Photovoltaic (PV) solar — which has become the lowest-cost form of energy in most major countries, according to the International Energy Agency — is set to play an increasing role in limiting the environmental footprint of edge data centers.Although…
The bigger the outage, the greater the need for explanations and, most importantly, for taking steps to avoid a repeat.By any standards, the outage that affected Facebook on Monday, October 4th, was big. For more than six hours, Facebook and its…
Supply chain upheaval is one of the pandemic’s ripple effects, and the data center sector has not been spared. For most operators and vendors, supply logistics will remain a source of uncertainty for the near term. In Uptime Institute’s Global Data…
Many analysts have forecast an explosion in demand for edge data centers. After a long, slow start, demand is beginning to build, with small, prefabricated and mostly remotely operated data centers ready to be deployed to support a varying array of…
Operators often say that data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software is a necessary evil. Modern facilities need centralized, real-time management and analytics, but DCIM is notoriously difficult to deploy. The software is also not easy to…
Earlier in 2021, ASHRAE’s Technical Committee 9.9 published an update — the fifth edition — of its Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments. The update recommends important changes to data center thermal operating envelopes: the presence…
Most new technologies go through a hype cycle: A spark of interest and early investment is followed by a surge of hype, then a crash of expectations as reality sets in. Only over time and a period of work, absorption and adjustment does the…
Through their public commitments to net-zero carbon emission targets, cloud providers have re-energized talks in the data center sector of a major redesign of critical power systems. The elimination of diesel fuel use is chief among the goals, but…
Demand for edge data centers has started to increase from low levels. Uptime Institute’s research shows that owners, operators, and suppliers alike anticipate further growth across different industry verticals, especially in North America.While…
A recent outage at Akamai took down access to cloud services from Amazon Web Services and Oracle, as well as online services for American Express, Charles Schwab, Costco, Delta Airlines, FedEx, United Parcel Services, and many, many others, mostly…
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly sophisticated, one of its most anticipated benefits is a transformative reduction in the data center workforce, by augmenting the abilities of workers and relieving these workers of more…
Power purchase agreements (PPAs) are often a preferred method for data center operators to procure renewable electricity, but their fixed purchase price and duration (eight to 20 years) can pose significant financial and power management risks.Data…
In the 12 months from early March 2020 to April 2021, COVID-19 made a big impact on how and where IT was used. This had a surprising — and in some ways paradoxical — impact on IT service availability and the number and severity of outages recorded…
A recent outage at content delivery network Fastly took down thousands of websites in different countries, including big names, such as Amazon, Twitter and Spotify, for nearly an hour. It is the latest large outage highlighting the downside of a key…
Edge data centers are generally small data center facilities — designed for IT workloads up to a few hundred kilowatts — that process data closer to the population of local end users and devices. Earlier in 2021, we surveyed data center owners…
Dr. Tomas Rahkonen
Intelligence Team
Jacqueline Davis
Daniel Bizo
Andy Lawrence
Jay Dietrich