Data Center Education Series Expands to More Dates, Cities

I'm pleased to announce the expansion of our Data Center Education Series to include more dates and cities.

If you're not already familiar with the program, our Data Center Education Series provides students with comprehensive, vendor-neutral, module based training led by the data center design experts from PTS. The training series discusses the most pertinent topics in the data center industry, tying in case studies and real world situations to provide the knowledge IT professionals need to understand, operate, manage, and improve their data centers – ultimately reducing operating costs and improving service delivery to users.

For instance, the Data Center Infrastructure Management course will show attendees:

• Power and cooling infrastructure in the data center and how hardware and configuration impact energy efficiency and availability
• Methods to improve data center energy efficiency
• Management tools available to help you optimize data center performance and availability
• Practical steps to implement ITIL
• How to measure the IT Service Management metrics that really matter
• How to monitor your data center to optimize performance and availability
• What impacts data center availability and how you can improve it

The course schedule for the first half of 2010 is as follows:

• Jan 17 - 19, 2010 in San Francisco, CA
• Jan 25 - 27, 2010 in Washington, DC
• Feb 8 - 10, 2010 in Chicago (Schaumburg), IL
• Feb 22 - 24, 2010 in Dallas, TX
• Mar 15 - 17, 2010 in Ottawa, ON
• Mar 22 - 24, 2010 in San Jose, CA
• Apr 19 - 21, 2010 in Washington, DC
• Apr 26 - 28, 2010 in New York, NY
• May 3 - 5, 2010 in Chicago (Schaumburg), IL
• May 10 - 12, 2010 in Atlanta, GA
• May 17 - 19, 2010 in Dallas, TX

To learn more about the Data Center Infrastructure Management course and to register, visit http://www.data-center-education.com/DataCenterInfrastructureManagement.asp.

Related courses, taught by experts in each field, are also available and include:

• How to Get Started with ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
• ITIL Service Capability: Planning, Protection and Optimization
• ITIL Service Capability: Service Offerings and Agreements
• ITIL Service Catalog
• ITIL Service Lifecycle: Service Strategy
• ITIL v3 Foundation
• Understanding Networking Fundamentals
• TCP/IP Networking
• Telecommunications Fundamentals
• Voice over IP Foundations

For more information regarding each of the courses including costs and the dates and cities where they are available, visit our Data Center Education website.

PTS Data Center Solutions Showcase

PTS' growth of solutions to design, build and manage the data center has never been stronger.This post showcases two industry-leading solutions that you may want to consider for your own data center.

Energy Monitoring Systems

Would device-level power consumption monitoring help you manage costs for effectively?

Working in conjunction with Packet Power, PTS is pleased to announce a cost effective per-device energy monitoring system which is easy to deploy and highly accurate. The system provides device level monitoring & trending without having to change out power supplies or PDU's.

Features include:

• All billing-quality power monitoring hardware is built into standard equipment power supply cables.
• All standard cable connector con-figurations (C13/C14, C19/C20 etc.) as well as voltages and current loads are available. PP Monitoring Nodes
• Data collection network automatically supports thousands of devices in a single facility, is configuration-free, entirely wireless, secure and operates independently of any Wi-Fi or other networking infrastructure.
• All information gathered by our system and all advanced monitoring, billing and management functions are accessible via the web & e-mail.
• All available without any additional hardware or software.
• All information generated by the system can be integrated with your existing operations management and billing systems.

Learn More...

Air Curtains - A Green Alternative

Reduce data center cooling costs by directing cold air where it is needed most - through the computer racks! Air Curtains and strip doors separate cold air and warm air aisles, maximizing the dynamics of air flow to cool your data center. A system can pay for itself in months!

• Save energy on both air conditioning and fan systems - 15% and 67% respectively (according to a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
• The Air Curtain product line includes transparent curtains, strip doors, panels and patented hardware; create a solution specific to your needs.
• Specially formulated vinyls are low-outgassing and anti-static while meeting ASTM and NFPA fire retardancy requirements.
• Hardware is also designed so curtains fall away in the case of fire, allowing fire sprinklers full operating range.

Learn More...

And remember, PTS typically designs these solutions and performs Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling prior to deployment to guarantee the results, savings & performance. To learn more, please contact us today.

