Yahoo!'s energy-efficient, secure data center

By Khoo Boo Leong | Apr 20, 2009

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To run and manage its data center, which is located a distance from its office downtown, Yahoo! Singapore required a 24/7 remote management solution that is simple, and yet does not compromise security and operational functionality.

Globally, the search and news portal’s operations team has been using Avocent’s Cyclades TS terminal servers as their standard console management solution to manage its many data centers around the world and in Asia-Pacific. This has allowed Yahoo! to run its data center operations with a lean IT support team.

Further, Yahoo! was interested in the green IT initiative to improve energy efficiencies in its data centers, according to Anand Thipse, country manager, production operations, Yahoo! Southeast Asia and India.

To achieve these objectives, Yahoo! deployed the Avocent Advanced Console Server (ACS) to manage its data center servers and network equipment and the Avocent Power Manager (PM) to manage all the power connections as well as power management, a significant and yet neglected component of the IT infrastructure.

To comply with existing data center network access policy, the ACS’s multiple access levels can be customized for secure management. Its secure remote control features include data logging and event monitoring.

“Yahoo! also developed scripts to customize the ACS and PM to allow its engineers to carry out daily tasks and schedule maintenance jobs more easily,” Thipse added. ACS include features such as automated discovery tools to easily identify servers, routers, switches or PBX connected to any serial port.

In Singapore, Infilan Pte Ltd was the Avocent partner that handled the Yahoo! project.

“We have jointly helped customers in the early stages of designing their data centers and in simplifying their IT complexity from the desktop to the data center, based on Avocent’s IT Operations management strategy,” said Peter Chua, director of Infilan, which serves data center service providers, large MNCs, government institutions and SMBs.

Solutions such as the ACS and PM help enterprises to not only manage their data centers effectively and efficiently but also comply to regulatory and security standards such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the ISO27001 Information Security Management specification and others.