Participants: Lillie Coney

Participants: Reuven Cohen

This presentation will discuss cybersecurity and mobility, as well as IT architecture and critical data storage. Robert Carey is responsible for the strategic sourcing initiative of IT resources in light of the Federal Government’s consolidation efforts. Given the critical and highly sensitive nature of the data contained in the government data centers, the DOD strategy requires that implementation involves alignment with the JIE and DOD for an IT roadmap. The DOD is challenged by several factors, such as sup-optimal data centers and networks that incur unnecessary costs, limited operability, and cyber security vulnerabilities that threaten to exploit classified information and engender national security. Other forces are also at play including the increasing demand for new technology on rapidly evolving devices. Coordinating efforts require leveraging technical and operational expertise for successful outcomes. Carey will outline a case study analysis of the 10 Point Plan devised in the deployment of this complex project.

Participants: Robert J. Carey

Technology and servers change and are replaced much FASTER than power and cooling upgrades.  It is fairly common for there to be multiple generations of IT equipment during one lifecycle of a power and cooling system.  This can represent a real challenge and risk in the design and replacement decisions in data centers.

Changes in technology including its power and cooling needs must be considered across the power and cooling life cycle.  For all practical purposes, this is somewhat like predicting the future; not easy.  Compounding the challenge is the heightened expectation for energy efficiency.  In a traditionally RISK AVERSE yet RAPIDLY CHANGING data center industry, the actual data center facility designs are now expected to be some of the MOST FLEXIBLE and ENERGY EFFICIENT facilities EVER.

The degree of innovation necessary to meet these lofty goals is facilitated by the UNBIASED and VENDOR NEUTRAL information that has been emanating from ASHRAE TC 9.9 (Mission Critical Facilities, Technology Spaces and Electronic Equipment) over the past 10 years in the form of special publications, whitepapers and educational courses.  ASHRAE TC9.9 have essentially set the benchmark for raising the knowledge level of the entire data center industry worldwide.

 This presentation covers ASHRAE TC9.9’s latest publication (Datacom Equipment Power Trends & Cooling Applications – 2nd Edition) and also covers information from the upcoming 3rd Edition of the groundbreaking Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments.  These new materials from ASHRAE holds the key to developing innovative next generation data center designs that aim to yield optimal TCO by addressing the challenge HOLISTICALLY (from the electron to the atmosphere; both now and in the future).

Participants: Don Beaty

Capital One is a fast growing company with technology-savvy customers who want to do business anywhere, anytime. The company’s “always on” IT infrastructure strategy provides for a scalable, resilient and efficient model to grow as our business grows and deliver digital solutions that make it easy for customers to do business when and where they want.  In June, Capital One announced its intention to build a $150 million state-of-the-art Data Center in Chesterfield, Virginia. The company continues to invest in building simplified, standardized and automated technology and processes, which are backed by world-class data centers.  

Participants: Brian Cobb

Understanding the Design Demands and Infrastructure Requirements for Virtualization Technologies to Avoid Costly Mistakes

• Using virtualization technologies to simplify your mission critical IT infrastructure to reduce costs, decrease complexity and enhance flexibility
• Deploying a virtualization project to consolidate servers and storage into manageable, available and scalable utilities for data­bases and file serving.
• Maintaining the right balance between virtual and physical environments
• Extending the Useful Life of Your Existing Data Center to Overcome New Capital Expenditure Restrictions
• Discovering innovative ways to squeeze more out of your existing strategic and operational assets
• Limiting underutilized and stranded capacity
• Examining tools to identify the magnitude of the underutilization problem
• Maximizing existing power and cooling potential without threatening system reliability

Participants: Glenn Jones

There isn't a day when we don't read about a data breach, often of highly sensitive personal, corporate or government information. How can all of these breaches happen? In this session, you'll learn the largely avoidable problems that underlie so many of those incidents. How can the bad guys not only invade a corporate system, but be in place for a year or more and never be noticed? Why are end-of-life applications at particular risk? Why are the newest and hottest development and database environments placing the organizations that use them at risk? What are the issues to consider as BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) combines with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)?

