Infrastructure Management

New Zayo report analyses trends in DDoS attacks from 2023

Zayo Group, a global communications infrastructure provider, has released its annual Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Insights report, which found a significant increase in the intensity of DDoS attacks and their impacts on businesses in the second half of 2023. According to new Zayo data, the average DDoS attack lasted 68 minutes in 2023. With unprotected organisations shelling out an average of £4,700 per minute of each attack, that totals a startling £325,000 average cost to businesses for DDoS attacks.  A key driver to this enormous cost was the steep rise in the duration of DDoS attacks throughout the year. The average length of attacks surged by more than 400% from Q1 to Q4 of last year — from an average of 24 minutes to 121 minutes — signalling a worrying trend from both security and cost perspectives. The astonishing volume of DDoS attacks in the first half of 2023 – up 200% from all of 2022 – seemed to have contracted in the second half of the year. Across all industries, comparing Q4 to Q1 2023, companies saw a 16% increase in attack activity. The outlook isn’t exactly rosy, however, volumetric attacks are being replaced by multi-vector attacks, spreading destruction more widely by targeting individual IP addresses, email systems, databases or web browsers, which are much harder to detect. "What we’re seeing is that cyber crime is only getting savvier,” says Anna Claiborne, Senior VP of Network Connectivity at Zayo. “AI is presenting itself as a double-edged sword in this space. On one side of the blade, criminals are using AI to increase the sophistication of attacks and circumvent traditional defence mechanisms; on the other, mitigation platforms are using AI to dynamically identify and defend against new and emerging threats. As DDoS remains a profitable model for cyber criminals, attacks will continue to be a brutal inevitability for businesses. But luckily, DDoS protection is also rising to the occasion." Key findings by the industry: Telecommunications companies experienced the most frequent attacks, comprising about 40% of total attack volume with nearly 13,000 attacks in H2 2023. Retail and healthcare companies experienced the largest attacks in H2, with an average attack size of 2.5Gbps across companies in these two industries. Government entities once again experienced the longest attacks with the average attack duration increasing from four hours in H1, to 18 hours in H2, increasing by 322%. This is a 1,141% increase from Q1 to Q4 of 2023. Educational institutions accounted for 17% of all attacks last year, thanks in part to the ease and affordability of botnet-for-hire services combined with frequent gaps in the cyber security of the institutions.  Why it matters: DDoS attacks are here to stay, and cyber criminals are not discriminating over an organisation’s size, industry or business model. These attacks cost organisations thousands of dollars per attack, not to mention reputational harm and customer churn, and many of the factors contributing to a vulnerable environment, such as increased digitisation, political unrest and hybrid work, are not going away anytime soon.  The sheer sophistication of these attacks, which are meticulously planned to hit during a business’ busiest time of day and often utilise automation, like bots, to make it easier, makes it a crucial time for organisations to have advanced, forward-thinking DDoS protection. For every company, it is not a matter of if, but when. “Most people on the internet aren’t plotting a DDoS attack, but the internet is a big place and Dark Web crime is the fastest growing business on earth,” says Eric O’Neill, National Security Strategist at Carbon Black. “We’re in an attacker’s market and they are leveraging sophisticated technologies and cutting-edge techniques to innovate the way they deceive, disrupt and destroy our most critical data. To stop the attackers from gaining the upper hand, we need DDoS protection that is as easy and effective as turning on a switch.”

