ServerHouse’s ‘Pay 4 Power’ product removes the traditional method of buying rack space by the ‘U’ instead charging the customer only for power used.

Existing billing models in the marketing place have a power and space elements built into the price. Typically you’d commit to a rack rated at so many kW’s and you pay a premium even if you didn’t utilize that power.

ServerHouse aims to change this by offering customers a low entry point to scalable Colocation and flexibility in their IT systems.
The ‘Pay 4 Power’ product enables customers to be greener with their IT systems without any pitfalls.

For further details visit ServerHouse’s website at www.serverhouse.co.uk

The expansion is the first to be unveiled by Onyx, following ISIS Equity Partners’ £42 million investment in the company in October.

Onyx plans to add a further 20,000 sq ft to its existing 22,000sq ft centre, which would give it the capacity for a total of 250 racks of computer servers and 500 workstations, for use by companies whose own facilities are hit by disasters like fires, major power failures and the like.

No number has been put on the jobs that could be created.

Chief executive, Neil Stephenson, said of the company’s expansion: “This is great news for the South Yorkshire region as it demonstrates that businesses are keen to invest here, creating more jobs and providing support to a thriving, innovative business hub in what is fast becoming one of the UK’s key regions for growth.”

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Storage Gateway beta, announced on Wednesday, links a company’s IT systems with Amazon’s storage cloud via a software agent that can be installed on commodity hardware.

“The service enables you to securely upload data to the AWS cloud for cost effective backup and rapid disaster recovery,” Amazon said in a statement. “Data stored in your current datacentre can be backed up to Amazon S3, where it is stored as Amazon EBS snapshots… In the event you need to retrieve a backup of your data, you can easily restore these snapshots locally to your on-premises hardware.”

The product is for companies that want a hybrid cloud so they can keep part of their data on-premise and the rest in Amazon’s scalable, rentable IT stack. The software can be installed on host hardware to create storage volumes that attach as iSCSI devices to a company’s on-premise servers. Once installed, the Storage Gateway can be controlled from the AWS management console.

Ideal uses for the product include disaster recovery and business continuity, backup and data migration, the company said.

Initially, storage volumes can be kept on the appliance — Gateway Stored — which keeps the data on-premise while automatically replicating it to the AWS cloud. In a few months the data will be cached via the appliance — Gateway Cache — with the full copy residing solely in the AWS cloud, the company said.

Each AWS Storage Gateway can handle up to 12TB of storage across 12 volumes. The service is available from Amazon datacentres in the US, Ireland, Singapore and Tokyo. To begin with, the AWS Storage Gateway is delivered via a virtual machine image.

“As the cloud computing trend continues to gather momentum and businesses are increasingly reliant on IT systems to function, it has never been more important to ensure that a company’s mission critical applications are hosted in a dedicated, energy efficient data centre. This provides a secure, temperature controlled environment, which has access to reliable, resilient power and connectivity,” said Andrew Saunders, Head of Product Management and Marketing.

“Zen’s headquarters will provide the ideal location for the new data centre and is in response to increased demand for capacity in the North West. The data centre also meets the increasing demand for hosting services from Zen’s existing customers,” added Mr Saunders.

Once complete the 1,350 sq metre Tier 2 facility will be monitored around the clock by automated management systems, an onsite central monitoring team, CCTV and onsite security guards. The new data centre will be fitted out with state of the art power and environmental management infrastructure providing 2MVA capacity.

N+1 standby power generation and uninterruptible power will be supplied by Diesel Rotary Uninterruptible Power Supplies (DRUPS) ensuring Zen’s Hosting customers will get 100% uptime from their hosted services. Even the most demanding connectivity and bandwidth requirements will be easily accommodated as the new data centre is directly connected to Zen’s fully diverse core network.

Zen has been providing hosting services to its customers for the last 16 years and is already an experienced data centre operator having opened its first facility in 2001. The new data centre further enhances Zen’s growing hosting portfolio and Phase 1 of the build, which is due to open in Spring 2012, will house a range of Managed Hosting, Managed Cloud Hosting and Co-location services.

“Our mission is to provide the best ISP service in the UK. Translating our mission into action requires us to continually improve every aspect of what we do. This latest investment represents a significant improvement to our business, making a world class data centre available to our customers, and backing it up with an industry-leading level of support and service,” said Richard Tang.

“This is a very exciting time for Zen. Technology and the Internet are developing as fast as ever, and it’s fantastic to be part of it,” added Mr Tang.

The contract for the design and build of the new data centre has been awarded to the UK’s leading communications infrastructure specialist, Sudlows.

Andy Hirst, Global Projects Director at Sudlows commented: “The design of the new data centre will provide Zen with the ideal platform to offer its customers secure and fully resilient hosting services and ensure it maintains its status as the best ISP in the UK.”

IT.co.uk already lists over 190,000 IT related jobs in the UK, and is growing daily.

With what has to be one of the easiest to remember website addresses we’ve seen, IT.co.uk is set to become the place for IT Recruitment.

www.it.co.uk

Within easy reach of London, the centre has a staggering 11MVA of available power, room for 20,000 servers, and provides a direct connection to PEER 1 Hosting’s 10Gb fibre backbone network.

The facility is located in one of the most energy-efficient buildings of its type in the UK. Built on a brownfield site in Portsmouth, it is expected to deliver a predicted Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.1. For every one unit of power used for computer equipment, only 0.1 unit is used to power other areas, such as cooling. The industry average is 1.8.

