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Colocation America Blog
showing 11 - 20 of 207 post(s)
on: 01-24-2012 / By:
The Hudson Building on 60 Hudson Street has announced plans for a complex renovation to modernize the 80-year-old building. Power and cooling capacity expansions will be the main changes to the historic landmark that served as a pillar in the evolution of American communications infrastructure. In charge of the resurgence of the Hudson Building is CEO of DataGryd, Peter Feldman, who has a tough task ahead of him.
In a public interview, Feldman detailed the various difficulties surrounding the project, including limited space and outdated infrastructure. To refurbish an 80-year-old building is more than just cleaning up the outside, as the insides must be rejuvenated as well. Feldman plans on replacing the building's outdated mechanical systems with 240,000 square feet of practical floor space, which translates to benefits such as increased data center storage options and capacity.
The DataGryd team has also developed a plan that will upgrade the power and cooling capacity without interrupting the ongoing operations of current clients, many of who cannot afford a single second of downtime due to critical processes. This plan includes a drastic transformation of the data center cooling, which will feature a combined cooling, heat, and power (CCHP) system with Caterpillar turbines, which use natural gas to generate power.
on: 01-20-2012 / By:
The first release candidate of Linux 3.3 kernel was released to the public yesterday afternoon. Linus Torvalds and his team managed to close the 3.3 kernel merge window after only two weeks. When asked about the latest merge window, Torvalds stated, "It really was a pretty busy merge window. I don't know why it felt so busy, though, In pure numbers, the merge window seems to have been pretty normal - the number of merges and regular commits are right where you'd expect them."
Many pulls were handled in the 3.3 release candidate which included: DRM changes, BQL for fighting Bufferbloat, EXT4 file-system improvements, and improved ACPI/power management support. In comparison to recent kernel releases, Linus managed to pack in a long list of exciting features. For those running a dedicated hosting server using Linux, I'd recommend updating to Linux 3.3 rc1 kernel immediately.
on: 01-18-2012 / By:
In case you haven't heard, which seems nearly impossible, major websites, plus some 10,000 other sites, are protesting the SOPA bill. Now what is the SOPA bill exactly? First off, SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. If passed, the U.S. Senate and the Department of Justice have the right to shut down and make search engines remove links to sites deemed 'copyright infringement.' Mostly, SOPA is aimed at stopping domestic access and funding to foreign-based websites that offer pirated material. Essentially, this bill will cut off funding, advertising, and access to said sites. For anyone that has been on YouTube, copyright infringement on the internet is a real thing. YouTube even has different options of copyright and licensing for a person's created material and that of others.
Now what does SOPA mean to the average internet user? Perhaps nothing. As seen by the massive amount of popular websites on strike, this bill may never happen. As of Noon, Pacific Time, House Speaker John Boehner said that legislation was not ready for a vote, only to say it will come back in a month. Some senators commented that the bill is simply not ready, while others are outright withdrawing their support claiming 'free and open access' to everyone. Regardless of what US Senators are preaching, the internet remains free from the SOPA bill.
But really, what does SOPA mean for the average website owner? Again, it is uncertain the effect it will have. One thing is certain, however, that websites that are on shared IP addresses may be in trouble. Imagine the internet as it is currently. A website may be on a shared IP with a small video site (imagine with me). This small video site has pirated material that SOPA has deemed unfit for the public eye. In response to this discovery the Department of Justice bans the small video site's IP which, in turn, is your IP address. To prevent this from happening, sites may choose a dedicated IP address. Once a website owner sees the advantages of a dedicated IP address they may choose one of the other services that give them more control over their site. These services include server dedicated, colocation, or managed server.
Now what should the average website owners and users do? Well, they should do their research on the issue. Before you protest, strike, write, comment, Tweet, Facebook, or whatever it is you do, do the research. Figure out the reasons behind the bill and how it will affect you. Chances are you will find out more information about the internet and piracy laws then you ever wanted to know. Be engaged and have your own opinion on the bill before you go all gung-ho on being anti-government.
on: 01-17-2012 / By:
Lead sponsor of the controversial U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as SOPA, is officially removing a provision that states Internet service providers must block subscribers from accessing foreign sites with copyright infringement issues. Texas Republican Lamar Smith has announced he will remove the provision while they examine the issues surrounding the controversy of the provision.
Remaining in the bill still are provisions allowing the Department of Justice to pursue court orders requiring search engines to remove links to websites accused of copyright infringement. It will also require online advertising networks and payment processors to sever all ties with accused websites.
SOPA has been receiving a significant amount of negative attention in the past few weeks, especially with widespread retaliation from big names such as Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, and popular social bookmarking website Reddit, which will have a day of black out dedicated to opposing the SOPA. It remains to be seen how SOPA will affect the colocation hosting industry, but it will certainly make an impact when the decision is finally made.
on: 01-16-2012 / By:
Networkworld.com wrote an interesting article summarizing the biggest points to take away from the Consumer Electronics Show held last week. The article details 5 key points to takeaway from the trade show, incase you weren't able to follow or attend.
The first point is that Windows is finally back. Although Windows never really went away, it is now resurging with innovative ideas for the operating system. Windows 8 provides a personal yet functional feel that has completely eliminated the Start button. Although Windows 8 looks to be optimized for personal use rather than as an operating system for a dedicated hosting server, I still look forward to a great follow up to Windows 7.