Participants: Alan Brill

The dynamic “on demand” computing in the data center is the new operating paradigm.  However, highly variable dynamic computing loads have began to negatively impact the energy efficiency of power and cooling systems of the typical data center.

The computing loads in data centers are become more dynamic instead of nearly flat, due in part to widespread virtualization. Moreover as older IT equipment such as servers are upgraded to new Energy Star rated IT equipment, which while more energy efficient, have a much wider range of power and airflow requirements. This will result in more “traveling hot spots” during peaks or overcooling during lulls in computing loads.

Moreover, trying to adapt to higher and rising heat densities while also not “overcooling” the lower density racks, also takes its toll on cooling system efficiency. This is especially true in older data centers, which were not designed to handle these changing load conditions. These rising and variable densities can have a negative impact on data centers whose power and cooling systems are not able to operate at variable loads.

This session will examine the issues and potential solutions to this growing problem.

Participants: Julius Neudorfer

While power, cooling and cost control remain top concerns in the data center, new questions including Green IT, energy efficiency, PUE, utility negotiations and return on investment are highlighting the need for a new, business orientation to the management of data center physical infrastructure. Organizations struggling with the complexities of availability, server consolidation, virtualization and energy management are increasingly looking for more intelligent physical infrastructure management systems.  Today’s infrastructure management software packages can integrate with your virtualization platforms, enterprise management systems and even Building Management Systems for a holistic management of the entire data center ecosystem.  DCIM helps companies achieve efficient operations, forecast capacity, plan for business grown, and streamline workflow management.  Data Center Infrastructure Management software enables a healthy, efficient data center through integration with virtualization platforms and Building Management Systems.

Participants: John Esparza

Many companies looking to make the most of previous investments choose to modernize their existing facilities. Upgrades can often be completed more cost-effectively than the other options and they usually yield significant improvements in reliability, efficiency, and operational effectiveness.

• How aging MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing) infrastructure components can affect older data centers
• Suggestions for a series of beneficial upgrades
• Best practices for successfully planning, implementing and testing renovations

Participants: John Collins

With the advent of the virtual environment and high power computing, rack densities of 20kW and higher have become very common. Join our discussion on dealing with heat in a high density data center.  Vendor neutral topics include a discussion of cooling methodology that is flexible, affordable, and has the ability to interface with any cabinet make and model. 

Participants: Bryce Kleen

Selecting the right network infrastructure system is critical to the design and operation of the data center. Today’s Data Center Managers face the challenges of implementing evolving technologies, increasing architectural choices, meeting network performance expectations and the need to reduce power consumption, a major contributor to the data center’s operational costs. 

These challenges will only become more predominant over the life of the data center, in the next 10, 15 or even 20 years. This presentation highlights these key challenges in data center design, operation and daily activity and shows how the structured cabling and the physical infrastructure will have a direct impact in solving the headaches associated with these challenges. 

Making the right decisions on your network infrastructure today will build a strong foundation for your data center ensuring the maximum return on your investment tomorrow and beyond.

Participants: Todd Harpel

More than 75% of outages are the result of human error, requiring that mission critical operations evolve to meet the needs of the industry around us. Online availability is more important than ever and it is not dictated by our physical infrastructure alone. Highly qualified technicians are at a premium meaning that “C: players must respond like “A” players. Advanced operations teams affect this through proactive planning plus development and optimization of people, process, and materials. In this session, DLB will overview the proactive operations environment and talk to topics like continuous commissioning, optimization, and truly integrating a facility operations team.

