AOL's Mike Manos celebrates the Data Center Independence on 4th of July 2012, freedom via the micro data center

Mike Manos has a post on AOL's Data Center independence.  The micro data center looks like it has a 50KW capacity which could support a configuration like 100 dual proc 128 GB RAM,  dual HD servers, network switch, and storage appliance.  16 processor cores would give the micro data center 1,600 VM cores with 8 GB of RAM.  Slide in some SSD's to make the environment energy efficient and higher performing.  This is a nice cloud environment as modules to deploy.  I think Mike learned that a 40' container is not as flexible.  You can air ship a micro data center and it is much easier to deploy.  Air shipping a 40' container is really really expensive and can be difficult to deploy.

AOL’s Data Center Independence Day

Yesterday we celebrated Independence Day here in the United States.   It’s a day where we embrace the freedoms we enjoy as a country, look back on where we have come, and celebrate the promise of the future.   Yesterday was also a different kind of Independence Day for my teams at AOL.  A Data Center Independence Day, if you will. 

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Now you may say where would you put AOL's micro data center.  One place AOL could put them is at cell tower locations.

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It is reasonable in the future that in major metropolitan areas there will be a local data center presence.  Netflix has been expanding its network WW.  

 

Open Connect Peering Locations

Private Network Interconnect Sites

CityProviderSite Identifier
Ashburn Equinix DC Campus
Atlanta Telx 56 Marrietta
Chicago Equinix CH1/CH2/CH4
London Telecity Sovereign House
London Telecity Harbour Exchange
Los Angeles Coresite One Wilshire
Los Angeles Equinix LA1
Miami Terremark NAP Of The Americas
New York Telx 111 8th Avenue
San Jose Equinix SV1/SV5

Peering Exchanges

CityExchangeIPv4 AddressIPv6 Address
Ashburn Equinix Internet Exchange 206.223.115.238 2001:504:0:2::2906:1
Atlanta Telx Internet Exchange    
Chicago Equinix Internet Exchange 206.223.119.156 2001:504:0:4::2906:1
London LINX Juniper LAN 195.66.225.101 2001:7f8:4::b5a:1
London LONAP 193.203.5.229 2001:7f8:17::b5a:1
Los Angeles Coresite Any2 206.223.143.215 2001:504:13:0:0:0:0:215
Miami NOTA 198.32.125.71 2001:478:124::1071
New York Telx Internet Exchange    
New York Telehouse NYIIX    
San Jose Equinix Internet Exchange 206.223.116.133 2001:504:0:1::2906:2

One of the top limits for where companies can deploy data centers is the local resource requirement.  Mike's team has an option, where as long as they get power and network, their micro data center will run, managed remotely.

  • It redefines software architecture for greater resiliency
  • It allows us an incredibly flexible platform for driving and addressing privacy laws, regulatory oversight, and other such concerns allowing us to respond rapidly.
  • It further reduces energy consumption and carbon footprint emissions (important as taxation evolves around the world, as well as ongoing operational costs)
  • Gives us the ability to drive Edge Computing delivery to potentially bypass CDNs for certain content.
  • Gives us the capability to drive ‘Community-in-a-box’ whereby we can quickly launch new products in markets, quickly expand existing footprints like Patch in a low cost, but still hyper-local platform, allow the Huffington Post a platform to rapidly partner and enter new markets with minimal cost turn ups.
  • The fact that the technology mix in our SKUs is comprised of compute, storage, and network capacity maximizes the amount of products and services we can deploy to it.  

The race that is going on between the Google, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, and Apple is to get the low latency presence to users.  AOL is a player in this game as well.