Hurricane crushes chillers on Moscow data center's roof;facility grinds to a halt
A Moscow data center came to a halt for several hours last week after a hurricane caused large metal components from neighboring buildings to fall on the facility's roof, crushing its chillers, according to a CNews report. The data center belongs to a company called Dataline, a provider of data center services.

Dataline estimated total weight of the objects that destroyed its chillers to be more than 10 tons. All three units were badly damaged, suffering punctured radiators and causing sudden drop in pressure within the cooling system. In addition, 10 fans on two of the chillers were damaged. As a result, temperature on the data center floor had suddenly risen. The units were restored within four hours.

Click here for photos of the damage.

Intel transmits data with light beams at 50Gbps
Researchers at Intel Corp. have advanced the use of light beams to replace electricity as a carrier of data between computer components. Intel Labs said it had created the world's first silicon-based optical data connection with integrated lasers, which can move data further and much faster than the commonly used copper.

The scientists were able to achieve speeds up to 50Gb per second, or equivalent of a full-length HD film transmitted in one second. In its news release, Intel said the innovation will help data center operators get rid of performance bottlenecks and save operational costs by allowing them to replace a multitude of cables with one optical fiber.

Vendor consortium to develop test process for high-speed Ethernet gear
The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory has launched a new consortium for companies developing high-speed Ethernet products that comply with the IEEE 802.3ba standard. The provider of testing services is offering member companies an early opportunity for input into the testing process for the standard that was ratified last June.

IEEE 802.3ba was the first standard to specify two new Ethernet speeds: 40Gbps for compute and storage applications and 100Gbps for core networking. UNH-IOL is a commercial organization that offers facilities and programs for testing of IT equipment.

Vendors achieve near-native latency in inter-VM communication via 10Gb Ethernet
A group of vendors has achieved 26 microsecond latency in communication between virtual servers deployed on different hosts in a 10Gb Ethernet test environment. Blade Network Technology, Solarflare Communications, Cloudsoft Corp. and Citrix Systems benchmarked Cloudsoft's cloud platform Monterey, using the vendors' respective products and announced the results on Tuesday.

The rig used in the test was a combination of Blade's RackSwitch G8124 10GbE switch, Solarflare's SolarStormÔ SFN4112F 10GbE NIC and Citrix XenServer server virtualization software. Testers achieved 18.5Gbps bi-directional network throughput with four VM's on one host communicating with four VM's on a second host over a single 10GbE connection.

APC forms new Data Center Software business
APC, the provider of data center power and cooling products and services has formed a new business unit that will focus solely on data center software. The company's new Data Center Software business will work on advancing software and management systems for physical infrastructure.

The new unit will contribute to Schneider Electric's Ecostruxure architecture and the company's energy management initiatives. APC is a Schneider subsidiary. The software business will aim to simplify and drive energy and operational efficiency improvements across the data center.