Just a Few Things
- Post By: Greg Crumpton
- Date:
- Category: Blog
Jim Rohn used to say, “There are only a very few things that truly matter within any given thing.” He was speaking
in general terms. Basically, you need to boil stuff down until you get to the few parts that really make or break a deal, a sale, a relationship, or just about anything else that you spend your efforts on. http://www.jimrohn.com/jim-rohn-biography
I have read his work for many years and always believed in this philosophy, but didn’t apply it much to the functionality of a data center.
Until last Thursday.
Our local industry was gathered in Charlotte for a day of listening to some very sharp folks talk about where we are as a Mission Critical group. We heard from locals, we heard from folks who travel abroad doing this work, and we heard from vendors and end-users. It was quite a well rounded group looking at this from several different angles.
http://www.7x24carolinas.org/Resources/Documents/TechSummit_2014%20Agenda.pdf
After the event, several folks gathered around a cool refreshment where my friend Dave and I were discussing a project we may get to work on involving super density laden racks. Then we kind of took a step back and applied the Jim Rohn test to our Mission Critical infrastructure world.
Keep in mind we had just heard a plethora of new ideas, ways, tactics, and load calculations. You name it – we heard it. It boils down to this: Data Centers have always been based upon 3 large principles. Power, network and cooling. Yes, you can dig into to each and break them down: generation, transmission, distribution – speed, bandwidth, storage capacity – room based cooling, rack-based, 100 % outside air. No matter what you want to do within any of the groups, you always keep bringing it back to the basics.
How does this effect you, me, us, we, them? In a very major way, I think. Science is science. All of the computing, the power, the cooling (aka Heat Rejection) are all factual sciences. BTU’s, KW, everything comes down to science.
This is an important thing to keep in mind because everywhere we hear words like: Big Data Analytics, Greening the Data Center, and Energy Credits. All of these really neat parts of our industry can be used to take our eye off of the fact that there are just certain elements of the industry that can’t be reduced any further.
The sciences of math, engineering and fiber-optics are all about moving energy from point A to point B. This is one of the few things that really matter in the Mission Critical space.
Whatever your field or position, tune out the noise and focus on the few smart parts that really matter. It may just bleed over into the rest of your day to day world and amaze you.
