On to the links…

Week of January 9, 2017

A Twitter account associated with WikiLeaks—everyone’s favorite “we swear we’re transparent” information source—claims want to publish the financial and familial ties of all Twitter verified users. Since then, the tweet has been deleted, which is good news, considering it’s pretty much doxing hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom probably don’t want that information disclosed.

The account attempted to cover their tracks by claiming that they wanted to just explore influences based on proximity graphs.

Speaking of WikiLeaks, here’s the full US Intelligence Community report of the Russian meddling in US elections. Remember when WikiLeaks only released information about one side and claimed it wasn’t political in nature, despite there being overwhelming evidence of potential conflicts of interest on the eventual winning party that would kind of help their whole “we don’t choose sides, just transparency” thing? Me too. This is the declassified report that was gathered by the US IC, as the classified report shows all the evidence they have, and revealing that would compromise the ways they were able to obtain it.

Keeping on the US election topic, the Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson designated the US election voting infrastructure as critical, saying that recent attempts to influence or manipulate our democratic elections is cause for concern and increased security.

Photo Credit: Linked Above

Here’s a quote:

“Given the vital role elections play in this country, it is clear that certain systems and assets of election infrastructure meet the definition of critical infrastructure, in fact and in law…”

That’s pretty cool, and also kinda concerning that we didn’t consider that as an option before today.

Photo Credit: Linked Above

What is concerning, however, is that the government may have been paying Best Buy Geek Squad employees as informants to search through computers and other devices you may bring in to be repaired or checked. The information came out in a court case, United States of America v. Mark A. Rettenmaier, where a California resident took his computer to Best Buy because it didn’t start, and the Geek Squad technician found child pornography on the device, and alerted his boss, who was also an FBI informant. The evidence was found via a carving tool, which digs through old and deleted files for certain content, which should not be used when attempting to get a computer to start, as per the customer request. Best Buy has denied their involvement with the FBI.

And finally…

If you use the AutoFill function on your browser to fill out information fields, there’s a chance you’re giving up your personal info unwittingly, as malicious sites will use hidden text boxes to gather than information.

Photo Credit: Linked above

So, you know, change your password and definitely don’t use AutoFill on your browser.

Week of January 16, 2017

If you’ve ever hired a developer for a website or a project, hopefully you did a little bit more vetting than the thousands of people that hired a Dutch developer, as he installed backdoors into nearly all the websites he built for clients.

He used the backdoor to gather customer information and use that info to open gambling accounts and extort victims and their families for money. If I could steal a line from Austin Powers: Goldmember: “There’s only two kinds of people in this world that I hate. People that are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the Dutch.”

After numerous lawsuits, cases, and denials, a pacemaker vendor admits that maybe—JUST MAYBE—its hardware can be hacked. Here’s a statement from the FDA on the St. Jude Medical pacemaker:

“The FDA has reviewed information concerning potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities associated with St. Jude Medical’s Merlin@home Transmitter and has confirmed that these vulnerabilities, if exploited, could allow an unauthorized user, i.e., someone other than the patient’s physician, to remotely access a patient’s RF-enabled implanted cardiac device by altering the Merlin@home Transmitter. The altered Merlin@home Transmitter could then be used to modify programming commands to the implanted device, which could result in rapid battery depletion and/or administration of inappropriate pacing or shocks.”

If you’ve ever wondered how Google Play is able to vet its apps for malicious content, it’s an algorithm combined with Android’s own Verify Apps program that then checks the app for malicious stuff, as well as how long a user retains an app.

If it drops below a certain score, goodbye app.

Rudy Giuliani was announced as now-President Trump’s cybersecurity adviser.

The only problem is that his website about his security team is unsecure and extremely vulnerable.

Google released a security document that reveals the measures they take to ensure the security of their hardware and products. Unfortunately, in that document, they let slip that they install a custom security silicon on all of their servers, even the ones they colocate. The silicon chip “allow us [Google] to securely identify and authenticate legitimate Google devices at the hardware level.” I don’t know how to feel about this, but I understand where they’re coming from.

And finally…

–The CIA dumped a BOATLOAD of declassified files onto the Internet the other day for your reading enjoyment. Here’s something to note:

“Included in the database are US discussions about assassinating Fidel Castro, details of Nazi war crimes, reports of UFO sightings, and a study into human telepathy dubbed “Project Star Gate.”

YEP I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING WITH MY WEEKEND.

Week of January 23, 2017

Are you using Incognito Mode on your browser, or employing other privacy-hiding protocols to anonymize your actions on the Internet? Turns out, it might not be so private or anonymous. A study shows that even if you go full “anonymous”, sites and services like Google and Facebook are already tracking your actions, even if you set your privacy settings to the max and use anonymous browsers. My favorite part of that article is the author’s use of “de-anonymizationer”, which sounds like a sci-fi weapon designed to shrink you or something.

Speaking of privacy, there’s going to be a new battle in the war of staying out of my sh*t with “always on” devices like Amazon Echo, Google Home, and more.

Who is that data being sent to? When is it being recorded? Who has access to it? How can we be assured that the microphone isn’t recording at all times, despite the companies saying it isn’t? What happens with this data if law enforcement ever gets involved?

Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, wants to allow cops to have encryption backdoors for devices and platforms. That’s not cool, especially since the federal government can’t even keep their own stuff from getting hacked. By granting agencies a backdoor, you’re opening your customers up to other threats, because now there IS a way in. Asked whether encryption is important to national security and the security and privacy of the American people, Sessions responded:

“Encryption serves many valuable and important purposes. It is also critical, however, that national security and criminal investigators be able to overcome encryption, under lawful authority, when necessary to the furtherance of national-security and criminal investigations.”

Speaking of “ways in”, the open door that is Yahoo is under investigation from the SEC for taking so long to report the massive data breaches that left over a billion users’ info right out in the open. This new investigation doesn’t bode well for the sale of Yahoo to Verizon, who are already looking to renegotiate the $4.8 billion they originally agreed to pay for the former search engine.

That hacker who leaked nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities has been sentenced to jail for nine months. The hacker, Edward Majerczyk of Illinois, had his lawyer argue that while he illegally hacked into their accounts, he was initially doing it for his own personal portfolio and private viewing.

Ahh, he’s like the pervert’s Robin Hood.

And finally…

Symantec has revoked a boatload of security certificates that were mis-issued after a being exposed by Andrew Ayer, a certificate vendor. Symantec responded:

“The listed Symantec certificates were issued by one of our WebTrust audited partners. We have reduced this partner’s privileges to restrict further issuance while we review this matter. We revoked all reported certificates which were still valid that had not previously been revoked within the 24 hour CA/B Forum guideline – these certificates each had “O=test”. Our investigation is continuing.”

