Data Center World 2010 Puts Spotlight on IT Efficiency

by Chris Preimesberger

For the first time, Data Center World and co-sponsor eWEEK asked for nominees and selected a national Data Center Manager of the Year at the 2010 conference from more than 40 candidates. The finalists were Michael Greeney, data center facilities team leader at Chevron; Joseph Perillo, vice president of technology operations at MetLife; and Tom Roberts, manager of data center facilities at Trinity Information Services. Greeney was selected as the first Data Center Manager of the Year.

Methode Electronics of Chicago supplies a large number of components for data centers, including power distributors, power cables, fiber-optic connectors, RFID-based security hardware and software, touch sensors and many other items that can easily be taken for granted.

Methode Data Solutions Group showed a new biometric access package (thumbprint) for data centers that enable managers to see specific temperatures in different sectors, to provide access to specific doors for specific personnel and to monitor how long each door has been opened or closed. For example, the two blue lines on the center box represent the two doors that are currently available to be opened by one person inside the data center. If there turns out to be a problem, the manager can close the door at any time. The system is all RFID/sensor based.

Connectivity Technologies is a premium provider of high-quality services and products for the data center physical layer infrastructure. Established in 1997, Connectivity Technologies makes hardware that addresses port density, panel access, cabling, automated cable/asset management and custom designs.

AccessIT, a relatively new centralized remote access management provider, showed its new software at Data Center World. AccessIT consolidates all remote access services into a single session, providing on-demand access to all IT assets, regardless of their physical location.

Fred Stack, vice president of marketing for the Liebert Precision Cooling business of Emerson Network Power, shows off his company’s new SmartAisle configuration. Sensor-driven SmartAisle finds specific hot sections of the aisle and automatically directs more air to them, in order to keep temperatures in line and power costs down. No wasted power or air here.

London-based nLyte (formerly Global DataCenter Management) demonstrated its new-generation data center performance management (DCPM) software at the show. The nLyte software gathers information of all kinds—virtual and physical—and enables it to be used for analytics, among a score of other things.

Wright Line, of Worcester, Mass., makes a patent-pending independent heat-containment system (ICS)—a free-standing, scalable, sustainable and vendor-neutral containment package for high-density computing environments.

Siemon (which started as a phone-line company in 1903) now specializes in fiber-optic data center cabling, which is the most environmentally correct way to channel data and power. The Watertown, Conn.-based company also makes high-speed interconnects for data center networking.

Housed in bright orange ranks that passers-by could not miss, cabling provider CABLEexpress showed off its new lines of fiber jumpers, copper patch cables, cabinets and racks, and data center furniture. All very important to making the new-gen data center workable.

Perhaps the coolest technology at Data Center World 2010 was a demonstration of Sapphire, a new version of 3M’s Novec 1230, which looks and feels like water but is really a nox-toxic chemical that can put out difficult data center fires without hurting valuable equipment. Touch the liquid, and your finger goes cold for a couple of seconds, and the liquid vaporizes. It does not penetrate electronics, so an entire video screen can be submerged with no effect. The gas emitted by the chemical puts fire out immediately. A couple of cans of Novec 1230 can protect a good size section of a data center, with no worry about water short-circuiting sensitive electronics in case of fire.