In Depth

In Depth

Clustering for high availability and HPC

• Icelandic datacentres may lead the way to green IT

  Iceland may soon become even more attractive to companies wanting to minimise their carbon footprint while using high-performance computing services  Continue Reading

• Sharp end of the edge: Managing micro-datacentres in a shared environment

  Ongoing diversification in datacentre types gives rise to management challenges for operators, prompting a rethink about how they run their sites  Continue Reading

• Evolving datacentre chipsets put cooling, power and software management techniques under microscope

  New processor designs that could revolutionise approaches to supporting higher power densities at the rack still look years away, it appears  Continue Reading

• Could Iceland be the best place in the world for high-performance computing?

  Most of Iceland’s cheap, sustainable energy is currently used by aluminium smelters, but recognising the need to diversify, the Landsvirkjun power company now promotes other uses  Continue Reading

• How the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium sequenced Sars-Cov-2

  Consortium of universities and other institutions has harnessed datasets, analytics and cloud computing to sequence Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, in a blisteringly short time  Continue Reading

• With connectivity on the rise, Africa is a hotspot for datacentre investments

  We look at opportunities for datacentre operators in setting up or partnering with local firms in Africa  Continue Reading

• How long until cloud becomes the preferred environment to run HPC workloads?

  The high-performance computing market is growing, but enterprises that have already made large investments in on-premise HPC will need to weigh up whether a move to the cloud would be worth their while  Continue Reading

• Brain researchers get NVMe-over-RoCE for super-fast HPC storage

  French neurological researchers deploy Western Digital OpenFlex NVMe array for super-fast HPC storage with Ethernet-based NVMe-over-Fabrics connectivity across several floors  Continue Reading

• Intel Optane Persistent Memory aims to fill the gap DRAM can’t

  We look at Optane and its PMem product that Intel believes will fill a big gap between memory and storage that DRAM technology just cannot deal with  Continue Reading

• Blockchain: hype vs reality

  Blockchain technology presents a number of complex challenges that must be overcome before it can truly deliver on its promises  Continue Reading

• Evolution in action: How datacentre hardware is moving to meet tomorrow’s tech challenges

  The datacentre industry is in a state of flux, as new and emerging tech trends highlight hardware and performance shortcomings in legacy sites, prompting operators to rethink how they kit out their facilities  Continue Reading

• Evolution in action: The changing face of the datacentre

  The role datacentres play in the wider enterprise IT landscape is changing, fuelling the demand for a mix of different types of facilities that are capable of meeting the growing variety of enterprise data-processing requirements  Continue Reading

• AI storage: Machine learning, deep learning and storage needs

  Artificial intelligence workloads impact storage, with NVMe flash needed for GPU processing at the highest levels of performance – and there are other choices right through the AI data lifecycle  Continue Reading

• Enterprise HPC: Why HPE is buying Cray

  HPE’s decision to acquire supercomputing pioneer Cray for $1.3bn serves to highlight the growing importance of high-performance computing (HPC) deployments in the enterprise market  Continue Reading

• Enterprise accessibility: How Cray is using HPC to open up AI use cases from the datacentre

  Enterprises interest in HPC is reportedly being fuelled by the rising demand for artificial intelligence-based applications and services, and Cray is one of a number of providers looking to cash in  Continue Reading

• Are gas-powered datacentres all hype and hot air?

  As concerns about how the proliferation of datacentres will affect electricity supplies continue to be raised, some are experimenting with natural gas as an alternative energy source. But is it a viable, long-term solution?  Continue Reading

• The pros and cons of cloud bursting

  The much-vaunted benefits of cloud computing can be overshadowed by portability and interoperability issues  Continue Reading

• Cloud, frozen pizza model and the immutable infrastructure

  The architecture pattern for immutable infrastructure is based on the made-to-order pizza model  Continue Reading

• Demystifying Kubernetes: the tool to manage Google-scale workloads in the cloud

  We are witnessing a new technology wave in the form of immutable infrastructure and micro-services  Continue Reading

• The internet of things is coming: Is your datacentre ready?

  Gartner estimates the IoT will see 26 billion units installed by 2020 – channelling huge volumes of data traffic into datacentres  Continue Reading

• Micro-datacentre: What IT problems it solves and what workload systems suit it

  A micro-datacentre is a smaller containerised datacentre system designed to solve different problems or to handle different workloads  Continue Reading

• Will silicon photonics replace copper cabling in mainstream datacentres?

  Silicon photonics can increase bandwidth in servers, improve data transfer speeds and reduce complexity. But are datacentres ready for it?  Continue Reading

• Future of in-house datacentres in the cloud era

  It is predicted that companies will spend three times more on the cloud by 2017. But as cloud goes mainstream, are in-house datacentres really dying?  Continue Reading

• The UK’s problem with power

  Datacentre power buyers say Britain’s deregulated energy market is as complex as trading in derivatives  Continue Reading

• Make a high-performance computing and high-availability datacentre

  High performance computing and high availability systems are no longer limited to engineers and scientists. But is your datacentre ready?  Continue Reading

• How Capgemini keeps its Merlin datacentre green and energy-efficient

  Capgemini's Swindon-based Merlin datacentre is one of the most energy-efficient in the world. But what makes it green?  Continue Reading

• How to plan and manage datacentre redundancy

  Provisioning of a datacentre to survive a range of failure scenarios has become critical for many businesses. Here's a datacentre redundancy plan  Continue Reading

• How to effectively manage datacentre temperature and humidity

  A datacentre is a complex facility with different cooling equipment and power systems. Here's how to monitor its temperature and humidity  Continue Reading

• Amazon: Gold standard of the cloud?

  Amazon Web Services is the benchmark for cloud in the enterprise but can it handle the challenge of federated cloud services?  Continue Reading