Security: it’s almost always unsecure!

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The world of technology is an ever-changing ecosystem that is continuously transforming. The entire idea of technology is the application of scientific knowledge to benefit humans in practical ways. Technological innovations happen almost every single day both big and small. We take a look at some of the most intriguing or noteworthy technology stories in recent weeks.

Elon Musk Officially Acquires Twitter

One of the biggest stories in the world of technology is the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, the CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX, CEO and product architect of Tesla, and the founder of The Boring Company. After several months of the deal being in limbo, the deal has finalized the deal on October 27,

There will be some major changes to the social media platform used by more than 396 million people around the world. Popular social media is used by everyday people, professional athletes, celebrities, and even government officials. It’s one of the social media platforms that has been a key platform for legislators to express their opinions, share information, and connect with the people. 

Musk has plans to change many things about the social media platform including ending permanent bans. He has also introduced Twitter Blue, a paid subscription that allows users to be verified. It also gives users access to the platform without any advertisements, and the ability to access features like Undo Tweet.

The company has stated there will be more features will be introduced in the future, so users should look out for these changes. Until then, the world will be watching to see how the social media platform will evolve.

The Ring Company Announced a Car Alarm Is on the Way

Smart-connected devices are one of the fastest-growing areas in the world of technology. The ring is one of the most well-known companies that sell smart connected home security systems. The company may be most known for its video doorbells that feature a built-in camera and two-way talk, which enable users to hear see, hear, and speak to whoever is at the door. This is done through the Ring application which can send notifications to your smartphone or smart tablet.

In 2020, Ring announced were working on a new line of security cameras for cars, but new reports have shared more information and have also shown images of the device. The company is also working with Amazon’s Sidewalk network even furthering the concept of connectivity. Amazon Sidewalk is a form of mesh networking that is automatically connected with all new Amazon devices.

The Ring company looks to expand connectivity and security with the introduction of the upcoming car alarm, and through its collaboration with Amazon, many users will be able to easily enable this connectivity.

The company hasn’t announced when the Ring car alarm will be released to the public, but they have stated that the “car alarm system is in the works” and are “still working out some technical details.” Users that already use Ring devices and Amazon devices will be looking out for these announcements.

For the First Time, iPhones Overtake Android in Usage

Another intriguing story in technology is the news that for the first time, iPhones are more widely used than all android devices. Reports from the analytics firm Counterpoint Research and Financial Times stated that iPhone surpassed all of the Android ecosystems.

Apple’s iPhone was never anywhere near 50% of the market with smartphone giants Blackberry, Motorola, and Nokia. With all of the various smartphones available including the Samsung Galaxy line, Google Pixel line, Motorola smartphones, and OnePlus smartphone line—the iPhone had more competition under the Android smartphone umbrella.

The report that the iPhone now represents 57% of all sales displays a shift in the market. While there are more customization options for Android smartphones, many Information security companies believe that Apple devices are more secure than Android devices. A report by Forbes also states that 97% of mobile malware targets Android devices.

This notion may have contributed to the migration of smartphone users to Apple. It could also be due to the incompatibility of messaging between Android and iOS devices. Some believe that once users are a part of Apple’s iOS ecosystem through one of their computer devices, users will want to use Apple products exclusively to make things more cohesive. Whatever the reason is—for the first time, more iPhones are being used than any other smartphone.

Artificial Intelligent Automation Continues to See Innovation

Advancements in artificial intelligent technology continue to be displayed in various forms by different companies. Google’s PaLM or Pathways Language Model is a 540 billion parameter dense decoder-only Transformer model trained with the Pathways system. PaLM can now correctly answer multistep reasoning and mathematical problems. It can now also fix broken computer codes, translate code from other programming languages, and more.

The Meta company will move away from human-curated Facebook news stories and instead will use algorithms and artificial intelligence to automate news stories for the social media platform. This lack of human perspective and curation may or may not be a noticeable change for users that rely on Facebook for their news, but the move to automated systems for news shows that the world continues to trend toward artificial intelligence and automation.

DeepMind’s AlphaCode is a transformer-based large language model. AlphaCode writes computer programs. AlphaCode was able to rank within the top 54% of participants in a programming competition. By deciphering various problems that involve an amalgamation of critical thinking, logic, algorithms, coding, and natural language understanding. The company has advanced AlphaCode and it can now read requirements written in natural human language and can output the instructions into working code. The ability of an artificially intelligent machine learning system to read and write computer code shows how far AI automation has come.

These are just a few of the recent noteworthy stories in technology. Follow along as we follow these technological advancements, as well as, other news in the world of technology.

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Natural disasters can cause problems, as well, and you have no control over them. Power outages can remove access to the server and your data for unspecified amounts of time due to inclement weather and other disasters. In that case, you’re basically stuck until things are restored, but you need to know that your data is secure in the meantime.

Security breaches are disastrous for businesses. Not only do they impede your ability to access your database with confidence, but they weaken the confidence that your consumers have in your business. It helps clients and customers to know that there’s a plan in place to further safeguard their private information while keeping those files safe in one place.

Even human error poses a problem. Things can go wrong with technology. In all of these instances, data is at risk of being tampered with, stolen, or outright destroyed. Downtime diminishes your bottom line. It also brings interactions with your customers to a screaming halt. For that matter, if a potential customer visits your company’s website and can’t access anything, then they’re far more likely to move on to one of your competitors.

Downtime has negative effects on your employees, as well. Your bottom line suffers when it takes hours or, worse, days to retrieve your lost information. Every moment they sit waiting for the situation to correct itself represents a waste of money and time. All the while, there’s the potential to lose your clients permanently. Thus, you need to do everything possible to ensure that you can recover important data following a breach or disaster.

Backup vs. Data Disaster Recovery

Some businesses make the mistake of thinking that backing up data is the same thing as a data disaster recovery plan. While backing up your data is essential, it will not protect and maintain the same amount of data as disaster recovery. Your IT department should be aware of that. Make sure to discuss your options often and thoroughly.

Backups are a means of protection. In that way, they’re similar to disaster plans. However, backing up the data only makes additional copies of the information. It protects you from instances of a corrupted database, a software issue, or deletions.

Data disaster recovery is more of a plan. Specifically, it describes the process that you put into place to fix access to your essential applications, important data, and your IT department and its resources when there’s an issue. It can help you when a server goes down, when there are problems with your storage system, and when there are any problems with the function of your data center.

