Disqus - Latest Comments for Steve O'Donnell

Re: Practical advice on how to measure and compare the efficiency of your data center with other operators. | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:03:37 -0000

Bill

A good place to start is with The Green Grid (see Industry Bodies on this Blog for URL). They are pretty theoretical and spend a lot of time looking at and developing standards such as PUE etc.. Then you need a decent Electrical Engineer to follow the basic instructions in this post. You might consider getting in touch with Martin Williams at Glasshouse to see if using their Reflector product might get you closer to real time measurement of your KPIs.

Anyway very good luck and let me know how you get on.

Steve

Re: What are the engineering principles about moving computer equipment through my data center? How do I know when I need to strengthen the floor? What about point loadings? | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Wed, 21 May 2008 06:39:35 -0000

Yvonne

This is quite common in older Data Centers. The floor loading capacity will be severely compromised - particularly the dynamic or rolling load values. Also having perforated panels is likely to mean that they are at the very bottom end of the loading range.

You might consider getting a specialist data center floor company in to have a look at tightening the floor up and checking the struts (if there are struts as this might be a very old design with very shallow plenum).

Hope that's helpful?

Steve

Re: Helpful is unhelpful. Why our IT Departments are so random and unstructured? | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:52:25 -0000

Thanks for the comment Phil. At the risk of repeating myself (never stopped me before) letting Techies run IT is like letting the lunatics run the asylum. If we accept the base principle that IT only has business value if it kills the competition or gets cheap then there is no place for boys toys.

When we place customers at the center of everything we do, we build business value. Businesses that have customers willing to recommend them and their products grow SUSTAINABLY 125% faster than their competitors and are significantly more profitable.

Actually it is not hard to see and understand what good looks like, (as you said), the problem is sharing that vision and getting everyone on the same page. Once people start getting it though, change happens overnight. One day it is random and unstructured, then before you know it no one needs to ask for guidance anymore they understand the vision and act accordingly.

I have seen it happen and it is awesome. It happened at BT in the retail broadband operations space and we turned it around so fast that even the guys living it were speechless.

Steve

Re: IT Operations are rarely focussed on customer experience and often disappoint. | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:26:57 -0000

Yvonne,

Experience shows that this is permanent journey, although benefits can be got quite quickly. At BT the difference after a period of 18 months was quite staggering and was picked up by customers and management alike.

Steve

Re: IT Operations are rarely focussed on customer experience and often disappoint. | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:30:57 -0000

John

You make a very valid point. The task of tube mapping itself helps IT to be much cleared about the blockages and stupidity that are common in informal and poorly documented processes.

Steve

Re: IT Operations are rarely focussed on customer experience and often disappoint. | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:34:04 -0000

Hiten

You make an excellent point and thanks for the complement. Quite how IT Organizations have managed to get away from understanding the services they supply to customers for so long defeats me. Service views are one important part of this but as you say there is so much more. How can one focus on Cycle Time and Right First Time improvements without being able to calculate the end-to-end impact of changes?

Glad to hear that you are doing well.

Best

Steve

Re: Look for zinc coatings on the underside of floor tiles, metal supporting struts and tile frameworks as well as in air handling equipment, ducting and vents. | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:29:03 -0000

Thanks Pete,

It is great to get some real live recommendations from someone who has suffered with the problem.

Any more specialists that folks have used?

Steve

Re: Where do I get the time to do everything that needs to be done in a day? How can I balance the hundreds of competing demands on my time? | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:50:47 -0000

Paul,

I promise you that this technique is extremely effective. After a very short time you find yourself thinking in the second quadrant all of the time and you start to become much more effective.

You also get fewer surprises and actually get time to think.

Steve

Re: What are the implications of deploying fresh air cooling in Data Centers? What kind of efficiency gain can I get from my cooling subsystems? | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:35:42 -0000

Darek,

Depending on the location of your site and the maximum year round temperature the answer is yes. But in any site, it is possible to reduce the amount of air conditioning required provided that the external temperature is cooler than the temperature of air exhausted from your equipment.

I have moved on from my time with BT but if you wish I can put you in touch with the experts who have hundreds of theses sites that just work relentlessly every day?

Use the send me an email form on the about page with a telephone number if you want to chat?

