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healthcare data centers FEATURE ton's Carron observed. "Luckily, if modernization cannot meet the immediate Ken's V I E W needs of healthcare facilities, the industry can also rely on a Where Lost Socks Go number of accredited co-location providers and cloud services that allow temporary data-center services while internal resources are constructed, ensuring that capacity needs are always met in a reliable and compliant manner," said Carron. "Planning for infrastructure growth, such as for a data center, is a conundrum faced by facilities managers and engineers all too often," ASCO's Patel observed. "Should an infrastructure larger than needed in the near term be built for anticipated long-term growth? Or, should it be built to satisfy only near-term demand, with more infrastructure added later as needed?" "Mark Hungerford has wrestled with the conundrum for 15 years as the operating engineer for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The center has grown sixfold since 1991 and now covers 15 acres and employs 4,000 people," he reported. "They generally followed the model they used for the ﬁrst new building-they started with a basic, robust infrastructure of high-quality equipment that would accommodate expansion and grew out from there," Patel said. "This approach has served the campus well. Today, it's recognized for its reliable and right-sized infrastructure." On the positive side, Patel noted, "even though the square footage [a hospital] has allotted for additional data-center capability may be small, it still may be sufﬁcient because power density, or the kW rate for a given server rack, has increased. While older data centers may have a power density of 5 kW per rack, new-build facilities can achieve 20 kW. Higher densities allow a smaller building, fewer racks, and fewer rack power distribution units (PDUs)." Hospital data centers are no longer conﬁned to a broom closet converted to a computer room. They're an integral, if largely unseen, part of the healthcare infrastructure, one that will continue to evolve as healthcare changes. CBP E nough already. Big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), the cloud. Does anyone really know what those terms mean? Or how to capitalize them? Big data, you see, is nothing new. Neither is the potato shortage. The former Soviet Union still doesn't have a handle on its potato supply. What is big data? Is there someplace I can get Even as I write this, Potato News Today (I'm not making some small data? Aren't all those 1s and Os, the binary this up), an online source for all the dirt on tubers, bits that compose data, the same size, or do they come, reports a Russian potato shortage is looming. Not 50 for example, in tall, grande, venti, or trenta? years ago. Today. So much for big data. Sorry if I'm confused, but naming simple, everyday The proliferation of data and what to do with it is things shouldn't be this hard. Venti is Italian for 20, and not new either. In 1941 Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short a venti at a certain ubiquitous coffee chain is said to be story, "The Library of Babel," in which the library of the 20 oz. So far so good, but why then is a grande, which is title contained every bit of knowledge about everything, claimed to be 16 oz., not a sedici (Italian for 16)? There's far beyond the capacity of anyone to process. The also a trenta, said by some self-proclaimed experts frustrated souls searching for meaning in this overkill on the Internet to be 31 oz. So why isn't it called a of data, "...disputed in the narrow corridors, proffered trentuno? And tall makes no sense at all now that short dark curses, strangled each other on the divine is no longer ofﬁcially on the menu. By the way, these stairways, ﬂung the deceptive books into the air shafts, measures may vary, depending on whether they are met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the applied to hot or cold drinks-or what Internet sources inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad..." one consults. Sounds like another day at the ofﬁce. Or the Internet. When it comes to more complicated concepts, Let's hope a more amicable approach can be naming doesn't get any better. I'm pretty sure there is found. I attended a couple of educational sessions that no data stored in the clouds outside my window, but I've discussed the Internet of Things at AHR in Chicago read about new sealed hard drives ﬁlled with helium. recently and, while I'm still convinced IoT is a silly At one-seventh the density of air, helium produces less name and an incorrectly capitalized acronym, I began drag on the moving parts, using less power and running to see the utility of it, more so on a commercial and cooler. If you put enough of them together would they industrial level (the IIoT, to confuse matters further) ﬂoat skyward? Would that be the cloud? On the other than on a consumer one. I don't care if my smart toaster hand, I've heard the cloud likened to the place where tells my smart watch the toast is done so it can text my lost socks go, so maybe that's the real cloud. smart phone to alert me to that fact. Given a choice, I'd But not to quibble. I'll accept there's a lot of data out rather toast my bread on a stick over an open ﬂame. there-somewhere. What to do with it? Why, optimize Obviously, much work is yet to be done before the it, stupid. Unfortunately, optimize is yet another IoT becomes truly useful. A recent e-newsletter from buzzword-the next big thing which, in the end, isn't Harbor Research, a Boulder, CO-based research and so new after all. consulting ﬁrm, sums it up: "Some things that look easy "Comrades, let's optimize," exhorts author Francis turn out to be hard. That's part of the strange saga of Spufford on the website promoting his novel/history/ the Internet of Things and its perpetual attempts to get fantasy Red Plenty, which tells, among other things, itself off the ground. But some things that should be kept The Uptime Institute https://uptimeinstitute.com/ of the Soviet potato optimization program back in the simple are allowed to get unnecessarily complex, and HiTrust Alliance https://hitrustalliance.net/ shoe-thumping-we-will-bury-you1960s. Lurking behind that's the other part of the story. The drive to develop this potato-optimization, market-control scheme was technology can inspire grandiose visions that make a Large Electronically Computing Machine (the literal simple thinking seem somehow embarrassing or not translation of Bolshaya Elektronno-Schetnaya Mashina, worthwhile. That's understandable in science ﬁction. or BESM, which is not a ﬁctional invention, by the way). But it's not a good thing when deﬁning and deploying The BESM, which the Soviets cobbled together because real-world technology." Want more information? The resources below are linked in our digital magazine at cbpmagazine.com/digital/may2015. Center for Expertise for Energy Efﬁciency in Data Centers https://datacenters.lbl.gov/ Improving the Energy Efﬁciency of our Nation's Data Centers, Better Buildings Challenge https://www4.eere.energy.gov/challenge/partners/datacenters Benchmark Your Data Center's Energy Efﬁciency http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=prod_development. server_efﬁciency 16 COMMERCI A L BUIL DING P RODUC T S MAY 2015 cbpmagazine.com IBM wouldn't sell them computers in those Cold-War Now, if you'll excuse me, I must ﬂing some data into days, number-crunched thousands of variables in a bid the air shaft-and search for those lost socks. to make potatoes abundantly available to the masses. - Kenneth W. Betz, Senior Editor, CBP http://www.cbpmagazine.com/digital/may2015 https://www.uptimeinstitute.com/ https://www.hitrustalliance.net/ https://datacenters.lbl.gov/ https://www4.eere.energy.gov/challenge/partners/data-centers http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=prod_development.server_efficiency http://www.cbpmagazine.com

Commercial Building Products - May 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Commercial Building Products - May 2015