As you can see, having backup data is helpful in certain situations. That being said, your backups will not help you if there’s a data breach or a server outage. You won’t necessarily be able to reach your backup files, and even if you can, they won’t help you to get your server up and running again.

Terms to Know

The key to creating a disaster plan is to understand precisely what you need. For example, you should calculate your RTO, or recovery time objective, which is how long it will take you to recover data and resume day-to-day operations. That depends on how much time your business can lose, a number that’s different for every company. How long can you get back without access to your server and data? That will impact the details of your disaster data recovery plan.

Your RPO, or recovery point objective, is crucial, as well. The RPO is the data that you can safely lose if a disaster occurs. Some companies cannot lose any data, in which case they will need to regularly copy their information and send it to a remote center. Then again, it might not be a make-it-or-break-it scenario for your company to lose a few minutes or even a few hours of data.

Having a failover system in place may help you. In spite of its name, a failover is not a failure. Rather, it is a process that automatically and immediately offloads essential tasks to the system you have in place as a backup. For users, the process is smooth and seamless. You can effectively send data to another site that copies your existing systems. Consider it as a backup generator for IT processes.

Failback is a similar process. It involves switching the data back to your main system. This occurs once the disaster is over or successfully averted.

Putting a Plan in Place

There are numerous options for creating a data disaster recovery plan depending on the needs of your business. One option is to choose a disaster recovery service. In this instance, you retain the help of a third-party host. The service will be in charge of the infrastructure and processes to save and recover your data. It might involve tools that you or your IT department can use, or the third party might manage your data processes for you.

Another option is to choose a cloud service to backup your data. If you want a hybrid service, then look for a cloud that acts as a backup while providing you with the tools you need to access and organize your data after the disaster.

Prioritizing Tasks

It will help you to evaluate your priorities. What workloads are the most important? You may have a system that’s vital to your business. You need to prioritize that system as you put together your recovery plan. Conversely, applications that track time might not be important enough to worry about in the scheme of things.

A data disaster recovery plan is essential for your business and your customers. Not only will it save time and money in the long run, but it will also increase your customers’ loyalty to you and their confidence in you.

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If we analyze the last 20 years, the network security landscape has witnessed only occasional convulsions as not many cyber-attacks had financially impacted the companies. Until recently, the damage to reputation and privacy concerns have affected consumer willingness to engage online, and cases of ransomware and maze have caused financial loss, including the loss caused due to the shutdown of operations. 

Here, let us revisit those fundamentals of network security and try to understand what part of the security architectures a business must leverage to enable offensive moves and where lies the most risk.

Understanding the Fundamental of Network Security Design

The fundamental concept of a network security design which also forms the foundation of the security architecture of an organization covers the 4 key areas: physical security, access controls, authentication, and accountability. Every function of the network security fundamentals emerges out of the need to take actionable measures in these areas in order to protect network infrastructure from unauthorized access, destruction, and disclosure.

The six fundamental functions of network security are:

Segmentation

Credit: Fifth Domain

Network segmentation or isolation or compartmentalization is based on the idea to restrict the effects of an incident to limited assets. Traditional approaches to network segmentation involve policy around Access Control Lists (ACLs), internal firewalls, and Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) configurations.

Such implementations help in slowing down the impact of the cyber-attacks and reduce the damage to a specific section. However, not only these implementations are complicated and costly but they are not fully effective against threats.

For example, many companies assume that using different VLANs in different CIDR blocks could help them achieve optimal segmentation, but VLANs are usually never fully isolated from each other. Basically, even if you are using VLAN1 for a specific protocol that you can define by group, say unidirectional link detection (UDLD), there are chances of having multiple subnets in the VLAN1.

Security Policy Enforcement

Development and enforcement of security policy and controls enable organizations to detect hostile behavior and chronic or accidental policy abusers. The entire task of policy enforcement is categorized into three segments: 

• The first is design analysis of the system and develop policy specifications based on the key considerations such as hardware and software technologies and threat landscape. 
• The second is to detect violations. When the policy provisions are clearly specified, it becomes easier for the network administrators to spot unspecified behavior, assess real-time incidents, and keep a record of such incidents to be used as evidence purposes. 
• The third is to take action against the violation and the violator, which is subject to local security policy or say audit policy that defines the control and authentication practices.

There are multiple elements that need to be covered when developing the policy, such as Access Control Lists (ACLs), firewall rules, application control, and file blocking policies. Today, enterprises are extensively dependent on applications in their day-to-day operations. According to the Cloud Security Alliance report, an enterprise uses around 1000 applications and every application has its own security risk touchpoints, which simply means more options for hackers to exploit the vulnerability to get access to the targeted system. 

Credit: Network Management Software

A single application could have numerous security risk touchpoints.

Another way to access the internal corporate network is by transporting malware through email, USB keys, and web downloads. Hackers also leverage programming flaws in web applications to manipulate the backend systems, either to gain access to the system or to get the output information such as credit card numbers, which otherwise is not available from the front door. 

Having a security policy with respect to these elements is essential to keep the network infrastructure safe, as with every new technology, it is not just the security is advancing but the hacking tactics are advancing as well.

Identity and Trust

This function in network security is about determining the level of trust for an entity in order to provide access to a system. A simple analogy to the concept could be of an organization that issues identity cards to its employees. When you show that identity card at the door, the authority verifies the authenticity of the card to determine your identity and provides you the access to enter the premises. The concept of identity and trust in a network security solution is based on a similar system. 

There are two crucial aspects of identity and trust that are usually applied to secure the network infrastructure: direct trust and third-party trust.

Direct trust security model: It is about establishing a secure communication network between two trusted parties. In this model, one entity performs all authentications for the other entity. Since there is no delegation, all validations are done directly by the CA (Certificate Authority). However, implementing a direct trust security model is both labor-intensive and costly. It is widely used by financial institutions, including banks and insurance companies. 

Third-party trust model: This function explores the trust relationship between two entities, who share a common relationship with a third-party that vouch for the trustworthiness of each party. Here is a simple analogy that will help you understand the third-party relationship. A common example could be of a relationship between, a bank, which is a third-party, and the two users: customer and a shopping application. 

In a large-scale network, there are umpteen users, who do not share personal relationships, and in that case, public-key cryptography is made accessible to all the users. The user trusts the public-key because it is made available by their organization.

In an attempt to build a robust identity and trust architecture, organizations use multi-factor authentication systems, wherein to get the access, users have to provide identity-proofs at least in two categories, such as a password or pin, and a hard token, like an OTP (one-time-password). Digital certificates and trusted IP addresses are a few of the factors that are verified to build trust mechanisms.

