

Will you choose bad quality antivirus software such as McAfee or Symantec protection that is expensive or bad quality antivirus software from Microsoft Vista
that is free?

I think its a question of which antivirus software is worse- antivirus software protection provided by software such as McAfee and Norton or Microsoft Vista. Though Microsoft does not have a great history of providing desktop security and good antivirus protection, Microsoft Vista has seen significant investments in information security and can definitely do better than Norton or McAfee antivirus software.

Entire antivirus software product industry is a racket

I have a poor opinion of the antivirus software industry and the quality of antivirus software products- so I would rather get free antivirus software from Microsoft of the same quality as the more expensive antivirus software products from so-called industry giants such as McAfee or Symantec antivirus

Data storage backups - The biggest security hazard and waste of money

Data backups are a security hazard and redundancy causes a huge waste of money

Sounds surprising to see a data storage guy talk bad things about data backups and their security implications,right? But its true,data storage backups are taken once,twice and many times over with no track of how many Gigabytes of data are stored in backups,how much of that data storage backup is redundant etc

Typical corporate data storage backup scenario

• Redundancy of data storage backups- Its kinda fashionable to take data storage backups, and preferably repeated backups? Nobody takes incremental data storage backups anymore, its just fashionable to take more and more backups


• Data storage backups are so redundant that data storage backups are nowadays not even catalogued- every data storage backup is categorized by the ubiquitous file name - 'Backups' :-) Nobody has a clue what those data storage backups are about


• Data storage backups are a huge security risk- data storage backups are not catalogued and very often, openly available and not even under lock and key.

In summary, data storage backups are a huge security risk and a redundant data storage through avoidable data backups are a huge waste of corporate money- imagine if corporates used the extra money to pay more to employees :-)

Google Desktop - Dont download? Security Paranoia

You allow Google Desktop downloads ? Google Desktops are a huge security risk and should not be allowed in any organization. Dont you take your data center security job seriously- you actually recommend Google desktop searches?

Google Desktop evokes this common response among data security experts. But I think it is simply security paranoia to not allow Google Desktop downloads. Google Desktops are not a huge security risk at all- True,Google Desktop does communicate to home base and allows for the controversial 'Search across Computers'

But,Google is a large corporate now, and any potential disclosures on misuse of Google Desktop search data by Google would harm Google's interests far more than any potential gain of using the data from Google Desktop searches.

Anyways, when we allow free Kazaa downloads with the omnipresent spyware and downloads of any unauthorized downloads from the internet with no security checks, why should we get paranoid on Google Desktop? Its just security paranoia and fear of Big Brother Google.