Application Infrastructure, Storage Management
prnewswire | August 11, 2023
DataBank, a leading provider of enterprise-class edge colocation, interconnection, and managed services, announced today a new approach to building high-density data centers to accommodate High-Performance Computing (HPC). Enabling HPC, Universal Data Hall Design (UDHD) empowers businesses with the flexibility to support any deployment their workloads require.
With a market expected to reach $103.74 billion by 2030, generative AI's accelerated adoption has driven an increase in demand for high-density colocation. As technology continues to advance, data centers must be able to scale and adapt quickly to handle an increasingly diverse range of workloads – from power-dense HPC clusters to sprawling hyperscale cloud installations to traditional raised-floor, enterprise colocation.
"In order to future-proof their facilities, multi-tenant data center operators must rethink facility design, construction, and operations to allow for more flexibility and sustainability," said Eric Swartz, vice president of engineering at DataBank. "With UDHD, DataBank is able to accommodate hyperscale, traditional, and HPC all within the same, highly secure data hall."
Key elements to DataBank's Next-Gen Data Centers implementing a Universal Data Hall Design are the traditional components of data center colocation with an eye toward flexibility and resiliency:
Space - Starting with slab floor and all power and cooling infrastructure outside the data hall as the initial base, with raised floor and water to rack layers that easily can be added to any hall; this layered design approach allows any hall within the data center to be adjusted to customer needs.
Power - Support for distribution as traditional 120/208V or high density 240/415V as whips or through busway without change to the supporting infrastructure.
Cooling - With a closed chilled water loop and the layered design approach, each hall can independently support different cooling methods from flooded room to localized air delivery using raised floor and even water to the rack supporting rear door heat exchangers and/or direct chip cooling.
This design renders the additional benefit of sustainability, as efficient power and water systems reduce the consumption of resources.
"Universal Data Hall Design is crucial to innovation. As technology evolves, our data centers are able to evolve with it," said Joe Minarik, COO of DataBank. "While most of the industry is trying to navigate the here and now, we're already building the data centers of the future."
About DataBank
DataBank helps the world's largest enterprises, technology, and content providers ensure their data and applications are always on, always secure, always compliant, and ready to scale to meet the needs of the artificial intelligence era. Our edge colocation and infrastructure footprint consists of 65+ "HPC-ready" data centers in 27+ markets, 20 interconnection hubs, and on-ramps to an ecosystem of cloud providers with virtually unlimited reach. We combine these platforms with contract portability, managed security, compliance enablement, hands-on support, and a guarantee of 100% uptime availability, to give our customers absolute confidence in their IT infrastructure and the power to create a boundless digital future for their business.
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
Business Wire | September 26, 2023
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the security, performance, and reliability company helping to build a better Internet, today shared a new independent report published by Analysys Mason that shows switching enterprise network services from on premises devices to Cloudflare’s cloud-based services can cut related carbon emissions up to 78% for very large businesses to up to 96% for small businesses. The report is one of the first of its kind to calculate potential emissions savings achieved by replacing enterprise network and security hardware boxes with more efficient cloud services.
Global Internet usage accounts for 3.7% of global CO2 emissions, about equal to the CO2 emissions of all air traffic around the world. The Internet needs to reduce its overall energy consumption, especially as regulators continue to implement the Paris Climate Accord, including plans to transition to a zero emissions economy. The European Climate Law requires that Europe’s economy and society become climate-neutral by 2050, with a target of reducing net GHG emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. Regulators in the United States and the European Union, among others, have also announced plans to require companies to disclose climate-related information including carbon emissions resulting from their operations and supply chains, as well as climate related risks and opportunities. Finally, among the Fortune Global 500, 63% of companies now set 2050 targets for emissions reductions. Companies large and small will increasingly be looking to reduce carbon throughout their supply chains, particularly their IT infrastructure.
