Updates on my recent activites

Suffice it to say, I've been BUSY!!!!

We're in the middle of building our new Data Center in Washington and I've been busy with Dean Nelson developing the opportunities associated with Data Center Pulse (datacenterpulse.com).

A quick note on the Data Center project:

It's a big deal for us. The first two spaces are roughly 16K SF each and we have first right of refusal to three additional spaces. Total potential DC floor space is about 80K SF.

We're doing some pretty cool stuff from a building and MEP (Mechanical, Electrical & Plumbing) perspective and of course our virtual infrastructure will play a big role in site efficiency as well.

I can't say what the PUE rating will be yet, but we're implementing significant monitoring in order to capture detailed real-time data about how the environment is operating. I'm hoping for a PUE of <1.5.

The project is in the final phases now and as with most big projects some things have gone well and some haven't. We have several groups involved in the project and generally coordination is excellent. However, there are some peripheral teams that are fairly detached from the day to day project activity and this has caused a few headaches (lesson learned; don't ever allow anyone to talk you out of having a single leader with direct ownership of all resources).

Mostly though things are going as well as can be expected. We're under budget, and on target from a date perspective.

Some of the cool features include but aren't limited to:
- Hot Aisle containment
- Grey Water system
- LEED certification (external and internal)
- Power monitoring from the street to the rack PDU
- Comprehensive BMS system
- Hot air from the data center will be used to heat the office areas
- and more

There's still much more that can be done with a data center. However, this one should be a very nice facility considering the budget and original objectives.

Data Center Pulse (datacenterpulse.com & LinkedIn groups)

This is growing like a weed. We're now at almost 300 members and people continue to join. We have lots of ideas for how to take "positive" advantage of the information generated by all the smart folks in the group. Including doing videocasts that get posted to Datacenterpulse.com and striping content from discussions and developing recommendations or strategies from it for posting on the web site. Our primary goal here is to influence the industry in a positive way. We believe the only way for us to influence the industry and our peers effectively is if we can stay vendor agnostic. We also believe there's no way for us to stay agnostic if we accept funds from vendors or if we allow sales or marketing folks on the board.

If you're interested in joining you can get to the group via the web site (datacenterpulse.com) or by going directly to Linkedin and requesting to join there.