Able-One Blog

by Todd Cox, Chief Technology Officer and Lead IT Architect

When I ask Chief Information Officers what their biggest source of frustration is around storage and storage management, clearly it involves managing the growth of storage and really getting to the "true" price per terabyte on the floor. The true cost of enterprise disk has nothing to do with the price of the hardware, as most storage vendors are buying their disk drives from the same manufacturers. The real value of storage in the data center today is the software functionality that is built into their offerings, allowing for truly efficient management of their storage environment. Functionality like compression, de-duplication and storage tiering become critical strategies when looking to drive down the price per usable terabyte.

Big Data

Unstructured file system data, sometimes called "big data" is driving many of our customers' expanding storage needs. Often I see clients storing information that has not been accessed for 12 months or more, yet it is sitting on very expensive disk. Why do companies do this? Simply, they have neither the tools to identify obsolete or orphaned data, nor policies in place for dealing with this dilemma. There must be a better way, you say? You're right, there is. Through technologies like tiering and information lifecycle management (ILM) data can live on the appropriate media type, which ultimately drives down the overall cost of storage on the floor.

Virtualization

Virtualization is a common theme in the server space and certainly internal virtualization is not new to the storage world; the concept of external virtualization is much less common however. What if you could "front-end" your existing storage with all of the new functionality and availability of your new enterprise storage purchase, thereby increasing the useful life of assets that you already own? Sounds too good to be true, right?

These concepts and technologies will be discussed in much more detail next Wednesday, December 12th as I present #TheFutureofStorage webinar. We will examine storage trends in the industry and talk frankly about driving costs out of enterprise storage. I hope you can join me!!

Click here to register for the Future of Storage Webinar Invitation

By Grant Sojnocki President, Able-One Systems

In our first blog post we talked about the growing problem of heat management in the data center, and discussed why traditional methods for cooling are no longer economic or environmentally friendly options. 

Carrying on with this topic, in this post, we’re going to focus on a disruptive, new technology that removes the heat at the point of need --the back of the rack -- in a very energy efficient manner.

Able-One Systems is now an authorized reseller for OptiCool^™ Technologies, an emerging leader in cooling solutions. OptiCool^™ was recently identified by Gartner in two research publications in July -- the "Hype Cycle for Power & Cooling Technologies, 2012," by John R. Phelps, and the "Hype Cycle for Server Technologies, 2012," by John R. Phelps and Mike Chuba. Gartner positions the rack-cooling and liquid cooling technologies markets, which OptiCool™ is a leader, as "early mainstream" and assigns a technology benefit rating of "high."  

The OptiCool^™ cooling solution has many benefits over room-based and row-based cooling:

• Exceptional energy efficiency - up to 95% less in room cooling energy required
• Exceptional space efficiency - up to 90% less cooling footprint required
• Exceptional for high density – Increased in-rack cooling capacity by 500%
• Flexible cooling redundancy options including in rack redundancy

OptiCool delivers a highly practical cooling solution for existing facilities and new construction.  The bottom-line is OptiCool^™ will use less energy, less space, increase cooling capacity and reduce noise levels, offering s a very attractive new cooling option with a very strong return on investment.

See OptiCool™ in Action!  

Meet up with our team, and learn more about the OptiCool™  cooling solution at the Toronto DatacenterDynamics Converged Event, happening November 27^th at the Allstream Centre. You can find us at booth #11.

Embrace Next Generation Cooling Methods with Able-One Systems and OptiCool™

By Grant Sojnocki President, Able-One Systems

Our IT industry has experienced significant technical advancements, specifically within the data center, over the last number of years.  Storage, memory, networking and server technology is better than it has ever been, and these advancements allowing our customers here at Able-One Systems to deliver faster, better service to their end users than ever before.   The increasing density of this technology within the data center has a very real environmental downside.  It’s a problem we’re passionate about solving at Able-One Systems, and we believe we’re uniquely positioned to make a difference. 

Is it hot in here?

The problem is a fairly simple one to wrap your head around.  When you up the power, you up the heat. When you up the heat in a data center housing millions in sensitive equipment, you need to effectively remove that heat in order to protect the equipment and prevent catastrophic failure. 

This is not a new problem, just a growing one. The heat load generated by computing electronics within equipment racks has doubled over the last eight years.  Yet businesses continue to use traditional and fundamentally flawed methods to cool entire rooms flooded with heat from hot electronics. The heat is climbing and we’re throwing air conditioners or air movement contrivances at the problem. It is simply not a sustainable, or smart planet, approach.  

This extra cooling contributes significantly to overall energy cost, the fastest growing expense for a data center manager. In a 2011 article in the New York Times, it was reported that Google, a gorilla in the  data center world, continuously uses enough electricity to power more than 200,000 homes, and its estimated carbon emissions for 2010 were just shy of 1.5 million tons – nearly all attributed to the carbon fuels required to provide electricity necessary for power and cooling. Estimates show s in North America now account for 2-3% of all electricity consumed.        

So what is the answer to this dilemma? In our next blog post we’ll explore some innovative new methods for data centre cooling. 

Come Meet Able-One Systems at DatacenterDynamics Converged!

Meet up with our team, and gain new insights on  cooling at Toronto DatacenterDynamics Converged Event, happening November 27^th at the Allstream Centre. You can find us at booth #11.