Security Visibility

In order to see what is happening in your security architecture, it is essential to build capability around security visibility. Now, the visibility must be of the entire network infrastructure and is achieved through advanced analytical tools. 

Here is a list of things you need visibility into:

• Logging Details: Logs are the element that establishes user accountability. Within your network infrastructure comes a range of elements that produce logs, such as Routers, Switches, Databases, and so on. Logging details can help you spot unauthorized behavior or identify any potential threat. 
• Traffic: Getting visibility into the unidirectional traffic stream such as source and destination IP address, protocol, and source and destination ports can provide insight into the traffic on a network. 
• DNS: Monitoring of recursive DNS queries, such as queries made to strange domains or any anomalous changes in DNS activity could possibly highlight an outbound or inbound DDoS attacks such as DNS data leaks and compromises machines and malware. 

The objective of visibility is to analyze the communication between two systems.

Contextualization

Credit: Network RADIUS

By having visibility, you get information about the incidents or changes in the traffic patterns, but unless you add context to the events, the information would be of little help for you to take meaningful actions. For example, if you find a number of computer systems start communicating at the same time, it is an indication of botnet traffic.

Botnets are used to perform click fraud campaigns, collecting ransomware, sending spams, or stealing data. Whereas, if the two servers start communicating, which previously never have communicated indicates the presence of malware. 

Now, contextualization applies to every component of network security design, which requires one to have visibility into the security applications for in-depth analysis. It is not possible without the support of advanced Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) technologies that provide real-time monitoring, event notifications, and other details from logging data, which have cost impacts.

Resilience

Building resilience is necessary because we know that absolute cybersecurity is impossible, regardless of advanced tools and well-drafted policies. The time has come for the companies to think differently by adopting a proactive approach, which means instead of taking actions when the security is breached, we need to design a network infrastructure that predicts when it will be breached. 

In order to make the network resilient, a High-Availability (HA) pair of security devices, as primary and secondary units are deployed, in which two identical firewalls are configured for consistent connection and increased protection. So in case if the primary unit fails, then the secondary unit takes over.

Another way of building resilience is by designing a network architecture that can withstand a DoS/DDoS attack. This could be achieved by increasing the bandwidth of your server.

For example, if the IP address suddenly starts experiencing heavy traffic that is overwhelming the system, and the attack size is lower in bandwidth of the link between yourselves and your ISP/ISPs, then you get more time to mitigate the risks. Today, some firewalls also have DoS/DDoS mitigate features such as Syn Cookies, but the performance profiles must be carefully assessed before opting for one.

As you can see, on the enterprise level, while developing a network security design and deployment strategy, there are multiple factors to be considered, each having a cost associated with it. Lately, many firewall vendors have come up with products that assure high security at the cost of a few thousand dollars, but in a restrictive environment and that means a requirement for more focused considerations on fundamentals, in order to cherry-pick the most critical ones and design security systems around them.

Main Photo Credit: Medium

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Photo Source: datacenterfrontier

Data Center Cooling Methods

Cooling systems continue to evolve over there years becoming more hi-tech than ever before. Engineers continue to innovate from one method to another. Datacenter cooling traditionally consists of two different methods—air-based cooling and liquid-based cooling. Within these two main methods are different variations that we discuss.

The first method in air-based cooling is “cold aisle/hot aisle”. This method separates the cold air from the hot air. This is done by facing the cold sides of each cabinet away from the hot sides. This creates a convection system where the cabinets cool themselves. Next is the “cold or hot air containment”. By isolating the cold air and hot air and driving the air directly from the CRAC unit helps cool the servers. The last method in air-based cooling is called “in-rack heat extraction”. This method adds compressors and chillers to the rack itself.

The first method under liquid-based cooling is “water-cooled racks and servers”. This method has water running alongside the hot side of the cabinet to bring the temperature down. The water flows through pipes and never touches the components. And the last method we will discuss is “liquid immersion cooling”. This method uses a special fluid that doesn’t conduct electricity, which allows the servers to be completely emerged to be cooled.

These methods were introduced in hopes to find the best way to cool down and get rid of excess heat from the servers. But maybe neutralizing the excess heat was never the best idea. People are finding ways to use this extra heat to warm homes.

Photo Source: cloudcomputersguide

Unique data centers around the world

There are many unique data centers around the world. From data centers built in a nuclear bunker, in an underwater submarine, inside of a mountain, or located in the arctic circle—data centers are being built in unique locations for many different reasons including security or built-in cooling. One of the most interesting data centers is located in Finland. This data center is built underneath a 19th century Eastern Orthodox cathedral in Helsinki called Uspenski Cathedral.

Because this 19th-century cathedral data center is located underneath the Cathedral in an underground cave the regulated environment reduces energy. Not only that, but any excess heat is also pumped through pipes to heat homes in the surrounding area.

Heating homes with excess data center heat

Stockholm Data Parks is one of the company’s leading the charge in this idea. Under Stockholm Data Parks are multiple data centers are joining this initiative. IP-only, Interxion, and Advania data centers will join in building an energy-efficient data center campus in Kista, Stockholm.

This energy-efficient campus will be connected to Stockholm’s district heating system and will one of the most unique setups. Data center tenants will actually get paid for the wasted heat to heat nearby communities. After its construction, the extra heat will be enough to supply enough heat to 35,000 residential apartments in Stockholm.

This may sound like a farfetched idea, but Stockholm Data Parks opened up its first campus in 2017. It was launched with three infrastructure companies, Fortum Varme, Ellevio, and Stokab. The first site is located in the suburb of Kista and has a similar plan as the upcoming new campuses. Data center operators are able to sell their wasted heat and buy cooling as a service.

This is a win-win scenario for all parties. Data center managers don’t have to worry too much about cooling down their data centers, the district heating system gets free heat, and everything is recycled to help everyone out. Stockholm Data Parks aimed to supply 10 percent of the city’s residential heating demands. Now with the new campuses making enough heat for 35,000 apartments, it seems as though the idea can not only transform the way we look at data center cooling, but it can transform the infrastructure of a city as well.

Photo Source: datacenter-insider

Building heat pumps in future data centers

The energy efficient data center campus design idea sends the excess heat through a liquid cooling system to a district heat system. Which will then heat up the homes nearby through the flooring. Because the liquid loses heat as it travels, the houses closest to the data center will be the ones that need the most heating. By the time it loops around back to the data center, it will be cool enough to cool down the data center. This looping process happens over and over again, heating houses nearby and eventually cooling the data center itself.

