E-Bomb Deployed

Several news organizations are reporting that an e-bomb was used in last night's bombing of the main Iraqi TV station by US forces. The potential deployment of electromagnetic pulse weapons was the sibject of frequent speculation in the days leading to Persian Gulf II. The technology behind these weapons has been of interest to some data center operators.

In the heyday of the data center building boom, a Wired magazine story about Exodus raised the specter of the EMF weapon, which in theory could penetrate concrete walls and ruin the equipment and data inside - thus subverting the multiple layers of physical security put in place by Exodus and other leading data center providers. The technology even figured as a plot device in the remake of "Ocean's Eleven," in which Don Cheadle's character uses an EMF pulse to knock out the electric power and surveillance equipment at several Las Vegas hotels.

So did the e-bomb live up to its billing? Details are sketchy, but it appears that Iraqi TV was back on the air again only hours after the strike.

War Prompts Hacking

There have been more than 1,000 web page defacements today related to the Iraqi war, according to the Internet security software maker F-Secure, which is tracking war-related security issues on its web site. While web page defacements gain attention, a number of new e-mail "combat worms" may pose a larger challenge for network administrators.

There are a number of news stories today documenting hacker activity, including a story by SecurityFocus about a hack of one of the National Security Agency's affiliate web sites. Other coverage is nicely summarized by The Washington Post (although the Post's headline writers went overboard with the "digital mayhem" reference).

Thus far most Internet monitoring companies say the major news sites have fared well with the deluge of traffic from war-related surfing. I keep seeing reports saying CNN is doing fine, but it seems mighty slow everytime I try to get past the home page. To track network performance, bookmark the Internet Health Report from Keynote.

Iraq Fiber PsyOps

"Turn your tank turrets downward. And don't even think about repairing those fiber optic cables." It's not just the Iraqi soldiers being targeted by the US military's psychological operations (PsyOps) as Operation Iraqi Freedom gets started. Some of the millions of "surrender leaflets" being dropped over Iraq have messages for Iraqi technicians who might be called upon to repair damaged communications infrastructure.

"Stop repairing military fiber optic cable," reads one of the leaflets, written in both English and Arabic and posted on the web site of the U.S. Central Command (CentComm). The leaflet shows a flaming crater, with a close-up detailing the severed fiver optic line at the crater's edge. "The cables are tools used to suppress the Iraqi people by Saddam and his regime," the message adds. "They are targeted for destruction."

Fannie Mae to Build

We've seen it before. But it's still startling to read about large financial organizations planning to spend huge sums of money to build data centers at a time when large, finished facilities are available for between 20 and 50 cents on the dollar. The latest entry in the build-your-own category is Fannie Mae, which reportedly is set to spend $130 million to build a new data center complex in Montgomery or Frederick counties in Maryland.

In January, Bank One said it would spend $300 million to build two centers in the state of Delaware. Back in November we noted plans by Recovery Point to spend $41 million to build a new data center in Gaitherbsurg, Md.

These three companies are apparently prepared to spend $480 million - nearly half a BILLION dollars - to build four new data centers totalling at least 730,000 square feet.

It's amazing that this kind of building boom is moving forward in the midst of distressed conditions in the data center market. With dozens of finished data centers being sold, mothballed or repurposed, you'd figure that these companies would be buyers, not builders. With the growing number of comparable sales, the value proposition for buying versus building is better documented than ever before.

Let's look at the economics. Fannie Mae reportedly is contemplating a $130 million project for 210,000 sf of space, of which 120,000 sf will be data center space. Even with the office space included, that $130 million works out to more than $600 a square foot. Bank One's Delaware projects contemplate even higher costs.

By comparison, just over a year ago, Cable & Wireless paid $615 million for 4 million square feet of finished data center space, which works out to $153 a square foot. Last week a finished, 93,000 square foot PSINet data center in the Boston suburbs sold for $9.1 million, which works out to $97 a square foot.

How do you reconcile new construction in light of that gap? What's clear is that for some large financial firms, location is a much more important variable than cost. There's still inventory available in northern Virginia, but not very much in Maryland. If you absolutely need to be in Maryland and require a ton of space, you may need to build.