Steve

Re: What are the implications of deploying fresh air cooling in Data Centers? What kind of efficiency gain can I get from my cooling subsystems? | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:43:15 -0000

Darek,

I am going to write a blog article to answer your questions so that it is shared with everyone. Expect to see it in the next 48 hours.

Thanks for your comments

Steve

Re: Today, data center experts are no longer taken for granted. The torrid growth in data centers to keep pace with the demands of Internet-era computing, their immense need for electricity and their i...

Steve O'Donnell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:41:43 -0000

Sorry Neil, I am told that being a geek is deeply unattractive for the ladies. The recent commercial popularity of Data Center engineers is unlikely to help.

Try going to the Gym and have a professional makeover. It may not help but you should feel better.

Steve

Re: 60% of Data Center blog readership plan to introduce fresh air cooling | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:43:07 -0000

Hi Suz,

Simple reason is that I allowed readers to choose more than one topic so the total could add up to 300% in theory.

Hope that explains it.

Steve

Re: Just occasionally, failure is a cause for celebration! | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:17:35 -0000

Hi Andy

Thanks for the comments - Danny has a really great management approach with a real homespun view on life. I learned a lot from him.

Steve

Re: When was the last time you saw a Data Center press release that didn't make some green or energy efficiency claim? | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:48:08 -0000

Graham,

Thank you for your comment. I did write to Fujitsu and their PR firm asking for clarification but no one got back to me. I am always happy to make changes to any posting that is factually incorrect or unfair.

There is an email form on the About page that can be used for this purpose.

Shame really.

Steve

Re: A Green initiative that costs chump change and can take 15% off your electricity bill overnight | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:09:04 -0000

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the question - it is really valid and important. First thing is that you must have sufficient gas discharge points inside the contained area if it is a cold aisle or outside the contained area if it is a hot aisle. This is because the gas will always follow the route of airflow - viz cold to hot. Usually it is relatively simple to move these to suit with minimal expense.

Perhaps I will blog this in more detail in a few days. Would that be helpful?

Hope that helps

Steve

Re: Why are the simple solutions never that obvious until someone points it out? | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:17:40 -0000

Mark

Stop looking in the data center catalogues. They come from industrial product companies. Drive in deep freeze, hospital and food preparation applications. I will get the part numbers and suppliers and publish them here.

In fact I suspect that a new article is called for covering fire suppression and hanging.

Steve

Steve

Re: Why are the simple solutions never that obvious until someone points it out? | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:02:49 -0000

Hi Randall

I have been busy over the last few days writing articles so perhaps you missed it in the mix. Try http://www.thehotaisle.com/2008/07/11/using-cur...

Hope that does it for you.

Best

Steve

Re: When was the last time you saw a Data Center press release that didn't make some green or energy efficiency claim? | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:36:45 -0000

I have waited for 10 days now looking for any feedback from Fujitsu or their PR actually hoping I had got it wrong. Looks like even the largest and most well regarded companies haven't got a clue about what being green and environmentally friendly means but are happy to make unfounded claims.

The press release (including all of the inaccuracies) is still on the wire.

Ridiculous

Steve

Re: Practical advice on how to measure and compare the efficiency of your data center with other operators. | The Hot Aisle

Steve O'Donnell — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:45:25 -0000

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the comment. You are absolutely right that the measure we need is much more about measuring business value against electricity used. How many unnecessary or underused applications are deployed in our data centers and how mush do they cost the business to run for zero benefits?

I started looking at the implications of this in Asset Management is a Green Issue - an earlier article. Methinks I need to develop this theme around how we measure value of IT from a business perspective.

Steve

Re: Kudos Diane Greene

Steve O'Donnell — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:44:02 -0000

Under her stewardship server virtualization got respectable to talk about in polite company. Who can do that for storage virtualization? The only credible player, IBM, seems to want to hide what they have like a lamp under a bushel. I keep talking to Monshaw about spinning SVC off but that seems to be too hard for IBM to do.
After server and network virtualization, storage virtualization is that key that takes all of the heat out of what frame to use and vendor lock-in. Maybe thats the reason that it hasn't flown. Too many interest groups wanting to maintain the status quo?
And yes I am the big articulate Scotsman.
Steve
---------Who said articlulate? I can't understand a thing you are saying........Cheers