Participants: Brian Durham

Modular data centers can be a cost effective solution to traditional brick and mortar data center. The mobility, scalability and low initial investment are key drivers for the next generation of data centers as IT computing extends beyond the western world. Modular data systems are not mainstream yet, but have value for many client applications. Modular data systems can be quickly deployed and used in remote locations. More specifically, they are a reliable source for companies that have unpredictable IT computing growth and/or need scalable infrastructure without cost for large overhead in infrastructure of traditional data center.

Participants: R. Stephen Spinazzola

Historically, our view of the data processing environment has been the power cord and server utilization readings. Data processing activity drives data center costs in facilities, energy, hardware assets, software assets, licensing, maintenance, and operations.  Contemporary Data Center decisions making requires a finer degree of resolution of management data, and that data be tied to Business relevance.  One problem has been discerning what proportion of this data processing activity is useful, versus non-useful.  Having visibility into the Useful Work characteristics of the environment opens a wide range of management and operational possibilities.

•        Data Center metrics focusing on energy efficiency: PUE, CADE, FVER, et. al.

•        Data Center metrics focusing on business value or ROI:  DCcE,  DCsE, et. al.

•        Allocating energy to a workload is more complex than hardware energy measurements.   Workload-based energy management measurement will enable organizations to put a value on every kW of energy they use in their data centers.

•        Useful Work- what is it?

–       Lights are on but nobody’s home

–       Processes that deliver business value

–       Associate business value with each kW of energy used

–       Don’t virtualize waste

–       Quantifies Value versus Waste

•        Putting Useful Work to Work

–       Identify which servers are “truly” busy (or are otherwise ripe for reclamation)

–       Identify unused software licenses= savings (measuring utilization doesn’t do this)

–       Identify opportunities for power management = savings

–       Identify virtual sprawl = savings

–       Quantify waste

–       Optimize HW, SW, Maintenance, Operations costs

–       Reduce risk of consolidation/ relocation projects

–       Reduce risk in DR planning

–       “Business Metering”

Benefits of Knowing Useful Work

·       Identifies inefficiency for immediate savings

·       Business reporting of server power and efficiency

·       Saves energy without disruption

·       Controls virtual sprawl

·       Reduces operational costs: $4,400 saved from each unused physical server

·       Reduces virtualization costs: $1,000 saved from each unused virtualized server

·       Reduces energy costs: 10-15% less power when servers are not doing useful work

·       Equivalent reduction in power to cool servers

·       Manages Data Center investments in: Cooling, space and capacity

Participants: Bob Landstrom

Energy Star is a joint program of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Energy. The program maintains a voluntary label for products and buildings that aims to save money and protect the environment through promoting energy efficiency. This talk will provide an update on Energy Star's activities in the datacenter area, including information on labeled products, datacenter labeling, energy efficiency strategies, and examples of expected cost savings from adopting more efficient systems. A brief update on the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative will also be included.

Participants: Robert Meyers

Briefing addresses the importance of a single, secure, standards-based network to support a smaller, better trained, more capable expeditionary Army as it draws back to CONUS; Army IT Efficiencies and other enterprise efforts; Army's IT Management Reform; and the Army's move to a Joint Information Environment.

Participants: Richard C. Breakiron

This session will explore the benefits of the hybrid cloud as part of an enterprise’s data center and IT infrastructure strategy. Public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, community clouds ­-- it’s a jungle out there, but improved bottom-line performance and flexibility awaits for the adventurous. In this session, Reuven Cohen guides CIOs through an exciting global journey. Delve into the unique opportunities and challenges that arise in hybrid cloud territory and discover powerful channels to improve utilization, keep costs down and drive new revenue.

Participants: Reuven Cohen

Have we reached a point in the evolution of the data center industry where facilities cost escalation compared to IT hardware costs is unsustainable? This panel will discuss whether engineering is innovating quickly enough to meet future enterprise IT demands, can modularity [in its many forms] deliver this, and what does the future hold for traditional data center builds? 

Participants: Stephen Worn Glenn Jones Julius Neudorfer David Sukinik, P.E.