VISI offices will be closed on December 24th and 25th.  We will reopen on Wednesday December 26th.  The Data Center and support lines will continue to be open and available 24/7/365 over the holiday.  Our support team can be reached at 612-395-9010.

Happy Holidays!

I’ve been hearing from vendors lately touting their green initiatives. Chip makers are telling us about their green processors and storage vendors are giddy about their green drives. It’s mostly marketing hype. Now don’t get me wrong; I am willing to consider all things green (although I prefer the color blue). But what these vendors are really doing is reducing the increasing power requirements of their devices. It is similar to what legislators in Minnesota call a “budget cut”. Oh, the power requirements of these devices will increase — just not as quickly.

I don’t mind this type of green thinking because I’m a big fan of efficiency. If you can squeeze more processor cycles out of the same number of electrons, more power to you (pardon the pun). But don’t try to convince me that my business or my data center is greener as a result. Data centers chew up enormous amounts of power and the power requirements are only going to increase.

Politicians are pushing for greener power production in our state. They have even suggested putting what could be considered tariffs on power generated by neighboring states. I can’t imagine a better way to hurt business — especially technology business — in Minnesota. Instead of tarrifs, goverments could be doing more to promote green technologies. If I’m Google am I going to build a datacenter in Minnesota or Iowa? Oops, that question has already been answered. The bottom line is that power is as important to a technology company as roads are to a trucking company. If we need technology to solve the energy problems of the future, why are we planning to choke technology development by increasing power costs?

On November 20th, we took over the VISI offices in St. Paul to shoot a TV commercial.  The ad pokes fun at the ‘lax’ security that businesses often encounter when hosting their servers from their own offices.  The ad was produced by John Empson with Broadcast & Design Group and directed by Michael Kurtz. The commercial is set to air mid-January.

I put together a behind-the-scenes look at the production complete with out-takes, actor interviews and thoughts from the director.

Did anyone watch HE-MAN growing up?  Well, in each episode, there came a point where protagonist, Prince Adam, would find himself responding to some perilous situation whereby he would raise up his sword and say “… I have the power!” thus transforming him from a mild mannered — wait, wrong super hero — from a careless and worry free prince into HE-MAN, the most powerful man in the universe.  Although I can’t say I’ve seen any episodes recently, the quote here strikes awfully close to home.  No we don’t claim to be the most powerful company in the universe, but power is becoming a hot topic among those who operate data centers and directly impacts those who host servers in data centers.

Everywhere you look you see companies proclaiming their latest power-efficient goods.  Configured a Dell 2950 on Dell’s website recently?  You’re warmly greeted by a “NEW - Energy Smart Server” option.  Among the major chip makers, Intel and AMD, we’ve seen marketing messages migrate from a Gigahertz race, to a raw performance race (example: AMD Athlon 2200+ did not have a clock speed of 2.2 Ghz but performed like an Intel chip clocked at 2.2 Ghz), to a performance-per-watt race.

So how does this affect you and me, and what’s VISI doing about it?  For starters, the cost of power is rising sharply and hitting us right where it counts - in the pocket book.  It used to be that physicial cabinet space in the data center was the most expensive line item on the invoice.  Today, the cost of power is giving that “cabinet space” line item a run for its money!  Some data centers are struggling to even supply the necessary power customers demand.

In order to ensure that we don’t fall victim to lack-of-sales-from-no-power-to-give syndrome (sometimes known as LOSFNPTG), VISI is pleased to announce we have purchased and installed a fourth UPS in our Saint Paul Data Center.  With the addition of this new UPS, VISI has more than tripled our UPS capacity in the past 12 months.

Want to see what all this power looks like?  We’d be happy to give you a tour of our facility — just let us know.