Vertiv doubles capacity for switchgear, busway and integrated modular solutions

Vertiv has announced that it has increased capacity of its switchgear, busway and integrated modular solutions (IMS) business by more than 100% since acquiring the E&I Engineering and PowerBar Gulf switchgear, busway and IMS business in November 2021, and anticipates further doubling capacity with expansions through the end of 2025. The expansion plans enable Vertiv to support current commitments and accelerating customer demand for data centre power infrastructure, especially for colocation and hyperscale sites, including applications for AI and high-performance compute. In the two years since the acquisition of E&I Engineering and PowerBar Gulf, Vertiv has expanded its global manufacturing footprint for switchgear, busbar and modular power solutions by opening new facilities and adding production to existing facilities, resulting in more than 1,000 additional production jobs through 2023. With additional expansion plans underway, it expects to more than double capacity for its switchgear, busbar and modular solutions capacity in the next two years. “When we acquired the switchgear and busway business to complete our end-to-end power management portfolio for data centres and other critical commercial and industrial applications, we anticipated the product set would enable us to deliver greater value and superior solutions for our customers,” says Vertiv CEO, Giordano (Gio) Albertazzi. “With the surging growth of data traffic, reinforced by rapid AI acceleration, current demand is exceeding the projections that we formulated at the time of the E&I acquisition. Vertiv is meeting the demand acceleration by investing in capacity in key areas and locations, scaling our operations worldwide and flexibly meeting future demand for power management.” Giordano further notes that the acceleration of AI and other high performance compute is generating demand for capacity and innovation across the company’s offering portfolio, including power, thermal management, and prefabricated modular solutions, “Investing in additional capacity in all global regions aligns with our strategy to enable the growth of the industry and to build a resilient supply chain.” Vertiv’s switchgear, busbar and IMS capacity expansion through increased utilisation and footprint expansion is happening in South Carolina (US), Mexico, Slovakia, United Arab Emirates, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. Read more news from Vertiv here.

Infrastructure outlook 2024: Power grabs, geopolitics and green reporting

By Mark Kidd EVP and GM, Iron Mountain Data Centres and Asset Lifecycle Management The year 2023 was an exceptional year for data centre growth, and it looks like 2024 will be the same, but with new and more creative approaches to supply. Power will continue to be the primary focus, with pressure on electrical grids driving new investment in generation components, hubs and energy sources. Geopolitics will also enter the equation, combining with climate reporting legislation to make granular reporting of everything from raw materials to CUE an urgent task. Digital momentum Early investment in power-hungry generative AI drove phenomenal growth last year, with as much as 50% in additional global capacity delivered in a single year (Cushman Wakefield). A lot of negative economic forecasts failed to come true and business fundamentals are still strong. Gartner forecasts an 8% uptick in IT spending after a sluggish few years, which will drive hardware consumption, while organisations look towards practical benefits from AI such as streamlining and productivity. Particular growth sectors to look out for in 2024 include government, defence and healthcare, which for the first time ever accounts for over 10% of global GDP. (Economist) The great power grab How will supply match demand this year? Over the last six to 12 months available data centre capacity, which was already limited, has been soaked up by the giant power sponge of AI planning. AI will lead to design impacts on data centres, as well as new patterns of development where large-scale more remote AI training sites contrast with AI inference (delivery) sites close to users. Even if the demand for AI capacity slows - and there is no sign of this - replenishment of capacity will not be able to keep pace with demand, particularly in Tier 1 regions. But the market dislikes a vacuum, and new entrants are looking to make the most of the opportunity this presents. Established operators are still managing to turn up or fast-track opportunities from their portfolio, as Iron Mountain is doing in Miami. Powering land has also attracted some speculators as the demand and returns are high. This will likely lead to the identification of new capacity zones outside the most developed markets. Major new global fibre routes will also come online this year, accelerating performance and creating opportunities. New cable projects are underway to add higher performance and redundancy and lower costs in the Middle East, particularly for backup around the Suez Canal, a well-known connectivity pinch point. Both the Africa one and two subsea cables will also complete, speeding traffic between Africa, Europe and the Middle East. New data handling hubs are bound to pop up around multiple landing points. (Capacity) Carbon crossroads An 11% climb in renewables use is expected, but renewables will still only account for 14% of global total energy use. There is a long way to go to reduce emissions, and temperatures continue to rise, with the 1.5° ‘global warming ceiling’ identified in the Paris Agreement approaching fast and $4 trillion per year will be required to upgrade the electrical grid as the global transition to low-carbon electricity speeds up. The need for data centre power is now creating competition for key power-generation components including utility scale transformers. Considering this pressure on the green grid, some data centre operators may be tempted to select transitional solutions such as gas, but these delay addressing the core problem which is total decarbonisation. The #247CFE - moving beyond the Virtual Power Purchase Agreement to round-the-clock direct use of zero-carbon power - is the long-term solution. While implementing full #247CFE will take time, this is all the more reason to start early; if we don’t restructure power sourcing site by site, measure, track and improve it, we will never get there. The gulf between short-term and long-term power strategies will widen in 2024, raising questions for the industry and its customers. IMDC will remain on the side of #247CFE. Geopolitics meets green reporting Geopolitics will add its weight to a new sheaf of global, US and EU climate reporting requirements to demand much higher levels of transparency in 2024. As well as critical components like semiconductors and GPUs, geographical provenance will be required right down to the raw material level for government contracts, and the industry will diversify its supply chains fast in areas like Vietnam, Eastern Europe, Mexico and India. The rare-earth mining and processing industry will experience significant changes, as these elements are critical to national security, energy independence and the environment, and demand for recovery of rare-earth minerals will continue to rise. Greater transparency will also be required to meet new climate reporting regulations across the full asset lifecycle, from production to retirement to reuse, as environmental impact targets broaden to take account of Scope 3 emissions. Conclusion: Opportunism with an eye on the long term 2024 looks like it will be an exciting year, with lots to play for and developments that will change the data centre landscape. Creative site selection and speed to market will have major impacts on the bottom line, while geopolitical considerations and new regulations put both forward and reverse supply chains under the spotlight. For infrastructure operators, getting the balance right between short-term opportunism and long-term systemic improvements will be key.