Photo Source: dataeconomy

Renewable Energy Data Centers

The environmental impacts of data centers is a topic that is often discussed. The United States alone will use about 73 billion kWh of power in 2020. This is why companies are looking into renewable energy to lessen their carbon footprint. Some of the biggest companies are using solar energy to power their operations. Apple, Amazon, Target, Walmart, Switch, and Google are leading the way with the most solar capacity installed. And Microsoft is pledging to be 100% carbon negative by 2030. This means Microsoft is planning to remove more carbon from the environment than it emits.

There are many advantages of solar power and other renewable energy. It reduces greenhouse gas emissions, reduces fossil fuel imports, and more. But this plan only focuses on not leaving a harmful impact on the environment. What Stockholm Data Parks and the 19th-century cathedral data center in Helsinki is doing is focusing on everyone in the area. There is no wasted heat and no wasted cooling. This is as renewable as it can get and at the same time taking care of everyone in the community. This idea turns the excess from data centers from a problem into a commodity.

The post Using Excess Heat from Data Centers to Heat Residential Areas appeared first on Colocation America.

Photo Source: pcmag

How to Connect with Your Office during a Quarantine

Working from the comfort of home can have its advantages, but it can also have its difficulties. Technology can make communicating and collaborating on projects with coworkers possible. Here are some of the best technologies to help to work from home feasible.

Virtual offices are becoming more commonplace with the world’s current situation. Although people are quarantining and isolating themselves into their own homes live communication brings your coworkers closer to you. One of the most popular video chats for a group is called Zoom. This application can handle online meetings, training, and technical support. Through the application, you can also hold events and town hall meetings. Teamwork a crucial part of in-person work environments—Zoom can create collaboration-enabled conference rooms for your team. Making the transition of working from home a little easier. Lastly, the application offers cross-platform messaging and file sharing.

Slack is another application that brings the team together. It’s their slogan. Just like the former, Slack brings you all the communication tools you need in one place. This application helps those working remotely stay productive while helping you stay organized. All of your conversations are organized into different channels. You can create specific channels for all of the different teams working for your company making it easy to communicate with the correct people without bothering everyone, messaging every person individually, or waiting for an email to come back. If you have partner companies, or companies you are collaborating with, a collaborative channel can be created for that as well. Slack also has video capabilities that many offices are looking for currently.

Other videoconferencing applications you may have heard of are FaceTime, Skype, and Google Hangouts. All of these can bring your office closer together. Depending on yours and your company’s needs, many applications can help to work from home possible.

Photo Source: polygon

Best Technology to Keep Entertained during Social Distancing

Working from home can be great, but because your home is now your office—you may not have the same feeling of calmness and relaxation as you once did coming home after a long day of work. This is especially true since this quarantine has us stuck at home even after a long day.

Technology can also help keep you entertained during social distancing. Streaming services like Amazon’s Firestick, Roku, and Apple TV are great choices. People can also take advantage of some free entertainment. You can use Pluto TV and stream tv and movies for free, Peloton and Echelon are both offering a free 90-day trial to keep you active and moving while at home, and Audible is offering free audiobooks for children and adults. There are many activities for free online to you entertained.

Even with all of this technology around us, human connection is so necessary. And although we can’t be with many of our friends and family, just like our work environments, we can use technology to remain in contact with everyone. Watching a movie or binging a show just isn’t the same without your friends and family.

Netflix Party allows you to watch movies and shows with your friends who are also in quarantine. The Chrome browser extension syncs the video so you’re all watching at the same moment and allows you to group chat as well. While it may not be the same as being under the same room, as of right now, it’s the next best thing.

If you’re more into traveling and getting some culture and education, Fast Company and Google Arts & Culture have teamed up with more than 2500 museums and galleries around the world giving everyone access to virtual tours and online exhibits. These are some of the most famous museums around the world including Guggenheim Museum in New York, British Museum in London, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, The Louvre in Paris, and more.

Many well-known musicians are also offering free concerts from their homes during the quarantine. John Mayer, Bono, Keith Urban, and John Legend who have been using outlets like Facebook and Instagram live to connect with their fans. Theaters-streaming services are also offering Broadway performances, plays, and ballet performances for you to stream online so the world can practice social distancing while getting their theater fix. The New York Metropolitan Opera House is sharing Nightly Met Opera Streams from past performances until this pandemic is over.

Photo Source: aithority

Data Centers Are Ready for the Substantial Rise in Usage

As offices, schools, and workplaces remain closed, more and more people will be staying home. The rise in internet-powered activities for work and recreation continue to increase. Technology will be even more crucial in our lives. Streaming services and data centers are ready for significant growth in usage. AI automated systems help data centers deal with these kinds of crises.

Internet services like Netflix, Zoom, and Dropbox are still running smoothly, and this is due to companies’ technical infrastructure. Many data center operators including Equinix (the world’s largest operator of data centers) recently upgraded its systems. The company upgraded its network from 10Gigabit links to 100 Gigabit links making it ready for the surge in usage. But even with these upgrades, data center operators are needing to keep a close eye on its systems to absorb the current and future stream of traffic.

Conclusion

Social distancing isn’t natural for many people. But technology can help us be productive and continue to work from home. It can help connect us to our coworkers who are also in quarantine. Technology can allow us to collaborate from a distance and finish old projects and start old ones. It can also be our source of entertainment at the end of the day and be the method of communication with our families who we are separated from. Technology is all around us—and we’re better off because of it

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Virtualization is revolutionizing how businesses operate. Leveraging the power of virtual environments has allowed organizations that recognized the technology’s potential to leap-frog their competition and provide better products and services because their resources aren’t tied down to maintaining physical systems.

It is also proving to be critical in today’s workplace due to the coronavirus pandemic that has forced companies to shutter offices and adapt to having a remote workforce. Let’s take a closer look at what Virtualization is and how it can benefit organizations operating in the new normal.

What Is Virtualization?

The main goal of virtualized systems is to ensure organizations can run multiple operating systems and programs on a single server for better efficiency and scalability. Virtualization has two critical components: the virtual machine and the hypervisor.

The Virtual Machine (VM)

A virtual machine or VM is simply a “virtual” representation of a physical computer. The beauty of virtualization lies in its flexibility – organizations can create multiple virtual computers or machines, each running its operating system and programs – using a single physical computer.

Virtual machines can’t interact with a physical computer instantly. VMs need a software layer called a hypervisor to communicate with the physical hardware it’s on.

What Is a Hypervisor?

