Vendor lock-in is regularly levied as a criticism of cloud services. But the reality of IT is, there has always been lock-in. Even before cloud, enterprises were locked into hardware, operating systems, database platforms, data centers and network…
As major businesses feel a growing sense of urgency to dramatically cut carbon emissions, opinions are starting to shift in favor of nuclear power, which is not classed as clean, but is a near-zero carbon energy source. The digital infrastructure…
The power usage effectiveness (PUE) metric is predominant thanks to its universal applicability and its simplicity: energy used by the entire data center, divided by energy used by the IT equipment. However, its simplicity could limit its future…
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…
Increasing demand for data center capacity is challenging operators to optimize their server footprint. What is the relative value of virtualization, software containers, public cloud, and IT upgrades to manage growth? What elements of data center…
Uptime Institute’s annual survey, now in its eleventh year, is the most comprehensive, longest-running study of its kind in the data center sector.
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…
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.
The pandemic has accelerated some long-term trends toward greater use of digital services, remote working and remote operation. Overall, costs have been pushed up, but other impacts are less clear — some are even counter-intuitive. Many…
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/…
Demand for private and shared edge data centers is starting to grow from low numbers. Certain edge workloads, the strategies of large cloud providers, and the speculative deployments of supporting 5G networks are fueling edge data center buildouts.
Intel’s protracted difficulties with its leading-edge processor manufacturing have garnered a great deal of attention over the past few years, as the world has watched a once unshakable technology lead diminish. Intel’s manufacturing development…
Until recently, power purchase agreements (PPAs) and unbundled renewable energy certificates (RECs) were the primary means for data center operators or managers to procure renewable electricity and RECs for their operations. Many companies are not…
As the pandemic began to make an impact in early 2020, it became clear that data center operators were going to have to invest more if they were to provide the services on which their customers were increasingly reliant. Short-term needs included…
Across the world, data center owners and managers are striving to buy more renewable energy and reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. The global internet giants and the largest colocation companies have led the way with huge green energy…