Investing in Efficiency

Data center efficiency is attracting the attention - and the cash - of venture capitalists. Yesterday Rackable Systems, which makes power efficient rackmount servers, said it received a $1.5 million investment from PTI Ventures, just a month after securing $21 million in funding from Parthenon Capital. The company's story provides a case study in how bucking conventional wisdom can pay off.

Rackable was founded in 1999, amidst the Internet boom. Back in the "build it and they will come" era, data center builders were focused on speed to market, rather than efficiency of the equipment. Nonetheless, Rackable decided to build servers that made efficient use of space, power and cooling and could be managed remotely.

Launched at a time when it seemed anyone with a dot-com and an idea was getting VC funding, Rackable's business plan was built on "bootstrapping" - growing with its own cash and resources. Now, venture capital is scarce, data center efficiency is hot and Rackable has access to funds.

Rackable's attractiveness is in large part due to its customer list, which includes Yahoo, Google, Webex, Electronic Arts, Sony America, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, UCSC/Human Genome Project and Deutsche Bank.

What has sold those clients on Rackable, as well as the VC community? The company says it products can "significantly reduce total cost of ownership by reducing up front purchase cost, reducing deployment times, and reducing ongoing maintenance expenses for HVAC, power, and data center labor."

Watching for War

Sure, we're all focused 100 percent upon business these days. Right? The prospect of imminent war is hard to ignore, try as we might. Apart from the obvious military and human dimensions, a protracted conflict has business implications as well. The potential chilling effect of war is discussed in The Effect of War on Telecom, a news analysis from the folks at Light Reading. So how will you keep track of the news? Many Americans will monitor TV coverage on CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC or the networks. Here are some web news sources I've encountered that might make for interesting reading as events unfold:

Global Security: A great resource for background information, this site by a DC military think tank offers updates on troop deployments and uses satellite images to track activity in "hot spots" overseas.

Iraq Coverage Resources: The story behind the stories from The Poynter Institute, a popular resource site for journalists covering the conflict. One current article examines the decisions media outlets face about if and when to evacuate staff from Baghdad.

DefenseTech: This Weblog is authored by Noah Schachtman, who covers military technology for Wired magazine, and has written at length about the use of unmanned "drones" in combat. His "blogroll" of links to related sites is impressive.

Debka: This Israeli site is focused on intelligence and counterterrorism, and has been somewhat erratic with its "scoops," with big hits and big misses in equal measure. If the Iraqis target Israel in any way, this will be a site to watch.

Where is Raed?: This offbeat weblog is written from Baghdad, and offers a view of what residents are experiencing as the likelihood of war draws near. Earlier this month, this blog made news when it offered the first account of Iraqis filling ditches with oil, apparently to set them afire to create an oily smokescreen to hinder possible US air strikes.

Hot Spots A Hot Topic

Data center "hot spots" are suddenly a hot topic for the technology media. Hewlett Packard's announcement yesterday of a new service to analyze the efficiency within data centers generated a blizzard of media coverage in the tech press, including articles in Business Week (via C/Net), InfoWorld, InternetNews.com, eWeek and Information Week.

The growing challenge of managing high-density equipment areas within the data center is hardly news to readers of CarrierHotels.com (see stories in April and November of last year). And yet the flurry of publicity greeting HP's announcement is a sign that awareness of cooling management has busted out beyond the data center walls and into the larger IT consciousness.

This is driven at least in part by educational efforts by user groups such as the 7x24 Exchange, whose local chapter in the Delaware Valley has devoted several recent meetings to the topic. Another driver is the growing interest and adoption of blade servers, which offer huge efficiencies in space utilization but equally huge heat management challenges.

Blade servers have been making headlines, with IBM, Hewlett Packard and Dell all rushing to position themselves alongside early adopters like RLX Technologies. It appears corporate end users are starting to see blade servers less as a novelty and more as the future of their data center.

Just about every new technology has a point at which it "crosses over" from hype to hip. Lots of highly-touted and energetically marketed products become "vaporware" when the market never shows up. It becomes a different story once the interest in a technology is being driven by users, rather than vendors.