Datacenter-Link Blog

Let we listen to Carr’s own words: “In The Big Switch, I draw a parallel to what happened with the invention of electric utilities a hundred years ago. Before the electric utility, people had to generate their own power to run their machines - with waterwheels or steam engines or just their own muscles. But as soon as the wires for the electric grid were strung, they no longer had to worry about producing their own power. Power was delivered to their home or their office over the network, and all they had to do was plug an appliance into the socket in the wall. That’s what’s happening to computing today. It’s turning into a service supplied over a network. It’s becoming a utility.” [1]
We can go further in our analogy: the very first power stations were not only “customized” and “taylorized” for specific local needs, but they were also built according to different visions of the Net and its needs. Let I remember the famous “War of Currents”: Edison’s DC distribution system consisted of generating plants feeding heavy distribution conductors. We know that this was not the way the Electric Grid grew !
According to some authors, we are facing a similar situation in data center architecture: nowadays data center design and approach and the modularization effort is an interesting detector of this. Let we listen to Senior Vice President of Technical Services at Digital Realty Trust, Michael Manos: “In fact one might say that the current modularization approach to data centers is really just the industrialization of the data center itself.  In the past, each and every data center was built lovingly by hand by a team of master craftsmen and data center artisans.  Each is a one of a kind tool built to solve a set of problems.  Think of the eco-system that has developed around building these modern day castles.  Architects, Engineering firms, construction firms, specialized mechanical industries, and a host of others that all come together to create each and every masterpiece. So to, did those who built plows, and hammers, clocks and sextants, and the tools of the previous era specialize in making each item, one by one.   That is, of course, until the industrial revolution.” [2].
Right now, two power stations having the same functionality are slightly different one from another: the standardization is a brand of the modernity.
Again Mr. Manos: “No longer are companies limited to working with the arcane forces of data center design and construction, many of these components are being pre-packaged, pre-manufactured and becoming more aggregated.  Reducing the complexity of the past.”
Looking at what is happening today, going out of the metaphor, what we can say? Are the companies really moving on this path? The answer seems to be “yes”.
Using the words of  American journalist and best-seller writer Tom Vanderbilt, we can say that “While most companies still maintain their own data centers, the promise is that instead of making costly investments in redundant I.T. hardware, more and more companies will tap into the utility-computing grid, piggybacking on the infrastructures of others. Already, Amazon Web Services makes available, for a fee, the company’s enormous computing power to outside customers.” [3].

…..TO BE CONTINUED…..Quotes:

[1] http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/bigswitch/interview.shtml, N. G. Carr
[2] “A Practical Guide to the Early Days of Data Center Containers”, October 29th, M. Manos.
[3] “Data Center Overload”, Published June 8th 2009, The New York Times, T. Vanderbilt
[4] “Estimating total power consumption by servers in the U.S. and the World”, February 15th 2007, J. Koomey.

Tags: data center; electric grid; net; power station