The hypervisor is a lightweight software layer that allows multiple operating systems to run beside one another while sharing the same resources of a physical machine. Hypervisors assign each VM a portion of the underlying resources of a physical computer – memory, storage, and computing power – thus preventing the VMs from interfering with each other’s processes.

Types of Virtualization

Credit: Veritis Group Inc

To better understand the benefits of virtualization in business, let’s take a quick look at the different types of virtualization and how it affects networks, systems, and environments.

Desktop Virtualization

Desktop virtualization delivers applications to mobile workers, satellite offices, and employees working offshore. This powerful solution can replace as many as 100 desktops for every virtual desktop server, an efficient way to manage systems across multiple locations.

Application Virtualization

Application virtualization allows users to access desktop applications remotely via a compatible browser or a cloud interface. Old legacy applications that have problems running on modern machines can run without issues as a virtual application. “Virtualizing” apps are easier to roll out, upgrade, and support in the long term.

Server Virtualization

Server virtualization is when more than one Operating System (OS) runs on a physical server as a virtual machine or VM. Every VM instance has access to the server’s computing power. Server clusters that are aggregated into a single resource allow for more efficient use of resources.

Because the entire state of a virtual machine can be saved to file, they provide fault isolation, detection, and recovery at the hardware level. VMs also offer better security, faster workload deployment, increased performance, and lower operating costs.

Network Virtualization

Network virtualization is the complete replication of a physical network but in the form of software. It lets programs run on a virtual network and behave exactly as they would in a physical one while providing logical networking services to connected devices or workstations.

Storage Virtualization

Credit: SearchStorage – TechTarget

Storage virtualization provides businesses with a robust, secure, and isolated storage solution across multiple virtual networks using as little as one storage element.

Instant failover technologies rely on this storage virtualization for better stability and is the key to data redundancy.

What Are the Benefits of Virtualization?

Organizations that use virtualization can reap plenty of benefits right off the gate, such as increased scalability and reduced expenses, to name a few. Here is a more detailed look at these benefits:

Increased Productivity and Efficiency

Fewer servers mean less physical hardware to maintain, and your IT team will be able to devote resources to more pressing issues.

With virtual machines, IT teams won’t have to install, support, and apply updates server-by-server. The environment can be maintained across all VMs by updating a single server, increasing productivity and efficiency.

Reduced IT Expenses

Running non-virtualized environments can be grossly inefficient in today’s modern IT infrastructure. Idle computers can’t be used for anything else if no one is using the applications installed in it. Virtualized environments using a single physical server morph into many virtual machines that can run different operating systems simultaneously.

Incorporating applications to virtualized environments means spending less money on physical hardware and easier troubleshooting.

Less Environmental Impact

Running multiple servers takes much power because they need round-the-clock cooling and enough juice to operate at full capacity. When organizations can use fewer physical servers, they’re consuming less electricity and reducing their carbon footprint, which can only be good for the environment in the long run.

More Resilient Systems = Reduced Downtime

When an incident like a power surge or a fire causes damage to a physical server, it needs to either be fixed or replaced. This scenario could take hours or even days if there aren’t any technicians available or the parts must be ordered elsewhere.

Virtualized environments make it easier to clone the affected machine, provision, and redeploy it. The recovery time on a virtual machine is minutes versus hours or days to provision and set up a physical server.

Segmentation and Testing

Because virtualized environments are segmented into individual VMs, developers can run a virtual machine without impacting the rest of the production environment or development operations. The technology is utilized best for DevOps and ideal for testing because a virtual machine can easily be cloned for running a test on the environment.

For instance, new software patches can be tested on a cloned virtual machine and see how the ecosystem responds, before applying a system-wide update.

When done right, the benefits of virtualization in businesses that rely on technology are massive. It can save companies a lot of time and money by lowering hardware costs and relying less on external support. Servers can be virtualized to run a private cloud computing model so organizations could be less reliant on third-party providers, making them more competitive.

Cloud computing is often mistaken as virtualization, but in reality, it’s merely something that can be done with the technology. The applications for virtualization in business are near limitless, and organizations should embrace the technology now to remain relevant in today’s fast-moving digital world.

Main Photo Credit: Make Tech Easier

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Small to medium-sized businesses are taking huge advantage from cloud computing because it allows them to transfer an extensive range of shared posts, products, and advertising pitches freely from anywhere.

Credit: 360Logica

The modernized workspace, powerful security, round-the-clock tracking, quick backups, remote access, portability, and market productivity are some significant reasons that captivate the attention of merchants and make them confident for the migration of their services to the cloud.

A Short Introduction to Cloud Computing & Business Stats 2020

The process that helps in distributing several software and hardware services online with the help of centralized remote servers is known as cloud computing. The remote servers of the cloud provide the active data storage and maintenance facilities to make it comfortable for the users to upgrade or broaden the thousands of data into existing infrastructure.

Cloud computing is categorized into three parts:

SaaS – SaaS is the software as a service that is the sturdy software distribution model equipped by the third party providers for the users who want to run the applications online without downloading the software into personal computers. The biggest examples of SaaS are Hubspot, GoogleDocs, Web Content Delivery Services, Salesforce, Dropbox, ZenDesk, Slack, MailChimp, BigCommerce.

PaaS – The Platform as a service or Paas helps the clients build new apps by using the remote and embedded configurable APIs. Also, the service features many development tools, configuration management platforms, and frameworks for deployment. Google App Engine, Force, Microsoft Azure, Magento Commerce Cloud are the real examples of PaaS.

IaaS – IaaS is defined as the infrastructure as service, offering the abstract OS, hardware, and virtual machines that may be controlled via API services. The typical examples of IaaS are Rackspace Cloud, Amazon EC2 and S3, Windows Live Skydrive, and much more.

Cloud Adoption Statistics for 2020

Credit: gartner

• According to Gartner, it is projected that the global public cloud service market will reach nearly $266 billion in 2020. By 2022, the transition to the cloud will influence more than 1.3 dollars trillion in IT spending. 
• 94% of the enterprise’s first choice is cloud now & by 2020, 83% of enterprises will place their maximum data in the cloud. 
• The largest public cloud market was the US in 2019, with the maximum spending of $124.6 billion.

4 Cloud Computing Security Risks Faced by Every Business

Even after a handful of benefits, timely updates, collaborative environment, this populous cloud computing is flooded with certain security flaws that need to be understood.

Partial Data Deletion

The OS (operating systems) do not help in wiping the data accurately when the users request to delete the cloud resources. It may happen when the customers store the additional copies of data or give them access to other clients for using the cloud, but they destroy the disk. The reusability of hardware resources and the multiple agreements poses severe risks for the customers.