Following Windows improving, NetworkWorld talks about the latest ultrabook craze. Ultrabooks are the non-Mac alternatives to the MacBook Air, and feature fast speed at a low weight, all at a reasonable price. The thing to takeaway was that although they are great, they are not as essential or innovative as all the hype warrants.
Read more about CES and the last three points over at NetworkWorld.
on: 01-12-2012 / By:
AT&T has announced the arrival of a new open-source cloud running OpenStack, to improve their application developer platform. It is dubbed AT&T Cloud Architect, and is a planned service of private and public servers equipped with a variety of storage, network, and monitoring options. The AT&T Cloud Architect will be offered as a service in the near future.
AT&T claims it will come with a LAMP stack for Fedora, CentOS, Debian, Red Hat, and Windows Server, which is positive news for those currently operating a low cost dedicated server with one of those operating systems. The Cloud Architect will eventually feature a full API framework, allowing full access to the cloud.
Additionally, AT&T has now become the first United States telecommunications provider to partner up with OpenStack. Openstack is a project started by Rackspace and NASA in 2010, with the main purpose of building up a Linux infrastructure for cloud. John Donovan, AT&T chief technology officer, has stated OpenStack will be hosted at three of their main data centers, including their data center in New Jersey, specifically Secaucus. They plan to expand to six data centers by the end of the year.
on: 01-11-2012 / By:
The forecast is out on IT trends for 2012. Staying ahead of the game is, of course, the main concern for many businesses. One trend that keeps everyone blogging is the increase of exchanging of data and information online. As society changes so must companies and the way in which they conduct business even for financial companies. The ease in which companies exchange information has led to an increase of deals. To stay in the loop, exchange data and maintain uptime at any hour, companies will have to find the cheapest dedicated servers close to home.
For financial companies on Wall Street a data center close to the company's
headquarters matters. A second in the world of low-latency trading can seem
like an eternity. Imagine Wall Street having a data
center in San Francisco opposed to
Weehawken; the microseconds wasted to connect to an exchange systems to execute
a trade may be the difference between millions of dollars made or lost.
For those who do not know Weehawken is home to five major exchange companies'
IT infrastructures including the American Stock Exchange, Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and BATS Trading. The increase in bandwidth has allowed finance companies to
reach more clients quicker resulting in more sells. For a finance business or
any other business type in Weehawken or the surrounding areas, choosing a Colocation
Weehawken provider or data center may be the
difference between making it, breaking it, or just surviving.
on: 01-11-2012 / By:
2012 is looking to be an eventful year in the data center industry and its operations. Large scale tectonic shifts are either planned or undergoing for a number of major data center, providing new prospects in an otherwise stable field.
Virtualization is shrinking down data center footprints but augmenting cooling requirements and power density. Storage is getting more crucial because of the shortage of hard disk production, associated with the natural disasters in key production areas such as Thailand.
Increased uptime expectations are pushing operations into new service models, and compliance is putting emphasis on improved security expenditure. All of these shifts are significantly increasing demand for colocation and cloud services, and it has only been a little over a week in the new year!
Over these next couple of weeks, the blog at Colocation America will keep readers up to date on the developing trends in the data center industry and the progressive shift that is imminent. For now, look forward to an increase in supply of the low cost dedicated server, despite growing compliance and quality demands from data centers. In addition, look out for potential infrastructure upgrades from major data centers and colocation, such as One Wilshire colocation from the flagship Los Angeles data center.
on: 01-10-2012 / By:
Linux Mint has broken the all time record on DistroWatch's linux distribution ranking list, over the previous holder Ubuntu. Linux Mint has managed to obtain a 3160 rating, which is over a 1000 rating higher than Ubuntu. The ranking list puts emphasis on trending traffic and new user growth, which is why Linux Mint has been doing so well on the list in comparison to Ubuntu, which has been relatively stagnant outside of its regular updates.
The decrease in user growth for Ubuntu can mostly be attributed to its still controversial change to the Unity system, which has been criticized for its lack of customization. Canonical has also shifted gears away from the desktop industry and has started focusing more on tablet and handset operating systems. For those searching a low cost dedicated server, Linux Mint may be a great alternative to the once mighty Ubuntu when considering an operating system.
on: 01-06-2012 / By:
Linus Torvalds has announced the official release of Linux 3.2, the latest kernel version for Linux operating systems. It features file-system improvements including support for Ext4 block sizes up to 1 MB, and quicker scrubbing with Btrfs. In addition, Linux 3.2 also upgraded the process scheduler functions, improved thin provisioning capabilities in accordance with Device Mapper, improved desktop responsiveness for large write-backs, and up to date drivers for graphics and WiFi: all great news for those running a Linux dedicated server.
Torvalds made the announcement on January 4th, and stated that it was a few days later than expected. However, given the timetable on recent releases of kernels such as 3.1, it was relatively on time. In comparison, the kernel prior to this release was several weeks late because of malware intrusions by hackers on the kernels main systems. Hopefully Torvalds and his team can keep up this pace so that low cost dedicated server solutions running Linux can remain up to date and functional.