“The best way to reduce your IT infrastructure’s carbon footprint is easy: move to the cloud,” said Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder, Cloudflare. “At Cloudflare, we’ve built one of the world’s most efficient networks, getting the most out of every watt of energy and every one of our servers. That’s why, with Cloudflare, companies can help hit their sustainability goals without sacrificing security, speed, performance, or innovation.”
The Analysys Mason study found that switching enterprise network services from on premises devices to Cloudflare services can cut related carbon emissions up to 96%, depending on the current network footprint. The greatest reduction comes from consolidating services, which improves carbon efficiency by increasing the utilization of servers that are providing multiple network functions. On premises devices are designed to host multiple workloads and consume power constantly, but are only used for part of the day and part of the week. Cloud infrastructure is shared by millions of customers, often all over the world. As a result, cloud providers are able to achieve economies of scale that result in less downtime, less waste, and lower emissions. Furthermore, the Analysys Mason study found that there are additional gains due to the high Power Usage Effectiveness of cloud data centres, and differences in the carbon intensity of generation in the local electricity grid.
“Happy Cog is a full-service digital agency that designs, builds, and markets experiences that engage our clients and their audiences. We’ve relied on Cloudflare for many of those websites and apps because it's secure, reliable, fast, and affordable – but also aligns with many of our clients’ sustainability roadmaps and goals,” said Matt Weinberg, Co-Founder and President of Technology at Happy Cog. “Switching our clients from their previous on premises or other constant-usage infrastructure to Cloudflare's network and services has let them be greener, more efficient, and more cost effective. It's ideal when you can offer your clients a solution that covers all their needs and provides a delightful experience now, without having to compromise on their longer term priorities.”
About Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc. (www.cloudflare.com / @cloudflare) is on a mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare’s suite of products protect and accelerate any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare have all web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was awarded by Reuters Events for Global Responsible Business in 2020, named to Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in 2021, and ranked among Newsweek's Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in 2022.
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Data Storage
prnewswire | August 18, 2023
Pure Storage, the IT pioneer that delivers the world's most advanced data storage technology and services, today announced that Chungbuk Technopark, a regional innovation hub in Chungcheongbuk-do Province, has leveraged FlashBlade®, its unified fast file and object storage platform, to enhance the AI development environment it provides to local businesses by boosting storage data processing performance and significantly improving GPU usage.
Customer Challenge:
Chungbuk Technopark is an innovation hub that supports growth and economic development in the Chungcheongbuk-do province ofSouth Korea, including a development environment for deep learning and machine learning that helps local companies develop AI products. To support AI initiatives, the company needed storage with AI-optimized performance, simple management, and that was easily upgradeable.
Customer Impact:
Chungbuk Technopark built its AI environment around the NVIDIA DGX A100 system. After comparing flash storage solutions, it selected Pure Storage FlashBlade for a seamless integration with its DGX systems, maximizing the efficiency and management of data used to develop and train AI technologies. Benefits that Pure Storage delivers to Chungbuk Technopark include:
Advanced AI development infrastructure:Chungbuk Technopark increased data processing performance twofold, improved the GPU server's data read speed, and expanded GPU usage from 30% to 80%—an increase of about 2.6x. It also enhanced performance, scalability, and data availability for the AI development environment, while also achieving a tenfold increase in reliability.
Zero downtime to meet a growing workload:FlashBlade allows Chungbuk Technopark to increase performance and capacity without any downtime or data migrations. This means more reliable service for companies that rely on the AI platform.
Simple, efficient storage management:With Pure's AI-powered full-stack storage management and monitoring software, Pure1®, Chungbuk Technopark's staff spends much less time and cost managing storage capacity and performance.
Pure Storage supports Chungbuk Technopark's efforts to help local companies innovate AI-enabled services and products. A promising beauty-tech startup, for example, uses the AI platform to analyze skin and scalp conditions and market customized beauty products. A fast-growing local startup successfully developed AI technology to analyze the movement of wild boars. This helps livestock farmers prevent African Swine Fever (ASF), a development that earned the company the 'H1 2022 Best Patent Award of Korea' by The Hankook Ilbo.
