More Hardware options for DC Insight - Better solution to fit customer's budget and requirements

DC Insight is rolling along nicely with a few more projects coming down the pipeline. I am also pretty satisfied that we now have a very flexible solution which can scale from small rooms to large sites for both environmental monitoring and power monitoring.

Here are some quick diagrams which illustrates the concept:

For Environment Monitoring:

For Power Monitoring:

I have also updated our DC Insight solution page to show more detail.

As another customer learned, temperature can rise very quickly in a data center, causing your servers to shutdown

Today I get to visit a brand new data center still under construction. It is for a casino in Macau. Their setup is interesting with about 5 rooms of around 60 racks each. Judging from the state of the building, I am surprise to learn they have to be up and running by April! At least they have their data center operational while the building itself is still under construction.

Recently, they had an episode where apparently the chiller water supply was shutoff, and IT was not notified of the event. As the temperature rises in the data center, server began to overheat and shutdown. Only then, when the end user starts complaining did IT realize there was an issue in the data center. An the interesting part is, their data center is only at 20% capacity!

As we learned with another client, after we installed the DC Insight monitoring system in the data center, just shutting down one CRAC unit rises the temperature very quickly!

During the exercise, we took turns to shutdown 3 out of 4 CRAC units in the data center. As we observed from the above chart, the placement of the first and third CRAC made it crucial in the operation of the data center. Shutting down the first or the third CRAC, the data center temperature rises quickly, and within 8 minutes we have rack in-take temperature going over 30 deg C. Since, this is operational site the facility manager quickly restore the CRAC to avoid an issue. I guess they don't really have a N+1 cooling design after all :)

Now imagine if all the CRAC goes down at once, temperature can rise VERY quickly in a data center.

Uncluttered ancient network cables from office

Kung Hei Fat Choi! To kick of the year of the Dragon, I went ahead and completed new year resolution #1!


2012 Resolution #1 - Clean up spaghetti of network cables in demo room

With 30 years old company comes with 30 years old messes. I finally uncluttered the network cables underneath our raise floor in our small demo room.

Add Maven Central Archetype Catalog to STS

I was going through the "Create your project using the Broadleaf Maven ecommerce Archetype" section of  broadleaf commerce "Getting Started" guide and it was not immediately obvious to me why I was unable to find  org.broadleafcommerce.ecommerce-archetype from STS > New Maven Project. It appeared STS by default does not include archetype from the maven central repository (at least not in latest 2.8.1). 

Add maven central archetype catalog to STS by adding the following URL http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/archetype-catalog.xml to Windows > Preferences > Maven > Archetypes > Add Remote Catalog...

Now you should be able to find the BroadleafCommerce ECommerce Archetype under to newly created remote catalog.

First Visit to HackJam

I have been wanting to visit HackJam for a long time. I finally got off my lazy bum and went for the Eagle crash course, generously hosted by Alex Hornstein, a visitor from the US.

It was a excellent crash course. Good thing I did paid some attention back in school during electronic classes, such that I was able to follow most of the theories and basic circuit designs. What you don't get from school is the linkage to the real world and this is what Alex's crash course offered, i.e.

• How to get the circuit design and have it laid out
• How to output it into gerber format which PCB maker can understand have your board made
• He shared his experience with the low cost PCB prototype board maker in Hong Kong (just down the street from where I work!)

We went from zero to knowing how to design and economically make a prototype board in few hours!

Another interesting part of this visit is meeting Jon again. Not only is he working on Boot.hk, and Makible.com, he is also at HackJam! Jon, do you somehow bend the law of physics and have a 48 hour day??

I checked out his little work-in-progress Make-a-Bot like machine and it looks like he is almost there!

I have heard of 3D printers, but I have always think of them as ridiculously expensive. Boy! How fast have technology moved. Apparently today, it is possible to have a 3D printer for under 1,000 USD!

It was interesting listening to Alex sharing his vision on manufacturing goods as a SOHO/lifestyle business. In fact, he is well on his way. I saw his video of an electronic toy which he designed and manufactured. So, he is able to design his own circuit board, program his own firmware and print his own plastic. I don't think he is too far off!

I wish him luck!

Free domain? Too good to be true

I recently came across this free domain service co.cc. It appears too good to be true! And it is. Unless your website does not rely on organic search traffic from Google, then you will be okay. Google is not indexing any site under the co.cc domain! Searching for site:co.cc on Google gives you nothing.

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Update: 2011/12/26
Back then, it appeared Google did pull all the co.cc form its index, see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/06/google_cans_11m_dot_co_dot_cc_sites/
But it appeared co.cc sub-domain sites have reappeared on Google.

Hong Kong 2nd in Cloud Readiness in Asia in front of Singapore?

Singapore government heavy handed approach is definitely working in propelling Singapore as a leading destination for various enterprises to setup their data center. Who's in Singapore? A quick search on data center knowledge paint a fairly evident picture. Some brand name companies are IBM, Adobe, Amazon, OpenDNS, Salesforce.

I am glad to see Hong Kong government is trying to do the same. While visiting HKTDC's ICT Expo, I attended the "Canada - HK Innovation and Technology Partnering Forum". This is where it was first brought to my attention the Hong Kong government is finally trying to do something about the data center industry.

Few months later, HK SAR government launches their website dedicated to attract data center operators.

Recently, I came across this article on Computer World, which talks about Cloud Readiness in Asia.  According to the "Asia Cloud Computer Association", in their whitepaper on Cloud Readiness, Hong Kong rank 2nd in the cloud readiness index, behind Japan and ahead of Singapore.

Hong Kong may rank higher in the cloud readiness survey, but I don't believe this is a true reflection of how the industry is shaping up to be. A simple search in Data Center Knowledge website and you will see all high-end cloud companies setting up shops in Singapore: Amazon, Salesforce, Adobe, etc. Whereas in Hong Kong, you only get companies from the lower-end of the spectrum, which are really just co-location companies such as NTT, Equinix, Rackspace. Why is this important? Because I believe it represent a greater commitment by companies to build a cloud service offering such as AWS, Salesforce, Omniture platforms then companies offering rental spaces for servers, which is what co-location really is. The former will require a more sophisticated workforce hence creating better job opportunities for the area.

Hong Kong may be "winning" in this so call "Cloud Readiness", but sophisticated cloud companies are choosing Singapore over Hong Kong.