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Comment by Haralds Jass on January 12, 2010 at 8:40am

There are a lot of fibre routes Asia - Hawaii - mainland US. But, most of them only get "regenerated" here and continue on. There is, to the best of my knowledge, not a single IP network actually taking advantage of the unique positioning of Hawaii when it comes to IP networks. We have inquired with a few of the fibre carriers about availability, and that is so confirmed, it's just that no one is using it... due to little demand and small market here.

Comment by Kimo Watanabe on January 12, 2010 at 7:25am

Great information. I'm a little surprised that connectivity would be as big an issue, but I guess I shouldn't be. Seems like with the military presence, connectivity would be more robust, but I could see how; even if that is the case for the military, it wouldn't necessarily mean we'd see the same connectivity in the private sector.

Comment by Bruce Campbell on January 11, 2010 at 4:40pm

Considering the Hawaii Cloud. Perhaps the first place to start would be inquiring about the existing commercial data center DRFortress.

Basic facts form their website:

• 20,000 square feet Class A, purpose built industrial facility
• 24/Forever secure operations
• 2.0MW uninterruptible critical power
• N+1 HVAC, UPS and diesel generator plant

Another thing to consider is the pairing of a data-center with a clean energy generation site or plant. This is occurring on the mainland and is then 'branded' as green hosting. Imagine a solar farm built around (and on top of) a data center. Another way of leveraging the heat output of the datacenter is to vent it into a heat driven turbine such as would be found adjacent to a bio-fuel electrical generation plant.

These are all great ideas to consider, however the benefits of Green IT implemented now with simple to install and maintain, proven software solutions, are the low hanging mango's for Hawaii businesses. You might check out Hawaii Green IT to discover more....

Comment by Elya McCleave on January 11, 2010 at 3:10pm

btw I don't see the energy cost as the biggest obstacle opening a data center in Hawaii, but rather the connectivity.. how Hawaii connects?

I hear PLNI is Hawaii's only locally owned and operated telecommunications carrier... would be interesting to read more on the subject.

Comment by Elya McCleave on January 11, 2010 at 2:53pm

Cameron, yes in fact there are some emerging companies out there that can measure the overall greenness (like the word!) of a host and make recommendations for improvement. Every time I attend HostingCon I sit in at all the presentations on "Green IT". Fascinating subject! As Cisco's CEO John Chambers said "Green computing is the socially responsible thing to do".. I agree - we all have to make an effort. I'm proud to work for the company that does

Kimo, don't mean to "split hairs", but since we are on the subject of energy costs... IT equipment is the single largest component of data center energy consumption “x” savings on IT equipment translates to “2x” for entire data center (Source: Self Benchmarking Guide for Data Center Energy Performance).

By reducing IT equipment energy consumption (comparing different server architectures, virtualization & consolidation, moving processes outside of peak rate hours, ability to turn on and off equipment when not in use, etc) one just might be able to open a data center in Hawaii ;-)

Just as an example typical Midsize Datacenter Energy Consumption Calculation 50 racks, 4 kW / rack

Annual energy consumption of IT equipment
50*4*8760 = 1.75 million kWh

Total IT equipment annual energy costs
1.75 million *11c/kWh = $192K

Total Datacenter annual energy costs, accounting for energy consumption of cooling equipment
$192K x 2 = $384K

Comment by Kimo Watanabe on January 11, 2010 at 2:17pm

Very good points. On Google, though, they're still reported to be running at a million servers, and their energy costs reflect that. From what I understand, thats well over a billion dollars a year on the energy costs alone. Nevermind everything tied to that. With energy costs being what they are in Hawai'i, I can imagine it being a daunting task to look at building out your data center at home.

That being said, I think there are some very interesting technology solutions out there to help reduce cost, reduce physical hardware, and increase power and performance for hosted solutions.

I really appreciated too, the holistic viewpoint of Elva. Very nicely put.

Comment by Cameron Souza on January 11, 2010 at 1:42pm

Good point Elya. Everyone concentrates solely on power consumption. I wonder if anyone rates the overall greenness (is that a word?) of hosting providers.

Comment by Elya McCleave on January 11, 2010 at 1:09pm

When it comes to the green movement we need to remember that it's not only about reducing power consumption (though of course it's a big factor), but also
- reducing carbon footprint by minimizing travel
- leveraging renewable energy sources where possible
- reducing rate of hardware consumption (fewer servers, less storage)
- reducing facilities footprint by consolidating data centers and telecommuting
- ensuring sustainable supply chains

Superb has been taking steps in that direction by for example consolidating DCA1 and DCA2 data centers few years ago, establishing multiple channels of communication between four locations and signing up for webex (reducing travel frequency). We are also working on the virtualization efforts, which of course also a part of the green movement. Return on Investment is visible

FYI
“By 2010, expense to power and cool worldwide installed base of servers is expected to grow to $44.5 billion, equivalent to 70% of new server spending.” IDC study

Comment by Attila Seress on January 11, 2010 at 12:36pm

I'm excited about cold fusion - check out ITER's website at iter.org. It's been so expensive to build that 6 countries got together to contribute.

That being said, we have so much free sun out here I'm not sure why we don't take more advantage of it....

Comment by Patrick Ahler on January 11, 2010 at 12:20pm

Interesting, I like the green movement, but from a business perspective the question I have when I see that is always, when will the company see a ROI? Many times, it's a decade or more out and between then who knows what kind of energy innovation (cold fusion anyone?) will be introduced leaving the early adopters in a worse situation. Google of course has a lot of flexibility at their own locations, using their own non-standard equipment, I think most hosting providers are a bit limited because their customers expect standards to be kept. Also, I don't think Google (which is a client of ours) has made these changes anywhere but at their own data centers.

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