Issue 7, Dec 09/Jan 10


FOCUS NEWS UK & EUROPE


BBC USES DEDICATED DATA CENTER TO STREAM STRICTLY COME DANCING ON iPLAYER


The BBC is using solid-state disk memory, served from a dedicated data center, to stream popular content such as its Saturday night light entertainment show, Strictly Come Dancing.


The organisation’s iPlayer online system requires its own specially set up data center in which its most popular content is stored on SSD media.


High capacity and low latency are key to making iPlayer work, and the broadcaster has had to invest to ensure its most popular content is not affected by time lags when it is accessed through its online viewing platform.


The London Stock Exchange Group extended its Exchange Hosting service through which third-party companies can locate their servers in its data center, cutting latency times for automatic trading systems. The latest phase brings online a floor of the Exchange’s data center dedicated to hosting with 5kW of power available to each cabinet. The expansion of its central London data center hosting service increases cabinet capacity fivefold.


FURTHER READING


NYSE Euronext and the next-generation network , page 18


US e-discovery firm Stratify opened a London data center to provide support for electronic discovery and disclosure solutions.


Munich airport’s 600m3 computer room has undergone a transformation in which it raised the room temperature by 6o 22o


to 28o as part of a project


which saw it knock 35% off previous air-conditioning use. The operator changed


everything from installing hot-aisle/cold-aisle containment, rerouting cable runs within the server cabinets and reconfiguring the floor tile layout. Supplier Schroff said it


Paul Boyns, head of policy and IT strategy at the BBC, said that streaming content to the internet has had a big impact on its data center strategy. “We use solid-state disk for popular content just to get the throughput we need.


“It has had an impact on the enterprise data center strategy because, in addition to a traditional enterprise data center, we need high-capacity and low-latency streaming out to the internet. That requires a specific type of facility that wouldn’t be economical for email and file and print services. So it has meant we have a specific tier of data center for the on-demand content distribution.


was able to save some 35% of the previous air-conditioning energy usage and provide headroom for the installation of additional servers in the existing cabinets. At the same time, the temperature gradient within the server cabinets was reduced, extending the life of the servers and improving reliability.


IBM is in the planning and risk-analysis phase of a 1,200 square meter data center in a five-storey building in the Slovakian capital Bratislava for national carrier Slovakia Telecom. The next phase of the project involves the design and construction, including the networking and electrical system, emergency power supply and cooling system.


from


Intel partnered up with three French institutions to create a laboratory that will work on developing systems with one thousand-times the computing power of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The Exascale Computing Research Center will be funded by Intel’s investment of several million euro over three years and a matching contribution from the French Atomic Energy Commission, the Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines


“We do know what the energy consumption of that facility is, because it is a ring-fenced activity and therefore we are able to project ahead,” he said.


FURTHER READING The full interview with Paul Boyns is on page 32


University and the French National High-Performance Computing Agency.


The Green Grid signed a pact with the BCS, which will see both bodies work closely on promoting data center energy-efficiency through a framework agreement to improve research effectiveness into tools, metrics and best practice. It also launched a guide to the impact of EU policies, which ranks the implications of current and future legislation for data center operations in the UK, France, Germany and The Netherlands.


A report called Data Center Pricing in Europe 2010 to 2015 claims to map pricing trends over the next five years. The information based on a quarterly sector pricing tracker includes analyses of the pricing of a number of key products, such as a standard 19in rack, caged space, cross-connect rentals, 50 KVA suite, costs of installation, cabling and industrial electricity supply. The data is based on research


conducted among carrier-neutral and carrier-based operators across 19 European countries. The sample excerpts indicate that data center raised floor space is projected to increase in each of


the 19 countries studied from 2010 through to 2015, and that the UK will remain the largest single market, followed by Germany, France and Spain. It also suggests that Denmark is the most expensive of these markets, in terms of the average monthly per rack price, and Italy the cheapest. Pricing will remain at a premium and is projected to increase based on a healthy demand for new space. The Tariff Consultancy published the report.


The managed services arm of Computacenter, the UK’s largest IT supplier, said it picked nlyte’s DCPM to use across all its UK data centers. “The nlyte solution with its advanced visualisation capabilities and real-time environment will enable us to further improve the management of our data center estate and more accurately forecast and plan for growing demand,” said Simon Brickett, Computacenter’s head of data center managed services.


AboveNet Communications UK joined up with Interxion to create a point of presence for its enhanced metro Ethernet, IP transit and international VPN services at its London City data center.


www.datacenterdynamics.com 7


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