AOL Creates Fully Automated Data Center

miller60 writes with an except from a Data Center Knowledge article: "AOL has begun operations at a new data center that will be completely unmanned, with all monitoring and management being handled remotely. The new 'lights out' facility is part of a broader updating of AOL infrastructure that leverages virtualization and modular design to quickly deploy and manage server capacity. 'These changes have not been easy,' AOL's Mike Manos writes in a blog post about the new facility. 'It's always culturally tough being open to fundamentally changing business as usual.'" Mike Manos's weblog post provides a look into AOL's internal infrastructure. It's easy to forget that AOL had to tackle scaling to tens of thousands of servers over a decade before the term Cloud was even coined.

Wow .. how '2000'ish

[johnlcallaway]

Wow ... we were doing this 10 years ago before virtual systems were commonplace, 'computers on a card' where just coming out. Data center was 90 miles away. All monitoring and managing was done remotely. The only time we ever went to physical data center was if a physical piece of hardware had to be swapped out. Multiple IP addresses were configured per server so any single server one one tier could act as a fail over for another one on the same tier. We used firewalls to automate failovers, hardware failures were too infrequent to spend money on other methods. We could rebuild Sun servers in 10 minutes from saved images. All software updates were scripted and automated. A separate maintenance network was maintained. Logins were not allowed except on the maintenance network, and all ports where shutdown except for ssh. A remote serial interface provided hard-console access to each machine if the networks to a system wasn't available.

Yawn ......

Re:Wow .. how '2000'ish

[johnlcallaway]

Thanks for not pointing to the actual blog in the original article. So what they are really blogging is their ability to move an entire DATA CENTER without having to send people to do it. Other than .. you know .. install the hardware to start with.

Never mind........

Re:What

[billcopc]

How often does shit hit the fan in that sort of environment ?

As a hybrid techie who does a lot of hardware work, I would much rather go in once a month, fix a batch of issues in one visit, collect my fat cheque and go back to the pub, than spend 40+ hours a week playing Bejeweled, waiting for stuff to break.

I would expect AOL's strategy to greatly reduce costs, because that $15/hr rack monkey costs a lot more than $15/hr in the end. They have benefits, you have to "manage" them, they need human comforts like bathrooms, cleaning, seating, heating/air, lunch room. From an efficiency standpoint, the contractor route is more efficient in both money and time.