Prescient Data Centres unveils its new website

Prescient Data Centres, a commercial carrier-neutral data centre based in Northern Ireland, has unveiled its new website. The newly designed website features a full suite of enhanced services and solutions, bolstering its position as the only neutral colocation operator, with a facility in Northern Ireland directly serving the region with connectivity and reach beyond. Prescient’s new website showcases a comprehensive look at the data centre, providing details regarding the data centre’s security, safety, building management information, and cooling and power solutions. The website also focuses on colocation, connectivity, and support services. Additionally, it shares the company’s solutions and partners, including details about the at Prescient. “We are committed to giving our customers, present and future, the best possible experience with Prescient Data Centres,” says Doug Friend, CEO of Prescient. “Through our new website, we clearly communicate our industry-leading services for our customers and those who are considering making Northern Ireland a home for their data.” Prescient Data Centres operates Northern Ireland’s first commercial carrier-neutral data centre. The company offers data centre services in colocation, connectivity, and other solutions to assist in reaching local, national, and international digital infrastructure. Located within Prescient DC’s world-class facility, it offers super-efficient and exceptionally resilient, high-security data storage. Prescient DC’s unique location offers stress-free access to the UK and EU. Its proximity to Northern Ireland enables low-latency connections to North America with proximity to the cable landing, located in Northern Ireland. This strategic location allows the independent data centre to serve as a pivotal hub for cloud services in the region.

