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Articles tagged with: Data4 Group

France-IX: new PoP at DATA4

on Wednesday, 12 May 2021 Posted in Archives Rezopole

France-IX: new PoP at DATA4

Paris, May 10, 2021 - France-IX, one of Europe's leading Internet Exchange Points (IXP), is moving into the Marcoussis campus of DATA4, a leading French and European data centre operator and investor, to optimise Internet connectivity for businesses. With this new point of presence, DATA4's customers will be able to interconnect directly to the France-IX exchange node, which, for its part, intends to develop its peering ecosystem.

 

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"By connecting to an exchange point, companies gain in performance and have the necessary resilience for their critical applications while optimising their costs. France-IX's new point of presence at Marcoussis will allow DATA4's customers to optimize the way they exchange data to promote the hybridization of their platforms to the Cloud within DATA4's infrastructures," said Jérôme Totel, Vice President Strategy, DATA4 Group.

 

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"Our move to DATA4's Marcoussis campus reflects our desire to address the enterprise segment, which is different from our historical members, as well as to address the demands of some of our existing members. By facilitating access to the Cloud, peering represents an essential vector for them to meet the challenges of digital transformation. This strategic partnership with DATA4 will allow us to pursue our growth strategy in France by expanding our network and our ecosystem," said Franck Simon, President of France IX Services.

 

 

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Heat wave: why French DCs are holding up

on Thursday, 01 August 2019 Posted in Archives Rezopole, Archives GrenoblIX, Archives LyonIX

Heat wave: why French DCs are holding up

Heat episodes are not taken lightly by data center operators. In France, "we have gone from 40 degrees to 46 degrees in a few years. We have met the specifications of Spain," says Marie Chabanon, Technical Director of DATA4 Group.

 

In order to counter any heat stroke, the datacenters' resistance to temperatures has increased " The great fear is the domino effect [...] If all or part of the cold infrastructure has problems, it affects the rest of the equipment. And if the refrigeration unit stops, it's the worst thing that can happen to us with the complete power outage," added Fabrice Coquio, Interxion's Managing Director. A risk also linked to the quality of RTE or Enedis' electricity distribution. "We must anticipate a risk of electrical loss or incident," explains Marie Chabanon.

 

But data center operators have a secret boot to fight this domino effect. "Data center electrical systems are built to be 100% operational. However, this is never the case. The consequence is that in the event of a load, such as a higher cold demand, we have unallocated power that we can use," explains Fabien Gautier of Equinix. This is called capacity redundancy.

 

Especially since the densification of computing power per unit of space in recent years, with the democratization of virtualization, has led to more consumption and more heat. "With 14 or 15 kvA berries, we cause hot spots, which are more sensitive to heat waves," explains Fabien Gautier. The work of urbanizing the IT architecture deployed in the rooms is therefore essential. "Our work is therefore the urbanization of the rooms. If they were completed on the fly, that can be a problem," he adds.

This involves, among other things, load balancing. "Our data centers are designated with redundancies and a 50% load rate. The backup machines will be used to provide additional power" in the event of a heat wave, says Marie Chabanon. Nevertheless, it must be anticipated. "We must ensure that backup systems are ready to be operational, through maintenance and control actions on backup equipment."

 

The protection of data centers against heat also requires the installation of curative systems. "We installed water spray systems to water the roof equipment with water that is not too cold," says Fabrice Coquio.

And to be prepared for any eventuality in the early evening, the schedule of the technicians present on site has been modified. It is also necessary to warn customers so that they are careful.

 

Recent advances in hardware strength and data center design have made it possible to increase the temperatures in server storage rooms. "The idea is that the lower the PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness), the better it performs. Ten years ago, we used to make datacenters where it was difficult to achieve a PUE of 1.6. Today we are at 1.2 and we are getting closer to 1, which represents 20% savings by playing on the temperature and energy performance of the new equipment," says Marie Chabanon. As a result, the cooling system now focuses on machines with forced air. There is no longer any need to refrigerate entire rooms.

"We are seeing an evolution in the design of indoor temperature according to the recommendations of the Ashrae (American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers). The idea is to work well with much higher temperature ranges. We have gone from 20 to 22 degrees to 18 to 27 degrees," she adds. Since 2011, these standards have been raised: they recommend blowing at 26 degrees on the front panel on indoor equipment. "The humidity level was also modified [...] In 2008, it was between 40 and 60%. It is now 70%," says Fabrice Coquio.

 

This will limit cooling costs without affecting the resistance of the installations. A critical point in hot weather.

 

 

 

 

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Source : ZDNet

 

 

 

 

Development of French DCs

on Wednesday, 20 February 2019 Posted in Archives Rezopole, Archives GrenoblIX, Archives LyonIX

Development of French DCs

Interviewed by LeMagIT, Olivier Micheli notes that French data centers are finally attracting international cloud players and that they are expanding geographically in order to reduce latency.

Olivier Micheli, who is both CEO of Data4 Group and President of the France Datacenter Association, estimates that there are 200 large datacenters in France covering up to 10,000 m². The capital with the largest number of people because Paris is a European interconnection node.
There are between 3000 and 5000 private computer rooms of varying size and power across the country.
Beyond the desire of companies to control their equipment, the importance of ever lower latency is increasingly important in local economic activities and the development of smart cities.
According to Olivier Micheli, the market is moving towards data centres whose size is proportional to the size of the economic activity nearby.

After a slow period between 2012 and 2015, the French data center market has caught up. France is now in fourth place in Europe, tied with Ireland. There are several reasons for this: the opportunity for international companies to reach 67 million people from locally hosted IT resources, the geostrategic importance of Marseille and also the government's efforts to create favourable conditions for the development of these datacenters.
This finally allows France to align itself with the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands.

The customers of these data centers are 70% of public cloud players such as Amazon, AWS but also publishers such as Salesforce. User companies want a lot of support.

The first issue for datacenters is, according to Olivier Micheli, connectivity. Indeed, companies now want to benefit from an offshore computer room in order to redistribute this data to users and Internet actors.
The second challenge is that of intelligent buildings and to achieve 100% renewable energy by using, for example, Free Cooling.

 

 

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Source : LeMagIT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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