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Yahoo Rolls Out Hadoop Enhancements
June 30th, 2010 : John RathYahoo announced significant enhancements to the open source Hadoop software Tuesday at the third annual Hadoop Summit in Santa Clara. Yahoo said the new features will accelerate the potential for enterprise-wise adoption by mainstream businesses. Apache Hadoop is an open source project for developing reliable, scalable, distributed computing.
Over the years that Yahoo’s use of Hadoop has evolved from applied science projects to an enterprise-class platform being used across a 35,000 server infrastructure to develop personalized content for tens of millions of users.
“Hadoop is where science meets big data – it’s the technical underpinning that powers our innovative consumer and advertiser products on the world’s most advanced digital canvas,” said Blake Irving, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Yahoo. “Yahoo’s cloud and Hadoop make it possible for Yahoo to rapidly personalize our content and advertising, and deliver highly relevant experiences, while maintaining the trust of our 600 million users.”
At the Summit Yahoo announced the beta release of Hadoop with Security and Oozie, Yahoo’s workflow engine for Hadoop. Yahoo reported that it has tested these two releases and deployed them across tens of thousands of servers.
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Server Farm Doubles As A Goat Farm
June 15th, 2010 : Rich MillerA couple of times a year, the Yahoo! data center facility in Quincy, WA, is host to more than data center staff and visitors. It becomes grazing land for a herd of 252 goats which take up residence and nibble down some invasive weeds taking over the pasture beside the facility. According to Christina Page, Yahoo! Director of Climate and Energy Strategy, the goats are quite pleased with their visits since they find weeds particularly tasty, preferring them to the non-invasive grasses on the land. “They’re also quite nutritious,” says Page. “That’s particularly good for the new goat mom who had twins the first night of her visit to Quincy.” Learn more and see photos on this post, Green Weed Whackers: Goats at the Data Center. See the goats in action below in this Yahoo!-produced video. It runs about two minutes.
This text will be replacedFor additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.
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Green Weed Whackers: Goats at the Data Center
June 15th, 2010 : Colleen Miller
A herd of goats provides a green alternative to traditional mowing or use of pesticides to control weeds at Yahoo! data center facility.
Most initiatives to make data centers greener focus on measures to reduce power and cooling usage. But Yahoo has extended its sustainability strategy to weed control, with the help of a herd of grazing goats.
The Yahoo data center facility in Quincy, Wash., is located exactly halfway between Seattle and Spokane along the Columbia River in an area of the country with rich farmland. Despite the beauty of the rural setting, the data center had an issue with invasive weeds in an adjacent pasture.
“We opted for a creative – and greener – alternative to spraying the weeds with pesticides,” says Christina Page, Yahoo Director of Climate and Energy Strategy. “We enlisted the help of Craig Madsen from Healing Hooves, and his herd of 252 goats to come visit for a few days. Goats eat just about anything, and it turns out, they find weeds particularly tasty, preferring them to the non-invasive grasses on the land.” See a video of the goats doing their job.
The goats and their herder live a few hours away in Edwall, WA and typically take up residence at the Quincy data center property for two or three days several times a year, depending on the weather and how fast the weeds are growing. Their next visit is expected in July.
It seems the goats have become part of the team. “In the spirit of one Yahoo!, we provided the goats with their very own security badges,” says Page.
Guess the goat has security clearance now.
It turns out goats aren’t just good for data centers. Both Yahoo and Google have used herds of goats to control brush and weeds at their Silicon Valley headquarters campuses.
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Yahoo is Ready for A Data Center Revolution
June 9th, 2010 : Rich Miller
Scott Noteboom of Yahoo during his keynote presentation Wednesday at the 7x24 Exchange conference in Boca Raton, Fla.
Scott Noteboom , the head of data center operations at Yahoo, sees 2010 as a moment of historic opportunity for the data center industry. As growing Internet adoption requires infrastructure everywhere, he says data center builders would do well to note the early history of the automobile industry.
“There are times during revolutions when you can do new things,” said Noteboom, whose great-great-grandfather was an auto worker in the industry’s early years. As the auto business became more crowded, competition introduced an unexpected market dynamic.
“The innovators became very conservative in nature,” said Noteboom, the keynote speaker Wednesday at the 7×24 Exchange spring conference in Boca Raton, Fla. “When things get competitive, margins will go down and only the efficient, who have the ability to innovate, will survive. Data centers have been operating for years in this bubble, almost like a castle. The data center can no longer be a conservative castle; it has to be a commodity factory. There are things we need to do to remain competitive.”
Testing Boundaries
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At the top of the list: question assumptions and push boundaries in search of improved efficiency and competitiveness. Yahoo’s data center infrastructure has undergone a five-year transformation in which Noteboom and the Yahoo team have driven inefficiencies out of their design. -
Yahoo Computing Coop: Shape of Things to Come?
April 26th, 2010 : Rich Miller
An aerial view of the Yahoo data center in Lockport, N.Y.
Yes, they really do look like huge chicken coops. But for Yahoo, the savings generated by the new Yahoo Computing Coop will be anything but chicken feed.
The Yahoo Computing Coop (YCC) is the culmination of a five-year effort to completely rethink the company’s data center design. While rivals at Google and Microsoft have gotten more attention for data center innovations, the Yahoo team has been quietly refining its approach to building faster, cheaper data centers that will be dramatically more efficient than previous facilities.
The company’s new data center in Lockport, New York is the first implementation of the YCC. The first phase of the project is in the commissioning stage, and is expected to enter production next month. The data center operates with no chillers, and will require water for only a handful of days each year. Yahoo projects that the new facility will operate at a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.1, placing it among the most efficient in the industry.