Pure Storage to pay its customers’ power and rack space costs

Pure Storage has advanced its Evergreen portfolio with the introduction of a commitment to pay its customers’ power and rack space costs for the Evergreen//One Storage as-a-Service (STaaS) and Evergreen//Flex subscriptions. Also, Pure Storage is unveiling new no data migration, zero data loss, and power and space efficiency guarantees, coupled with flexible upgrades and financing, across the Evergreen portfolio.  Industry significance:   For years, legacy Storage as-a-Service (STaaS) vendors have packaged the same CapEx solutions on an OpEx basis, ignoring what it means to deliver a true service. What enterprises want from STaaS are SLA-based outcomes that not only optimise IT budgets and spending but also optimise labour, while furthering security, sustainability and agility goals.   Pure Storage first introduced its Evergreen architecture in 2015 and has since grown its storage subscription portfolio to meet each customer where they are. In 2018, it launched Evergreen//One, a true enterprise STaaS offering, delivered and managed via unique SLAs and guarantees. In 2022, it introduced Evergreen//Flex, combining storage ownership with fleet-level consumption economics. With relentless innovation, it continues to push the boundaries of what enterprises expect from their storage experience.  This initiative represents the next major evolution in enterprise STaaS. As the most energy efficient technology in the market - helping customers achieve up to 85% reduction in energy use and carbon emissions and up to 95% less rack space than competing offerings - Pure Storage disrupts the market with a commitment to pay its customers’ power and rack space costs, aligning TCO savings and long-term efficiency goals.   Combined with new guarantees, flexible financing, enhanced resilience, and AI-powered service capabilities, it continues to eliminate the status quo, driving choice and flexibility in purchase and consumption with its Evergreen-based services.   Highlights:  Industry-first paid power and rack commitment: Pure will pay for its customers’ power and rack space through an Evergreen//One Storage as-a-Service (STaaS) and Evergreen//Flex subscription to take responsibility for the associated costs of power and rack unit to run our offerings. By eliminating the growing challenges of managing rising electricity costs and rack unit space, it exemplifies what it means to offer a true, seamless cloud experience, on premises. The one-time, upfront payment can be made directly as cash or via service credits, is based on kilowatt per hour (kWh) and Rack Unit (RU) fixed rates, and is proportional to the customer’s geographic location and contract size. Power and space efficiency guarantee: While Evergreen//One and Evergreen//Flex customers benefit from a paid power and rack commitment, expanded guarantees support customers who opt to own their storage via an Evergreen//Forever subscription, further establishing it as the most innovative subscription portfolio in the enterprise storage industry. The power and space efficiency guarantee supports Evergreen//Forever customers’ efforts to consume less power and store more data with less space, reduce energy costs, and report more accurately with transparent measurement of actual Watts per tebibyte (TiB). If the guaranteed Watts/TiB or TiB/Rack is not met, Pure will cover the tab. The energy efficiency guarantee is already available as an Evergreen//One SLA. New future-proof business guarantees: With new no data migration and zero data loss guarantees for Evergreen//One (SLA), Evergreen//Flex, and Evergreen//Forever, Pure empowers its customers to mitigate unplanned costs due to data loss incidents, while maintaining day-to-day business operations amid upgrades. With the zero data loss guarantee, it assures data protection with advanced data recovery services for any hardware or software product-related incidents, at no cost. With the no data migration guarantee, it ensures seamless technology upgrades with no data migrations, reducing customers’ overall risk exposure, cost of ownership, and e-waste. In fact, its Evergreen architecture extends equipment life up to 10 years or more. Flexible upgrades and financing: Pure eliminates the need for major upgrades while providing customers with more choice. Its Ever Agile program now includes a capacity plus controller trade-in delivered at up to 20% lower price than new controller costs. Meanwhile, the Capacity Consolidation program now includes expanded capacity trade-in credits valued at up to 50%. The latest updates, available via Evergreen//Forever, give customers flexible access to the latest innovations in performance, density, and energy efficiency. Additionally, with extended STaaS financing options for Evergreen//One, customers also gain flexibility in its procurement and deployment.