Before utilizing the cloud provider’s services, one must check the terms and conditions and discover the reviews if provided on the websites. Another way is to consult with web developers or cloud testers who know how to protect sensitive information from unauthorized parties.

Apart from that, you should provide limited access to subsets, company persons. Though, if you use the public cloud, the chances are very high to lose the securities. So, it would be great for you to put your data from the professionals on private cloud or demand for alternative solutions to control the future risks.

Middle Ground Management Interface

The public cloud providers’ customer management interfaces offer the freedom to access the large resource sets via the internet. This respect increases the risk factors, especially when combined with vulnerable web browsers or when masses decide to operate the service remotely.

Credit: Cubet

On one side, it proffers the ease of processing the thousands of data. On the other hand, it leaves the malware, bots, malicious bugs in a hidden manner. The cloud architecture includes high-risk functions like CP network administrators and managed security service providers that can damage your assets.

According to you, cloud computing is perfect for storing endless products, images, and videos, but you should keep the security always in mind. Before purchasing a cloud service, you should ask some questions from the service providers.

For example – Is it possible to move the operations and public data to a private cloud? Do you provide any guarantee to protect the assets with configuration management controls, vulnerability assessment, or access controls?

Noncompliance Standards

Small organizations rely heavily on cloud service providers because many providers give them access to the cloud without taking SLA agreement. In other words, you can assume that they do not have any legal policies to use the service. Due to this concern, sometimes, they do not understand how the cloud works and face integrity issues.

Before or after transferring the resources on the cloud, it is vital to perform the integration or security testing. Furthermore, you should check the reliability, performance of the service model, or consider the procedures or SLA agreements to overcome the insecurity issues.

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Attacks

There is no doubt that the cloud allows consumers to save a wide array of data, but it entirely works with the internet connection. During connectivity, occasionally, cyberattacks and malware infection like activities happen with the cloud services.

It is one of the significant threats faced by the vendors as the information of the businesses is stolen by the hackers who send unprecedented traffic volume to the web-based applications. The servers crashing occur with these web connectivity attacks.

First of all, the DDoS attacks originate with the single Ip addresses so you can get the configuration of your networks from the engineers and ask them to block the DNS responses that are coming from the outside connections. You can increase the bandwidth or move your solution in cloud-based DNS that may offer the data centers with the multiple points of presence as well as take care of the load balancing.

Overcome the Cloud Computing Business Threats with Cloud Testing

Cloud testing is the only key to address the security problems of a cloud-based environment. It is the kind of software testing that uses real-world web traffic for removing the bugs from the cloud computing services. Cloud testing focuses on three main core components that are infrastructure, network, and application.

Testing the application over the cloud provides the multitenancy, interoperability, disaster recovery, on-demand self-service, rapid elasticity, broad network access, resource pooling, and abundance of protection against crashing and data loss. Before or After selecting the right cloud provider, the organizations should consider the cloud-based automation testing or cloud-based security testing for its applications on the cloud.

It not only reduces the risks of data outages but also provides several types of testing that are mentioned below:

Performance Testing

With performance testing, it is easy to monitor the stability of software programs, computers, networks, responsiveness under a particular workload.

Functional/Non-Functional Testing

The automated functional testing allows cloud testers to record the open-source scripts from the cloud and is the valuable software testing for checking the functionality of Login. On the other hand, non-functional testing is beneficial for improving usability and loading performance.

Load Testing

If you have given your cloud access to multiple users and want to determine the application’s behavior after containing heavy stuff, you should test the virtual machines with the cloud load testing from the personnel. They will inform you whenever there is a need to increase the bandwidth or storage in a cloud.

Major Benefits of Using the Cloud Testing

Disaster Recovery

The disaster recovery testing is the step-by-step practice of a disaster recovery plan that is mainly designed for companies who want to restore their IT system after the event of failure.

ROI & Cost Savings

Any person who adopts the cloud services can migrate the data to remotely located data centers. Cloud testing helps to achieve a faster ROI by minimizing the cost of infrastructure equipment management.

Dynamic & Readily Available Environment

The cloud computing testing offers dynamic operations with an on-demand service to test the application with quick turnaround time. Any cloud testing application, which runs with the subscription model, can bring enormous benefits after making the successful registration on the browsers.

Getting first-class security on the cloud with testing should be your prime responsibility. It gives sufficient support to fix the number of issues at the most cost-effective prices and offers you unlimited availability of resources, multi-factor authentication, confidentiality, and much more.

Main Photo Credit: David Tzemach’s Blog

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Remote monitoring has been crucial throughout this COVID-19 pandemic. Most colocation customers can monitor their servers as well as cooling updates, networks, physical and digital security, and more. 

Stay-at-Home Order Creates Traffic Increases Remote 

As more people quarantine in their homes, internet usage and traffic has gone up tremendously. The usage of remote collaboration tools has also gone up. Comcast reveals voice and video conferencing traffic has gone up 212% and an average of 32% increase overall. Some areas are even seeing up to a 60% traffic increase. 

Keeping foot traffic in the data low is a priority for data center facilities. Although it is an essential business, data center operators are still looking out for the health and well-being of their employees. And while data center operators, system admin, HVAC, and electrical engineers, security personnel, and IT managers are all considered critical infrastructure workers, many companies are cutting the number of people working in the facility. This is why remote tools have become vital to the entire industry and those using its services. 

Photo Source: sevenmonies

Managed Services and Remote Monitoring 

Managed services and IT consulting are being used by many businesses. These outsourced experts are in charge of managing different parts of your business. This can include Windows/Linux Server Administration, Network Administration, vCIO services, risk assessments, application support and administration, general IT audits, software and hardware guidance, web hosting and design, Security audits, monitoring, remediation, and more. 

But one of the main reasons a company uses managed services is for remote monitoring. This can be very beneficial during a time of lockdown. It allows IT, service providers, and clients the ability to access and monitor their servers from anywhere. Because many data center facilities are limiting the amount of foot traffic within the data center, remote monitoring is vital. 

Anything else can be taken care of by the couple of data center operators that are allowed at the facility. 

Benefits of Remote Management and Monitoring 

When it comes to managing IT, administrators could be covering multiple states and regions. And when it comes to a global pandemic when administrators or users can’t go into the data center facility, remote monitoring, and monitoring software can be vital. Remote server administration tools and programs like SolarWinds MSP Remote Monitoring Software or Itarian can allow you to manage computer systems and servers 24/7 without always needing to be there. 

