Welcome to the Netrality News Roundup!
We’ve selected key articles on the latest news, developments, innovations and revelations in the colocation data center industry.
Don’t miss our bi-weekly news roundups to learn what’s going on with colocation, edge computing, and the brave new world of hybrid cloud, 5G, IoT, artificial intelligence, smart cities, virtual reality, and other technologies at the edge!
COVID-19 best practices for data-center operators
The data center advisory organization Uptime Institute just released a report aimed at helping operators of critical infrastructure facilities respond to the impact of COVID-19 as well as prepare for future epidemics by refining strategies and procedures. The free report, “COVID-19: Minimizing critical facility risk,” details recommendations and possible next steps.
Netrality’s top priority during the COVID-19 pandemic is the health, wellness, and safety of our customers, employees, and partners. Click here for an overview of our preparedness and actions taken.
A new AI chip can perform image recognition tasks in nanoseconds
March 4, 2020
Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review
“A new type of artificial eye, made by combining light-sensing electronics with a neural network on a single tiny chip, can make sense of what it’s seeing in just a few nanoseconds, far faster than existing image sensors.
Computer vision is integral to many applications of AI—from driverless cars to industrial robots to smart sensors that act as our eyes in remote locations—and machines have become very good at responding to what they see. But most image recognition needs a lot of computing power to work.”
Traditional sensors capture a huge amount of visual data, much of it not useful for classifying an image. Processing all that data and separating the wheat from the chaff takes a lot of time and bandwidth. Processing at the edge will allow these types of sensors to capture and process images at the same time, making image recognition much faster and more practical.
SparkLabs launches Connex IoT and smart city accelerator
March 2, 2020
Ryan Daws, IoT News
“SparkLabs Group has announced the launch of Connex, a startup accelerator focusing on IoT, smart cities and proptech. The new accelerator will make investments in startups that address key market drivers that include 5G monetisation, sustainability and green building initiatives and leverage emerging technology enablers like Low Power WANs, 5G, eSIMs, AI and security.”
Smart cities depend on ultra-low latency, two-way connectivity between sensors and devices. The slightest delay in connectivity can have real consequences (sudden gridlock on the streets, power outages, a delayed disaster alert, etc.). Urban-based, interconnected data centers will be crucial to the success of smart cities as they continue to proliferate across the globe.
Google: This is what caused CPU throttling at our cloud data center
March 16, 2020
Liam Tung, ZDNet
“Google says a set of crushed wheels used for moving its server racks triggered a chain reaction that may have disrupted Search, Gmail, and other services for some users. A rack of servers at one of its data centers started overheating to the point where CPUs were automatically throttled, ultimately because a set of rack wheels couldn’t bear the weight of Google’s cloud kit.” The casters on the rear wheels failed and the machines overheated as a consequence of being tilted.
It’s important for data center operators to keep in mind that something as simple as putting too much weight on a server wheel can lead to significant disruptions in services. Google has replaced all the racks that could be vulnerable to the same broken-wheel tilting issue and is reconsidering how it moves new racks into its data centers when they’re being built.
Intel Security Gap Hard to Exploit Without Physical Data Center Access
March 11, 2020
Maria Korolov, Data Center Knowledge
Late last week security researchers at Positive Technologies said they found a flaw in Intel chips’ read-only memory. They described the flaw as “unfixable” and said it could let attackers compromise platform encryption keys and steal sensitive information. Exploiting it, however, requires an attacker to get physical access to a compromised server.
The proper combination of physical and logical security will make it very difficult for the wrong people to access your data center and the sensitive information it contains. It will also serve to mitigate human error to the best extent possible.