To achieve this, the company is the first in the world to use the energy-efficient Excool cooling system.
The system harnesses the natural cooling effect of air and water, using a super-efficient heat exchange system, low-energy fans and water atomisers.

“Data centre demand shows no signs of slowing down. Our £45 million investment in this state-of-the art facility is testament to PEER 1 delivering the services that our customers need and are going to need in the future. By investing, we have developed a wholly-owned data centre that leads the way in reducing the carbon footprint for our customers, delivers 24/7 service and provides customers with the capacity to grow,” said Dominic Monkhouse, EMEA managing director of PEER 1 Hosting.

In addition to its green credentials, the data centre is kept secure through biometric authentication, ultra sound technology and coordinated intruder alarms. Users also have the opportunity to work at the site as catering, Wi-Fi, conference rooms, a 150-seater auditorium and fitness centre are available.

Fabio Banducci, President and CEO of PEER 1 Hosting said, “This new data centre represents a significant investment for PEER 1 in the UK and European markets. There is a shortage of green data centre capacity in the region which creates a great potential for growth. We see this state-of-the-art data centre meeting the needs of our customers going forward in an increasingly data rich world.”

Dubbed ATC, the datacenter uses off-the-shelf, pre-racked/vendor integrated gear with open source code, is run as a 100 per cent lights out facility (no BOFH patrolling the racks), and was put together in 90 days from the first proposal. AOL’s special sauce is its configuration management system, which the company says can set up and start a virtual machine in eight seconds and set up global server systems in minutes.

“The provisioning systems were built to be universal so that if required we can do the same thing with stand-alone physical boxes or virtual machines. No difference. Same system.” Said Mike Manos, AOL’s vice president of technology operations in a blog post.

This system was put to the test during this summer’s East Coast earthquake, a 5.8 magnitude shock in Virginia. “The flood of inquirers to AOL’s servers in the aftermath was handled using the system, adding new virtual machines to handle the steep surge in demand,” he wrote.

The timing of the announcement is fortuitous, considering AOL is trying to sell itself and touting its datacenter management as one of the assets it brings to any deal. Reuters reports that COE Tim Armstrong told a meeting of top shareholders that the company could be a good buy for Yahoo! He estimated that the two companies, with a combined audience, elimination of overlaps and AOL’s datacenter prowess, could save $1.5bn.

Read more at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/13/aol_demos_humanfree_datacenter/

According to the press release, the network expansion supports the high growth in this region. UK Grid added 6,000 square feet of colocation space to Manchester One at the end of June.

“By connecting our diverse, high capacity network into UK Grid’s Manchester data center, we can further address the demand from enterprises and IT service providers throughout this region,” Bjarni Thorvardarson, chief executive officer for Hibernia Atlantic said in a statement. “Hibernia Atlantic, known for its cutting-edge network technology and customized, high performance solutions, can now deliver significant competitive advantages to UK Grid’s client base.”

UK Grid’s Manchester One @ Synergy House data center provides more than 23,000 square feet of space. The company operates four data centers with more than 75,000 square feet between them.

UK Grid offsets all CO2 emissions through environmental projects, according to the press release, and is a member of the Green Grid organization.

“Hibernia Atlantic’s secure and diverse, high capacity connectivity, especially in and around the British Isles, makes them a natural partner to support our growing local, regional and international client base,” Rob Garbutt, CEO for UK Grid stated. “With Hibernia Atlantic, our clients can further deliver cost-effective and highly reliable network services to support mission critical applications and IT requirements – all backed by industry leading SLAs. We also have a direct and secure link between England, mainland Europe and North America, allowing our clients the necessary reach and flexibility necessary in today’s global economy.”

According to the press release, Hibernia’s network connects more than 120 points of presence throughout Europe and North America.

The new facility is set within a secure private 170,000 compound with 66,000 sq ft of data centre space and 22,000 sq ft of associated offices and disaster recovery areas. The site will feature dual redundant 8MW power supplies from two dedicated on-site HV substations, as well as diverse connections to multiple fibre optic connectivity providers. The new Maylands data centre will give us capacity for up to an additional 1,200 racks

Gyron’s Managing Director, Robin Balen, also revealed that Gyron had already pre-signed agreements with customers for over 1MW of critical IT load. He said, “We’re delighted to announce that with our 3MW Centro facility at nearly 90% occupancy after less than two years operation, we’ve been able to bring forward our expansion plans. The new Maylands data centre will give us capacity for up to an additional 1,200 racks to continue to support our customers’ most critical IT applications.”

Sir Michael Caine had not had cause to visit many (any?) data centres. But he has now. He was on hand to the officially celebrate the completion of phase one of Virtus’ site in Enfield in North London. 

Sir Michael Caine is the iconic actor whose career spans seven decades beginning in the 1950s through style setting 1960s films such as Alfie and The Italian Job to modern classics like Little Voice and major Hollywood movies such as the Bat Man franchise.

Phase two will deliver a further 18,000 sq ft in Q4 of 2011. The delivery of this raised floor space comes at a time when there has been very little speculative development in the sector, said Virtus.

Warren Barrie, managing director of Virtus Data Centres, is not known to have starred in any major or minor Hollywood movies though he does resemble a cross between Ben Kingsley and Jason Statham.