Vertiv expands operations in Norway

Vertiv has announced the establishment of a new legal entity in Norway, further strengthening its partnership with colocation provider, Green Mountain, and supporting its rapid growth in Northern Europe. This strategic move is testament to its commitment to delivering sustainable and scalable infrastructure to meet the increasing demands of customers and end users. As part of its expansion plans, Green Mountain has embarked on the ambitious OSL2-Hamar project, which involves the construction of a cutting-edge data centre in Hamar, Norway. This site will be powered by 90MW of renewable hydropower energy, with the potential to scale up to 150MW to accommodate future growth, and will be enabled to provide balancing services to support the grid. The facility is scheduled to deploy its first 30MW building in November 2023. Green Mountain boasts impressive credentials, including a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.25, 100% hydropower energy sources, Tier III certifications and a flawless record of 100% uptime and SLA compliance. Additionally, the data centre facility incorporates innovative, environmentally friendly features, such as pilot projects on waste heat utilisation for fish farming, circular economy initiatives, smart lighting, and innovative cooling solutions. As part of the latest expansion, Green Mountain has deployed Vertiv Liebert EXL S1 UPS with dynamic grid support and advanced battery storage systems, supporting the adoption of on-site hydropower energy and enabling grid balancing services. Each site is carefully designed and tailored to meet specific customer needs while constantly raising the bar for energy efficiency and sustainability initiatives. Vertiv has been a trusted partner of Green Mountain since 2020, providing highly efficient thermal management and power solutions, even amidst the challenges posed by the global pandemic. Click here for more latest news.

Salesforce standardises global hybrid cloud infrastructure

Red Hat has announced that Salesforce is standardising its global hybrid cloud infrastructure on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Helping the company to drive business transformation at scale to meet customer demand, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a more flexible and consistent foundation for security enhanced hybrid cloud deployments. The platform enables Salesforce to free up valuable developer resources, while at the same time consolidating IT systems, all helping to generate better business outcomes for customers.  Salesforce is a customer-centric, innovation-driven provider of cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) systems, using a SaaS model to support a robust customer base. Over the years, Salesforce has continued to grow and evolve its offerings to incorporate breakthrough technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), automated self-service tools and real-time data insights to support customer business needs. In doing so, Salesforce relies on a massive IT footprint that spans hundreds of thousands of systems running in traditional data centre environments and in hyperforce, its platform architecture designed for the public cloud. With the migration, Salesforce intends to gain even more efficiency in its IT operations, enhancing developer productivity and fuelling greater innovation across the customer experience. Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers the necessary stability for modern IT workloads and enterprise-grade hybrid cloud deployments, enabling organisations to run applications anywhere while providing ease of management across on-premises and cloud environments. By migrating its global infrastructure from CentOS Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Salesforce seeks to realise key benefits such as: Optimised performance and efficiency across various hardware and software architectures, including ARM, which enables Salesforce engineering teams to more easily adopt breakthrough technologies without incurring new infrastructure demands. Meeting customers where they are with a hardened platform that can drive more consistent innovation across the hybrid cloud, from the data centre to public clouds to the edge, with the capacity to support unique customer use cases regardless of location or scale. Improved system security measures with Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s layered approach to IT environment security, including support for many of the latest cryptographic and secure computing innovations. Enhanced customer support experiences through Red Hat’s support team, enabling Salesforce engineering to focus on delivering customer value without being bogged down in the minutiae of managing an operating system at cloud-scale.

Host-IT expands with two further UK data centres

Colocation, rack space and cloud services provider, Host-IT, has announced the opening of data centres in Bristol and Nottingham, bringing the total to four in the UK. This number is expected to grow during the rest of 2023 and 2024. With this, the company is offering a new range of packaged data centre services at each of its data centre locations, which also include Birmingham and Milton Keynes. These fixed price data centre services include VM’s (Virtual Machines), IaaS, Dedicated Servers (Bare Metal), quarter and half racks up to full racks - including power and connectivity. Full support during the setup phase and onsite 24/7 further enhances the user experience at each of the company’s data centre locations.   Andrew Willis, Managing Director of Host-IT, comments, “I am delighted that after the successful launch of Birmingham earlier this year, we are now live in Bristol and Nottingham. The team has worked very hard over the past few weeks to bring these to market.” He adds, "Host-IT’s added-value packages are designed to streamline our customers’ data centre services requirements to ensure an effortless experience for all. Furthermore, our new website makes it easy to order these services with complete transparency on pricing.” Click here for more latest news.

