Top 25 of 2020: The Year’s Biggest Data Center Stories

The Pandemic

Stress Test: The Data Center Industry and the Pandemic - Enterprise data center teams, data center providers, and cloud platforms meet the biggest crisis of their lifetimes.

Rules Rewritten: Managing Data Centers Through the Pandemic - The world’s data center operators have made big operating adjustments. Some of these changes may stick around post-crisis.

‘Freeze Time:’ How Long Can Data Center Supply Chains Hold Out? - The longer the global lockdown, the harder it will be to keep data centers running without failure.

How Zoom, Netflix, and Dropbox are Staying Online During the Pandemic - Inside the efforts to keep the quarantined world’s popular internet services running smoothly.

Energy

Study: Data Centers Responsible for 1 Percent of All Electricity Consumed Worldwide - Latest research shows that massive gains in computing power are accompanied by only a modest increase in energy use, thanks to efficiency improvements and the shift to the cloud.

Google Thinks Data Centers, Armed with Batteries, Should ‘Anchor’ a Carbon-Free Grid - A large-scale battery plant at its Belgium data center will provide backup power and help balance the grid.

The Tech Behind Microsoft’s Sustainable Data Center Plan in Sweden - The company has co-developed a demand-supply matching platform with its energy supplier in Sweden.

Security

What Data Center IT Security Pros Must Know About the SolarWinds Vulnerability - The unprecedented attack, whose full scope is yet to be determined, gave those behind it access to some of the most sensitive enterprise systems.

How to Avoid Paying Ransomware Ransoms - As private experts and government officials advise against indulging the bad guys, here are some tips for following that advice.

New Malware Makes Air-Gapped Data Center Networks Less Bulletproof - An advanced cyberespionage group is designing malware that can “jump” across air gaps, researchers say.

Kubernetes

After Kubernetes’ Victory, Its Former Rivals Change Tack - After what was likely the shortest technology battle in computing history, Docker and D2IQ (formerly Mesosphere) search for new ways ahead.

VMware Bakes Kubernetes into vSphere 7, Fleshes Out Tanzu - The grafting of the data center’s most pervasive software infrastructure manager with hypervisor-based virtualization is now officially complete.

Bottlerocket: AWS's New Linux Distro for Containers - Although the distro is available on its cloud now, its real value for AWS may come down the road, if other vendors adopt it for their platforms.

The Cloud

Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier Talks About IBM and His Vision for the Future - Paul Cormier recently sat down for a talk with Data Center Knowledge about how the company's relationship with its new owner, IBM, is working out and to reflect on where the company is going.

How Google Cloud Plans to Win Enterprises from AWS and Azure - GCP has been beefing up its enterprise strategy, and there are signs that the efforts are paying off.

Dropbox’s Reverse Migration, From Cloud to Own Data Centers, Five Years On - The cloud storage giant has developed a unique approach to data center capacity planning. Here’s how it does it.

Google Launches IBM Power Systems as a Cloud Service - The service is aimed at legacy enterprise workloads. Google is the second major cloud provider to offer the option besides IBM.

Oracle Adds Data Centers in Five New Countries to Its Cloud Platform - The world's second-largest software company is considered a "niche player" in cloud, but it's working quickly to make its niche bigger.

The Edge

Azure Edge Zones: Microsoft’s Plan to Dominate Edge Computing and 5G - Yousef Khalidi, corporate VP for Azure Networking, says the strategy is to build a “global computing infrastructure substrate.”

Why Google Cloud and AT&T May Merge their Telco Edges - Multiple use cases for low-latency “5G/edge” applications are being explored, powered by Anthos for Telecom.

Intel Engineer: Much Left to Solve Before Cloud and Edge Can Become One - Why the dream of convergence between core and edge data centers is further away than it may sound.

IBM Has Open Sourced Its Edge Device Platform and Wishes AWS and Microsoft Got On Board - IBM's Open Horizon is meant to make it easier to manage thousands of IoT devices as edge computing nodes.

Business

Investment Bankers Expect the Pandemic to Fuel a Long-Term Data Center Boom - With demand skyrocketing and eager investors aplenty, there’s little that can hold the sector back.

Equinix’s $335M Packet Acquisition Is Closed. Here’s What’s Next - The colocation giant’s platform-building endeavor enters a whole new phase.

Digital Realty Closes Its Acquisition of Interxion - The San Francisco-based REIT becomes the second-largest data center provider in Europe.