From the article: "San Francisco-based 365 Main has ... installed
lighting controls that automatically turn off lights..."
That's funny, I've never really noticed.
I've worked out of 365 for a while now at all hours of the day, and
it's still the brightest facility that I've ever been too. It always
seemed folly to me that they had fairly bright fluorescent lights over
all of the datacenter floor, even when nobody has badged in, when they
don't even have cameras covering a majority of every colocation room.
It's a very nice facility, but you certainly pay for it, and they have
some of the more wasteful operating practices that I've seen.
-j
Wonder if they visited Equinix in South San Jose... There ain't no
light in that place... But, i still think it's one of the better ones
that I have been in.
-Mike
I preferred the darkness of PAIX back in the late 90’s. We had a christmas tree in our cage and it looked great in the dark 
dhetzel@gmail.com ("Dorn Hetzel") writes:
I preferred the darkness of PAIX back in the late 90's. We had a
christmas tree in our cage and it looked great in the dark
that was brian reid's idea, and it was a great one, and equinix-san-jose
was merely copying paix (where al and jay had just spent a few years).
most importantly, it's STILL dark, and still looks great.
I sorta wonder why the default is lights on, actually...I used to always
love walking into dark datacenters and seeing the banks of GSRs (always
thought they had good Blink) and friends happily blinking away.
What we really need is a datacenter with lit floor tiles. 
John(damn I've been in a DC with clear floor tiles...why didn't I think
of this then?)
John Kinsella wrote:
I sorta wonder why the default is lights on, actually...I used to always
love walking into dark datacenters and seeing the banks of GSRs (always
thought they had good Blink) and friends happily blinking away.
Consider the power consumption per square foot of the gear in a typical data center, then add in the power needed to keep it cool. I suspect that the cost of energy to keep the lights on will be down in the noise.
John Kinsella wrote:
dhetzel@gmail.com ("Dorn Hetzel") writes:
I preferred the darkness of PAIX back in the late 90's. We had a
christmas tree in our cage and it looked great in the darkthat was brian reid's idea, and it was a great one, and equinix-san-jose
was merely copying paix (where al and jay had just spent a few years).
most importantly, it's STILL dark, and still looks great.I sorta wonder why the default is lights on, actually...I used to always
love walking into dark datacenters and seeing the banks of GSRs (always
thought they had good Blink) and friends happily blinking away.What we really need is a datacenter with lit floor tiles.
John(damn I've been in a DC with clear floor tiles...why didn't I think
of this then?)
How about the concept used in movie theatres? Line the walkways with white LEDs so that people can walk safely.
Far less power, easy to run from small UPS, and use LED exit lights to keep the fire marshalls happy. Even mark the location of fire extinguishers in LEDs.
Customers would be encourages to bring their own florescent panel lamps; rentals would be available for the forgetful.
(beware, weekend engineering and number pulling here)
If you have 250 fixtures, which are each (2) 4' T8 fluorescent bulbs,
which would make for (500) 32 watt bulbs, that would be 16 kw, or at
$0.13 cpkwhr, would be $1,497/month. But, don't forget, you'd have to
cool the heat load generated by the bulbs.
250 fixtures would probably be around a 16 kft datacenter (perhaps
smaller). 16 kft in todays datacenters would be about 1.5 mw of usage,
between power consumption and HVAC. That'd be $140,400/month. Lighting
would account for 1.0% or so.
We use a combination of LED and CF (compact fluorescent) for lighting,
which with reduced bulb changes (and the associated labor) because of
longer live, and the significantly less energy usage, the savings do add
up over time. I mean, it adds up in absolute dollars, but perhaps not
relative.
In our town, the fire folks do not require the emergency lighting to be
battery-backed, so long as it is on generator and will not be off for
more than 15 seconds.
We use an Edison-base style LED fixture, something like
http://www.superbrightleds.com/specs/E27-x24_narrow.htm
It provides about 15 to 20 watts of equivalent incandescent light, using
only 3 watts.
Has a neat look too.
Perhaps pressure-activated floor-tile lights so that
every tech can recreate the "Billy Jean" video...
David Barak
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise:
http://www.listentothefranchise.com
I sorta wonder why the default is lights on, actually...I used to always
love walking into dark datacenters and seeing the banks of GSRs >(always
thought they had good Blink) and friends happily blinking away.
What we really need is a datacenter with lit floor tiles.
John(damn I've been in a DC with clear floor tiles...why didn't I think of
this then?)
There's at least one datacenter in Seattle that when the customer "cards"
in, lights up the floor to their cabinet.... Been a while since I've been in
it, but I remember it "USED" to do that.... (fisher, internap I think?)
Fisher's not doing this now..
-b
I've been in there many times over the last two years and didn't see
anything like that (at least on second floor east...I hear they've
recently expanded into the fisher west building)
As far as I remember there was a DC in New York (for some reason Globix springs to mind) that did this... It was really cool, apart from when it messed up and sent you to the wrong cabinet....
W
There's at least one datacenter in Seattle that when the customer "cards"
in, lights up the floor to their cabinet.... Been a while since I've been in
it, but I remember it "USED" to do that.... (fisher, internap I think?)
Perhaps the infamous "unescorted customer EPO button-push incident of 2005" prompted them to knock that off?
--chuck
I was at a new (to remain unnamed) hosting site, back in the hey day
when just about anybody could be hired as a new NOC manager. The CTO
was giving me and some others a quick datacenter tour. As we were
exiting one floor, the new NOC mgr moved passed me and commented to his
new boss that putting an uncovered big red button next to the door was
just too inviting... and he proceeded to push it as he asked what it
does. All the lights went out, the large room went quiet. The CTO
cursed and rushed out to figure out what to do next. The rest of us
returned to the NOC... where the monkeys were still powered up and
playing games, not even aware that anything had happened. Needless to
say, things changed drastically shortly thereafter.
-Jim P.