Executive Insight:
"With the introduction of Pure StorageFlashBlade, we have trained our AI models faster with 2x faster data read speeds. FlashBlade has paved the way for us to build a better AI development environment, enabling many companies in the region to achieve significant business results."-- Cheol-hong Kim, Digital Strategy, Team Leader, Chungbuk Technopark
"The advancement of the AI development environment ofChungbuk Technopark has helped many local businesses maximize the potential of AI and data and accelerate innovation. We will continue to collaborate with companies and institutions in Korea by providing modern all-flash storage infrastructure to efficiently meet the exploding data demands of the AI era."--Jaesung Yoo, Managing Director, Pure Storage Korea
About Pure Storage
Pure Storage uncomplicates data storage, forever. Pure delivers a cloud experience that empowers every organization to get the most from their data while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it. Pure's commitment to providing true storage as-a-service gives customers the agility to meet changing data needs at speed and scale, whether they are deploying traditional workloads, modern applications, containers, or more. Pure believes it can make a significant impact in reducing data center emissions worldwide through its environmental sustainability efforts, including designing products and solutions that enable customers to reduce their carbon and energy footprint. And with the highest Net Promoter Score in the industry, Pure's ever-expanding list of customers are among the happiest in the world.
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Application Storage, Windows Server OS
prnewswire | August 02, 2023
Accelevation Holdings, LLC, a vertically integrated group of manufacturing companies serving the data center, electric vehicle, and robotic markets, has acquired Instor Solutions Ltd, a comprehensive, mission-critical solutions provider, for an undisclosed sum. Through the acquisition, Accelevation will integrate Instor's data center white space installation and project management expertise with its data center containment and caging solutions business, Conatech, to form the Accelevation Data Center Business Unit.
The acquisition has established a new, vertically integrated data center business unit comprising both brands to create a single, customer-facing entity and forming the USA's largest integrated data center services solutions provider. Together, the Accelevation Data Center Business Unit will solve key challenges for hyperscale, colocation, and enterprise customers, including faster product design, manufacturing, and supply chain capabilities, with dedicated white space integration, services, and project management expertise.
By combining both leading brands, Accelevation has created the only organization within the U.S. market capable of providing fully integrated, data center infrastructure product manufacturing, with self-performing, fit-up solutions design, and project delivery. The companies comprehensive services offering will propel hyperscale, colocation, and enterprise data center operators to benefit from industry-leading speed and efficiency – offering enhanced value throughout the entire life cycle and delivering world-class data center environments at accelerated pace and scale.
Through its integrated sales, manufacturing, and operations teams, for example, Conatech's customers now have immediate access to the data center white space design, build, and integration services that Instor has built its world-leading reputation on. In turn, Instor has secured unparalleled access to the vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities used by Accelevation to produce its Conatech data center products.
"By combining Instor's white space design and services expertise with Conatech's manufacturing and product capabilities, the Accelevation Data Center Business Unit is uniquely positioned to serve and support the data center market as it fulfils its growth potential," said Sam Prudhomme, President, Data Center Business Unit, Accelevation Holdings. "Our customers recognize that together, we're better - empowering them to grow at unprecedented speed and scale, and at the pace the market demands. Importantly, our shared values and methodological approach will ensure we continue to treat our customers the way they want to be treated, setting a new standard for integrated data center solutions and services, globally."
Accelevation President and CEO, Michael Rubiera, said, "We are thrilled to welcome Instor to the Accelevation portfolio of innovative companies. Combining Instor's 40+ sales and project management professionals to our Accelevation portfolio creates one of the most comprehensive and all-encompassing solution providers of data center products and installations in the world. We couldn't be more excited about the possibilities and growth this acquisition provides."
About Accelevation, LLC
Accelevation is a vertically integrated group of manufacturing companies serving the data center, electric vehicle and robotic markets. The organization's mission is to build businesses and work cultures that positively impact employees, their families, their community and their customers. At its core, Accelevation understands that it is their responsibility to plot a course for a more mindful way of doing business.
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