Air Handler With Servers Inside
“The building itself is an air handler,” says Scott Noteboom, the Director of Data Center Operations for Yahoo. “The entire building is meant to breathe, and there’s a lot of louvers and dampers to control the airflow.”The Yahoo Computing Coops are prefabricated metal structures measuring about 120 feet long by 60 feet wide. Each of the three coops has louvers built into the side to allow cool air to enter the computing area. The air then flows through two rows of cabinets and into a contained center hot aisle, which has a chimney on top. The chimney directs the waste heat into the top of the facility, where it can either be recirculated or vented through the cupola. See A Closer Look at Yahoo’s New Data Center for more photos and video.
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Earnings Roundup: VMware, IBM, Yahoo
April 23rd, 2010 : John RathHere’s a roundup of quarterly financial results announcements:
VMware reports first quarter results. VMware (VMW) announced financial results Tuesday for the first quarter of 2010. Revenues were $634 million for the first quarter,with the U.S. portion jumping 30% from last year up to $317 million. International revenues grew 40 percent to $317 million from the first quarter of 2009. “Our strong first quarter results were driven by pent up customer demand, carried over from last quarter, as well as a strong performance in Europe, China and Japan,” said Mark Peek, chief financial officer. Earlier in the year VMware acquired email and collaboration vendor Zimbra from Yahoo. Other highlights included acquiring parts of EMC’s Ionix IT management business and a partnership with Cisco and NetApp to provide a secure multi-tenancy design architecture designed to enhance security in cloud environments.
IBM reports first quarter results. IBM announced first quarter 2010 results Monday. Revenue was reported at $22.9 billion, net income at $2.6 billion and full year 2010 earnings-per-share expectations raised to at least $11.20. “In the first quarter, we drove significantly improved revenue growth rates from the fourth quarter across our businesses and geographies. We had strong results in strategic investment areas including growth markets, business analytics and Smarter Planet solutions,” said Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. Revenues for Global Services increased 4 percent and both Application Management signings and signings in Transactional services decreased. With first quarter cash on hand at $14 billion and a strong balance sheet, the company is well positioned to support its full-year objectives.
Yahoo reports first quarter results. Yahoo (YHOO) announced first quarter 2010 results Tuesday for the quarter ending March 31, 2010. Highlighting a twenty percent year over year growth in display advertising Yahoo reported $1,597 million in revenues and $188 million. “Our operating income growth and expanded margins this quarter demonstrate the success of our efficiency efforts as well as the first tangible benefits of our search agreement with Microsoft,” said Yahoo! Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse. Yahoo! received clearance for the search agreement with Microsoft from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission and the companies commenced implementation of the agreement on February 23, 2010. Data center news in the first quarter included Yahoo opening its Nebraska facility and the installation of generators at the Lockport New York facility.
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Generators Installed at Yahoo NY Site
March 8th, 2010 : Rich MillerThere’s just something about generators. They’re the huge engines providing the last line of defense for the data center and the thousands of web sites inside. They’re big, loud and powerful, and attract lots of attention during tours and installations.
And sometimes, they serve as a sign of bigger things to come. Last Friday the backup generators arrived at the new Yahoo data center in Lockport, New York. Three 2-megawatt gensets were installed, generating coverage in The Buffalo News.
“The generators, measuring 11 by 46 feet, were lifted off flatbed trucks by a crane supplied by Clark Rigging and Hauling of Lockport,” The News reported. “They were placed atop 7,000-gallon diesel fuel tanks. (Cummins sales engineer Jay) Deshpande said one generator, one tank and a full load of fuel weigh a total of 170,000 pounds. Deshpande said an emergency generator will burn 143 gallons of diesel fuel in an hour. The power is produced by 60-liter, 2,500-horsepower engines.”
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Yahoo Opens New Nebraska Data Center
February 18th, 2010 : John Rath
Yahoo has purchased this building in La Vista, Nebraska for $14.8 million.
Yahoo (YHOO) has opened its new data center in La Vista Nebraska. The 180,000 square foot facility near Omaha will hold about 100,000 servers, employ around 50 people and will become the largest Yahoo data center when expansions are completed.
Yahoo began the 17-state location process that led them to Nebraska in early 2008. Similar to other Midwest deals that were negotiated earlier with Google in Council Bluffs, Iowa and Microsoft in West Des Moines, Yahoo selected Nebraska for state tax incentives, low energy costs and a quality workforce. The announced $100 million deal included the La Vista data center and a customer care center in Omaha, with a combined 200 jobs created.
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Report: Yahoo Seeks Buyer for Hosting Unit
September 22nd, 2009 : Rich Miller
Does web hosting knit together neatly with news, search and advertising sales in a business plan for an Internet portal? That’s a question that has come up frequently in recent years as Yahoo has gone through several phases of redefinition, prompting speculation that the company would eventually divest its large web hosting operation.It looks like “eventually” has arrived. Reuters reports that Yahoo is seeking to sell its Yahoo Small Business hosting service, and is seeking a sale price of $350 million to $500 million. The move is part of a broader strategic refocusing that also includes a major marketing campaign that is expected to be unveiled today by CEO Carol Bartz. The company is said to be selling off assets that don’t reflect its new consumer focus.
Yahoo Small Business operates one of the largest U.S. shared hosting hosts, with about 2.2 million sites, according to recent data. That includes its online store, one of the leading turnkey e-commerce offerings for small businesses. That base of e-commerce customers is a valuable asset at a time when profit margins are being squeezed and pundits see cloud computing emerging as a competitive threat.
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