Remote monitoring and monitoring software not only make sure machines are working properly, but it can also give you real-time information on the state of all machines including security. Any disturbances or attempted security breaches are received and reported instantaneously. Monitoring software can let users know everything happening inside of the network. And because of this, security breaches are more likely to stop beforehand.  

Another benefit of having remote monitoring is the ability to limit user access. Whether it be reasons for limiting the access regularly to protect sensitive information or mandated quarantine due to a global pandemic. Limiting user access can protect sensitive and valuable information by permitting a smaller group of admin users.  

Larger networks require many IT professionals to monitor multiple aspects of the system and operation. Remote monitoring allows the staff to work in different areas. This could mean other offices, cities, states, or even countries. Remote monitoring makes accessing servers convenient. This also allows IT professionals the ability to access servers 24/7 from home in case of emergency. 

Lastly, remote monitoring can save money on travel expenses. IT professionals, administrators, and users can all save money by accessing servers remotely. If examining or repairing servers can be done from any location, travel expenses can be lowered significantly. Because of this, any changes or emergencies can be communicated and handled by the team from wherever they may be. This makes the entire operation faster and more efficient. 

Photo Source: lifewire

Tips for Remotely Monitoring Data Centers

There are many benefits to remote monitoring, but there are also challenges to managing servers in another location. Here are some tips for managing remote data centers. 

Deploying servers as virtual machines can be beneficial when it comes to remote access system settings including memory, CPU allocations, and more. Many virtual platforms let remote users know how each virtual machine is performing. Allowing users to prioritize which machines need any servicing or maintenance. Some applications and/or databases run better on physical servers, so you need to closely monitor and see if anything is having issues. Reading and writing large volumes of data can sometimes have a hard time in virtual environments. 

Simple Network Management Protocol and Windows Management Instrumentation are network monitoring standards that help you collect performance metrics. Configuring your settings to having the remote servers send alerts automatically if something is wrong is useful. Users usually discover problems earlier if the server sends the alert instead of having a monitoring tool occasionally check the metrics. 

Conclusion 

We are all living in unprecedented times. Social distancing, lockdowns, and quarantine protocols are changing the way companies do business.  Even as essential infrastructure, data centers are cutting the number of people working inside of the facility. This is why remote monitoring has become so incredibly important for the industry. But even when this global pandemic is over, the value and convenience provided by remote monitoring cannot be denied. There are many benefits to remote management and remote monitoring. From 24/7 security monitoring, limiting user access, saving on travel expenses, and servicing from any location, remote monitoring can be beneficial for many different people and businesses.

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Thankfully, we live in a generation where engineers are developing more energy and cost-efficient ways to build and maintain these massive facilities, to where they can become a little bit more self-sufficient, especially in the green-power mindset that is prevalent today.

Data Centers Historically

Back in the 1940s, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was one of the first data centers built. Before Computers were built with a compact RAM system and more simple wiring, the ENIAC ballooned its space with 18 thousand vacuum tubes and utilized capacitors and diodes. As time went on, engineers developed a greater understanding of what materials they could better use to minimize the massive space these old computers required. IBM led the way with the integration of virtual technology and eventually the normalization of the supercomputer in data center use.

Putting It into Perspective

Google estimates that its search engine produces 5.6 million queries a day on average. This massive amount of data would overwhelm data systems even 15 years ago, but google’s numerous data centers have the server power to handle this type of internet usage. However, a study done by Yale estimates that “a typical search using its services requires as much energy as illuminating a 60-watt light bulb for 17 seconds and typically is responsible for emitting 0.2 grams of CO2.

Which doesn’t sound a lot until you begin to think about how many searches you might make in a year.” Doing simple math shows us that that averages to about 2.04 billion searches a year and 408 billion grams of CO2. 

Although we think of electrical emissions as minimal compared to other fossil fuel emissions, the sheer quantity of simple emissions made by such huge uses of power is noticeable in the grand scheme of things.

If we estimate the average data center kilowatt-hour production in a single year, it would be equal to 34 large coal power plants producing 500 MW each in order to manage this kind of demand. Although these emissions are less apparent, they are no less harmful to the environment.

How Do Data Centers Utilize Green Power?

A 2005 Uptime Institute report determined that many data centers were so badly organized that only 40 percent of cold air for service racks actually reached them despite the fact that the facilities had installed 2.6 times as much cooling capacity as they needed. Since then, however, data center tech has come far, with the introduction of solid-state drives (an integrated storage device that uses internal wiring) rather than bulky hard drives.

Energy efficiency has seen an explosion of development in many industries, including data centers. Certain data management practices have become more effective, and many servers are using server virtualization and automation, making the server systems more automated and self-sufficient.

Hyperscale automation has taken the forefront in data center development, with hyper-scale data centers being constructed in the most efficient way possible. Dividing the server blocks into different areas with dedicated cooling technologies, and comically enough, open space, help the server components to cool more effectively and maintain a moderate internal temperature within the data center itself.

Developers have also discovered that many unused or dead servers take up important space within a server system and use a substantial amount of energy; thus, getting rid of dead or unused servers, or simply designing a latent functionality mode when these servers weren’t producing like normal, started a trend of DC optimization.

Above is a graphic that shows how much computing space can be achieved from hyper-scale Data Centers at different sizes. Many hyper-scale data centers that are built can power servers from 25-50 data spaces, while still maintaining climatic integrity within the system.

Tech Knows: How Companies Are Making the Change

Google, unsurprisingly, is the leading lady of green tech companies. Normalization of cloud technology, and google’s own dedicated cloud, have made it easier for developers to build out the Google Suite in the most energy effective way. Google has optimized its CMS and SAAS software in such a simple way that the GSA released a study showing that the average business can reduce carbon emissions using the Google Suite from 60 up to 90%.

The Google devs also introduce an interesting point; many large companies expend an equal amount of energy on overhead cooling as they do on their actual system. Seeing this as a major flaw to the effectiveness of a system, Google has optimized its Green Grid standard PUE to a whopping 1.11; this is done by building cooling modules underground within the data center and having natural gas power certain services.

Other large companies also value the eco-friendly image and functionality of a green data center, and many, such as Facebook, eBay, Apple, and Equinix AM3, have made the switch to hyper-scale data centers.

The timely development of cloud technology as well as an increased understanding of data center design has combined for a great future in green data centers. The industry-standard measure of power effectivity, known as a PUE, is a relevant statistic that many large companies use for frame of reference in developing a fast and functional database.

With the leading companies heading out the effort, many other smaller companies will follow suit in their data centers. With the future of tech lying on the horizon, increases in optimization and effectiveness will further perfect the internet and data storage as we know it. Only the sky (and the cloud) is the limit.

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