Colocation Firm Waveform Upgrades Michigan Data Center

Inside Waveform's data center in Troy, Michigan

Related Topics: colocation, green hosting, data centers, waveform

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Colocation provider Waveform Technology (www.michigan-colocation.com) announced on Thursday it recently made a series of physical upgrades made this summer to the Troy Michigan Data Center.

The upgrades come on the heels of the data center's completion of a SAS 70 audit.

The improvements will provide increased capacity to meet growing demand for data center space, improve service reliability, and maximize energy efficiency.

To meet the growing demand for colocation services, Waveform has added over a half megawatt of uninterruptible power supply capacity and replaced the data center's backup power generator with a new custom-built Kohler full megawatt generator.

Waveform now operates four UPS units, which function independently from each other to allow Waveform to meet increasing requests for fully redundant power feeds, which more than doubles the existing UPS capacity in the Michigan data center.

"We're experiencing a huge growth in the number of new colocation tenants we take on each year," said Waveform spokesperson Noel Montales. "We employ all Liebert UPS units because we believe they offer the best in class reliability and industry leading efficiency."

Liebert UPS operate at 94 percent energy efficiency, making them more efficient than any other battery UPS available.

Additionally, the new generator meets the EPA's tier 3 standard for emissions, improved the energy efficiencyof the previous tier 1 generator.

Waveform now uses only ultralow sulfur fuel, greatly decreasing the amount of sulfur dioxide released during runtime.

A temporary backup generator was deployed during the new generator installation, ensuring that customer equipment was continuously protected in the event of a commercial power outage.

Waveform also added 180 tons of heat rejection capacity to the data center's climate control plant, providing an estimated 10 percent increase to overall energy efficiency and creating a larger cooling reserve for more reliable cooling on hot summer days.

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Singapore Polytechnic to Launch Educational Cloud Computing Center

Inside the Singapore Polytechnic Electrical and Electronic Engineering Cloud Computing Center

Related Topics: asia, cloud computing, cisco, netapp, citrix, singapore

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The Singapore Polytechnic Electrical and Electronic Engineering Cloud Computing Center (www.sp.edu.sg) is set to launch, marking the first educational institute in Asia Pacific to provide students with the latest skills in cloud computing through an operational data center environment.

Conceived by its School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the SPE3C3 will provide teaching staff and students in the school with "on-demand, scalable, virtual computing and storage in labs to enable more sophisticated projects and research work," according to the press release.

The SPE3C3 was developed in collaboration with technology providers Cisco, Citrix Systems and NetApp.

Singapore Polytechnic is using the benefits of cloud computing to realize cost savings, energy efficiency and dynamic scalability.

The resources will initially be available to the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering students on campus, then later be accessible to all students on and outside of campus via Internet access in the near future.

"The new SPE3C3 shows Singapore Polytechnic's commitment to innovation in education and the use of cutting edge technology to provide its students with relevant and up-to-date training to develop their skills in virtualization, enterprise and cloud computing," said Tan Hang Cheong, principal, Singapore Polytechnic. "Singapore Polytechnic graduates will be truly work-ready in the cloud era and be able to contribute immediately to the industry upon graduation."

Starting in April 2012, students in the third year of the Diploma in Computer Engineering course at Singapore Polytechnic's School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering will be able to take two new elective modules, Data Center Management and System Virtualization.

These new courses are designed to educate and train students to setup, manage and support data centers, virtualization techniques and data recovery.

SPE3C3 is built on integrated cloud architecture from Cisco, Citrix and NetApp, specially configured to support up to 31,000 input/output operations per second.

The SPE3C3 can power up to 400 virtual machines, as well as have the ability to start-up and shut-down 240 server virtual machines in six minutes, 20 times faster than the standard industry benchmark.

The solutions implemented in SPE3C3 are powered by Cisco, Citrix Systems and NetApp and will deliver a unified, pretested, and validated shared infrastructure that caters to Singapore Polytechnic's data center and desktop needs.

The collaboration with Cisco, Citrix and NetApp allows cloud access for teaching resources, laboratory experiments, complex projects, lecture notes and lesson materials, enabling students touse the latest, industry standard technologies in cloud computing and storage resources for their research or projects.

During periods of low use such as school holidays, Singapore Polytechnic plans to use the SPE3C3 to provide students with practical experience in the management and configuration of a virtualized data center.

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