Introducing PTS' Information Technology Solutions Group

For years our team has provided exceptional service to analyze, survey, design, plan, commission and manage Data Centers for our clients. We are now pleased to leverage our expertise in All Things Data Center to launch an exciting new division, PTS Information Technology Solutions Group (ITSG).

ITSG provides information technology based consulting, design, implementation/integration, and ongoing support services as well as IT infrastructure solutions to companies nationwide. ITSG extends PTS' data center expertise beyond facility planning, design, engineering, construction, and maintenance to include service and solutions pertaining to:

• LAN/WAN Networking
• Information/Network Security
• Servers & Systems
• Virtualization Technologies
• Enterprise Storage
• Unified Communications
• Software
• Application Development

ITSG's services and solutions are tailored specifically to the needs of our client's project needs, including:

• Technology Roadmaps
• Data Center Relocation
• Consolidation
• Technology Refresh

ITSG follows our proven project delivery process:



PTS' goal is to provide our clients with 100% turnkey, people, process, and technology solutions from data center facility to IT operations.

ITSG will be led by Rich Horowitz, an industry veteran, who has been involved in all facets of the technology industry for more than 20 years. Rich is actively involved in business development, operations, Channel Partner development, Mergers & Acquisitions, and services delivery. Rich has been involved in approx $700 million in technology hardware sales, software sales and technical services engagements. Rich will be responsible for establishing and strengthening the PTS IT Solutions Group brand, and working with our clients to understand their needs and how we can provide value to them.

To learn more, please contact us today.

Intel's Active Management Technology {AMT} provides KVM access & console access eliminating the need for external KVMs or console servers?

There has been a lot of talk in the industry on how Intels new onboard AMT could replace service processors, such as; ILO, DRAC, RSA & ILOM.

http://sof​tware.inte​l.com/en-u​s/blogs/20​09/10/18/i​ntel-kvm-t​his-is-you​r-sol-on-s​teroids/

According to the Blog the local user has to allow the remote user in so I’m not sure this is a valid KVM or ILO replacement as much as a replacement for desktop tools like PCAnywhere & GoToMyPC?

If Intel does have a strategy to lead server remote access & control with AMT, I don't believe it will work. 1st of all, I'd like to point out AMT is an Intel product so it isn't an open standard for a management console. What about those who are buying AMD Opteron processors and/or Sun UltraSparc?

Secondly an open standard for server managment is already well underway from 1998 with IPMI & I think we need to look at what has transpired with IPMI to see what if any support will be given to AMT at the server level. IPMI was originally proposed in 1998 and driven by market leaders Intel, Dell, HP and NEC. Since then IPMI has been adopted by more than 150 other companies, including IBM, Sun, and every major server platform vendor. IPMI is now on its third major release. A significant percentage of rackoptimized servers and most blade computing platforms now include some form of built-in server processor technology that can work with IPMI. Obviously, IPMI data from across the enterprise can only be useful if management teams can view it from a common console. Otherwise, it would offer no advantages over a fragmented, vendor-specific management architecture. Thus, to take full advantage of IPMI, management teams need a solution that 1) delivers aggregated IPMI data to a single application, and 2) supports the IPMI implementations of different vendors.

This second point is critical. While most server vendors include the IPMI protocol in their platforms, they often hide it behind proprietary software/firmware extensions and/or bundled management solutions. An effective server management solution must be able to handle these variations in IPMI implementation in order to provide a unified view into the computing environment. My point is if AMT is to be successful like IPMI the Server OEM's are going to build their own management tools around it to differentiate themselves. Then there will also be 3rd party vendors that build central management tools to centralize access to the different Server OEM's tools that leverage AMT just as there was for IPMI. However, I'm not sure I see all of this happening for AMT because it is proprietary to Intel. IPMI is already included on most systems for these system mangement & diagnostic purposes. The Server OEM's have invested heavily in tools like ILO, DRAC, RSA & ILOM to take advantage of the IPMI chipset. Unlike AMT, IPMI is independent of the CPU and thus independent of a CPU chip failure and can be run on most systems out of band on a separate NIC. Although a few years old. Here is a good whitepaper that covers the development of IPMI and what has occured with its development.

http://www.avocent.de/web/de.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/IPMI+WP_5+Reasons+to+Cap_0406.pdf/$FILE/IPMI+WP_5+Reasons+to+Cap_0406.pdf