Colt DCS launches new Mumbai data centre

Colt Data Centre Services has announced the launch of its first data centre in India. The flagship Navi Mumbai data centre marks Colt DCS’ strategic expansion and commitment to supporting the increasing demand of hyperscale cloud service providers and large enterprises businesses in the fast-growing Indian data centre market.  India’s digital demand has soared in recent years. According to the leading real estate consulting companies, India’s demand for data centre capacity will reach 1.4GW by 2025. Navi Mumbai accounts for 50% of data centre capacity. Colt DCS’ Navi Mumbai data centre provides customers with tremendous flexibility and scalability given its significant land parcel of 15ac capable of supporting 120MW of IT power capacity. The flexible and scalable design allows the company to meet the quickly changing demands of emerging technologies and use cases such as Gen AI, high performance computing, machine learning and other computer intensive cloud applications that depend on high power density solutions with efficient cooling. This flexibility is supported by robust infrastructure. The data centre boasts a highly resilient 220kV GIS substation onsite with LILO configuration. The data centre also provides multi-layered security with combination of hardened physical parameters, access control and 24x7 surveillance. The site has undergone a comprehensive TVRA assessment and has been categorised as a low risk site. This project was also recently awarded with a 'Platinum' rating by IGBC – Green Data Centre (India Green Building Council). This accreditation further underpins Colt DCS’ commitment to sustainability and innovation. Colt DCS’ draws 100% renewable green power from the utility company. These initiatives aligns with its dedication to global environmental responsibility and will ensure customers achieve their own sustainability goals. 

EdgeConneX plans high-power data centres in Malaysia

EdgeConneX has announced its entrance into the Malaysian market with plans to build highly proximate and high-power data centres that will deliver nearly 300MWs of capacity combined. Located in critical locations across Malaysia, the new data centres in Kuala Lumpur’s Central Business District, Bukit Jalil and Cyberjaya, offer customers the ability to design highly customised configurations to meet any requirement. Malaysia is set to continue its rise with significant infrastructure and information technology investments, partly driven by increased digitalisation and the adoption of advanced technologies such as cloud computing and AI. This high-tech growth is aided by the country’s dense network connectivity, available and scale power, multiple port cities, and connections to 22 submarine cables that provide low-latency access to other countries across the globe. Structure Research, Head of Research, Jabez Tan, says, “The Malaysia market is attractive because of its proximity to the Singapore connectivity ecosystem. In addition, the ability to access the densely aggregated set of submarine cables will allow companies across Malaysia to connect to the rest of the APAC region from a single location. Being in such proximity eliminates performance degradation for a large cross-section of the workloads today.” Malaysia data centre details: Kuala Lumpur Central Business District: Marked by an excellent central location, the data centre will be built within the downtown business district of Malaysia’s modern capital, Kuala Lumpur. Offering 19MW IT Load capacity, this facility will provide customers ample opportunity for customised, build-to-suit configurations and highly proximate, low latency solutions to the capital city. Bukit Jalil: As a prosperous suburb of greater Kuala Lumpur, Bukit Jalil is home to several educational, technological, and medical institutions. With nearly 70MWs IT Load capacity, this EdgeConneX site is a greenfield build in the MRANTI technology park, offering ample power to address hyperscale and large-scale cloud or AI deployments. Cyberjaya: Located in a region focused on research and development in knowledge-based industries, Cyberjaya is home to several high-tech science parks near Malaysia’s government seat. The EdgeConneX data centre campus will have over 200MWs of capacity and consist of nine buildings spread over 30ac, providing the scalable capacity and power to meet a whole array of customer requirements in the future.