Equinix announced today that it will buy IXEurope Plc, a European data center colocation company, for almost a half-billion dollars.

According to the Equinix press release, IXEurope has 14 data centers that make up almost 400,000 square feet of data center space. The $482 million deal brings Equinix onto the European continent; the company is already spread out across the United States and eastern Asia.

The move expands Equinix’s total footprint to more than 3,000,000 square feet of data center space. Just this week I interviewed an executive about the unique Equinix colocation data centers.

Windows introduced its first operating system for high performance computing clusters last year, and its already achieved two spots on the Top 500 Supercomputers List.

Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 appeared on the computing industry’s semiannual top 500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers this week.

The operating system served on a new HPC cluster at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities of  Japan, which placed at 193 on the list

The top 500 benchmark was run on a 448-node IBM BladeCenter HS21 cluster with 1,760 processors. The benchmark result was 6.52 trillion computations per second (teraflops).

Windows also served as operating system for a new HPC cluster at Microsoft’s datacenter in Tukwila, Wash., which ranked 106 in the top 500. This system achieved 8.99 teraflops on 256 compute nodes and 2,048 processing cores of 64-bit Intel Xeon 5300 quad-core processors, powering Dell blade servers.  

I spoke with Microsoft this week for a story on their emergence into the high performance computing market, and they were pretty psyched about making this list.

Look out Linux.

IBM announced today the availability of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 for the IBM System Cluster 1350, giving mid-market and enterprise clients a familiar operating system to work with in additional to Linux.

IBM also announced today expanded server, storage and networking options for clusters.

High performance computing clusters can range from a few up to thousands of servers woven together to deliver high-speed performance.

The clustered system is also designed to leverage Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), and now supports the SLES10 operating system.

To read more, go to IBM’s press room.

The z/Journal, a magazine and online site for mainframers, has just launched a mainframe jobs list. The site allows visitors to filter the results by date, job type and location. Meanwhile, it is charging employers about $100 to post their jobs on the site for 60 days.

One thing it doesn’t have that would help, especially as the number of job listings grows, is a search function.

Intel Corp. today is releasing new 20Gbps optical cables that it says will be a good replacement for slower 24-gauge copper cables, especially in cluster environments.

The major chipmaker, which already sells optical transceivers, says the new cables have a much better range of 100 meters compared to about 10 meters for typical copper cable, which can help data centers expand their computing clusters.

You can read more from the Intel press release.

Thanks to Matt Hickman, director of information technology at Craig Technologies, for sending this along after reading my article about Google’s plan to build data centers in Iowa.

Prospective Google data center employees, heed warning.

Guide to not getting your butt kicked in Iowa (the abridged, and censored version):

1. Don’t order filet mignon or pasta primavera at Jonesy’s. It’s a diner. They serve breakfast 24 hours a day. Let them cook something they know. If you upset the ladies in the kitchen they’ll kick your butt.

2. Don’t laugh at the names of our little towns (Greeley, Strawberry Point, Cresco, etc.) or we will have to kick your butt.

3. Don’t order a bottle or a can of soda here. Here it’s called “pop”. Accept it. Doing otherwise can lead to a butt-kicking.

4.We know our heritage. Most of us are more literate than you. We are also better educated and generally a lot nicer. Don’t refer to us as a bunch of hicks or we’ll kick your butt.

5. Don’t try to fake an Iowa accent. We don’t have an accent. Do NOT mention the movie “Field of Dreams” because that will incite a riot and you will get your butt kicked.

6. Don’t talk about how much better things are at home because we know better. Many of us have visited big-cities like Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis and we have the scars to prove it. If you don’t like it here, Interstate 80 is ready when you are. Move your butt on home before it gets kicked.

7. Don’t complain that Iowa is flat and that all you can see is corn and hogs. If you whine about it, we’ll kick your butt.

8. Don’t ridicule our mannerisms. We only speak when spoken to. We hold doors open for others. We offer our seats to old folks because such things are expected of civilized people. Behave yourselves around our sweet, little grey-haired grandmothers or they will kick some manners into your butt just like they did ours.

9. So you think we’re quaint because most of us live in a corn field? That’s because we have enough sense to not live in filthy, smelly, crime-infested cesspools like New York or LA. Make fun of our fresh air and we’ll kick your butt all the way back to Silicon Valley.

William DiBella, the former president of Connectivity Technologies (also known as ConTech in the data center field), has been named the new president of AFCOM, the data center users group.

The group just put out a release saying that DiBella’s presidency was effective as of June 11. DiBella takes over for Jill Eckhaus, who is going to be the CEO of AFCOM.

DiBella’s primary responsibilities will be managing the day-to-day operations of AFCOM, which stands for the Association For Computer Operations Management. Anyone who is in the data center business knows that AFCOM’s Data Center World conferences, held twice a year, are always a good place to catch up on what’s going on in the business.

From the AFCOM release:

DiBella, who has a background in technical engineering, is recognized as an accomplished designer of distinctive products, solutions and services tailored for the data center environment, particularly the development of knowledge-based programs for data center professionals within the enterprise marketplace.

We’re looking into getting an interview with DiBella as soon as possible.

According to Data Center Knowledge, which got the announcement straight from the source, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) will be the first recipient of the Sun Blackbox, a portable data center in a shipping container.

The box will include 252 systems and grow the center’s computing capacity by 33 percent. From the announcement:

Building 50, the computing building, is close to maxing out its cooling system and its ability to distribute power within the building. But the demand for computing time is increasing rapidly.

“We needed to expand quickly this fiscal year, but solving the cooling and power challenges for the building takes longer. We worked with Sun to answer the question, ‘how do you extend your data center without too much pain?’” said RandyMelen, leader of SCCS’s High Performance Storage and Computing team.

The announcement adds that the Blackbox will actually be white, for energy efficiency purposes.

Firefly Energy is developing a different kind of UPS battery that it says is lighter and more efficient than traditional lead-acid batteries.

The batteries use a lightweight carbon graphite foam rather than the lead metal grids to support the chemistry and conduct the electricity inside. The company claims that you can cut the number of your batteries in half if you use its product.

The company is working with partners now and hopes to have a UPS application in the next couple months. Commercializing the battery would take another 18 months, however, so it’s still a ways off.