Electricity is the lifeblood of data centers. Data center operators go to great lengths to ensure a reliable power supply to their facilities, installing expensive UPS systems and massive banks of batteries, designed to power the equipment in the event of a disruption to the mains. If there’s no outage, these systems are essentially going to waste.
In the cover story of our latest issue, we look at several methods to combat this waste, including peak shaving and frequency containment reserve. Both methods help data centers make better use of batteries, and get paid for the effort.
We also talk about fuel cells, DCIM, bitcoin and the supercomputer that shot down a satellite and saved Cray.
The February/March issue of the magazine is out now, subscribe for free to the publication in print or as a digital download here:
Fueling the future
To liberate its data centers from the electrical grid, Microsoft is looking to fuel cells. The company is investigating two approaches - one using hydrogen, and another one using methane.
Manufacturing moves to industrial edge
Industry 4.0 is upon us - with smarter, more efficient factories that involve robotics and AI. But where will they keep the servers?
After the Storm
Sebastian Moss discovers the dramatic story behind Red Storm, a supercomputer that enabled the US military to shoot down a satellite as part of Operation Burnt Frost in 2008.
The many flavors of virtual
Dan Robinson looks back at the history of virtualization, and finds out whether bare metal instances on AWS are a threat to traditional colocation providers.
Innovation on ICE
Tanwen Dawn-Hiscox investigates SICS ICE, the Infrastructure and Cloud research & test Environment in Sweden - a fully functioning data center devoted entirely to research and development of new critical infrastructure technologies.
Max on bitcoin
It’s evil and you know it.
We also have content on edge computing in Asia, the competition between Argentina and Chile, tales from the world of DCD, and a selection of the most important news stories of the past two months.
From the entire DCD team, we really hope you enjoy this issue - we couldn’t have made it without your support.