Good points Michuki, But I was talking in the context of getting the content owners who our eyeballs go to, to set up their data centers here in-country so that all access is 'local'. By default that would mean mirroring/replicating their existing data center infrastructure - which includes hardware, software, data, etc... Your mention about Equinix is correct (I remember visiting their San Francisco data center in 2003, interesting that it is entirely underground) - on average data centers use between 30-100 MW http://www.neuralenergy.info/2009/06/data-centers.html which, on the higher end (where Google sits) is said to be the same amount of energy to power a city of 200,000 - Nakuru? - nevertheless, that's a lot of energy for a single facility. Imagine if the following were to consider setting up facilities in Kenya? - Microsoft - Google - Facebook - General Electric - EBay - Amazon - IBM - HP If all of them set up data centers in Kenya, they would collectively need about 500-800MW. Peg this against our current installed capacity of 1300MW and we are definitely not anywhere near the top of the list in terms of destination of choice for an African data center destination. Let us not forget that these are all key target tenants for Konza. How would we go about meeting their energy requirements? Let alone the water requirements for cooling systems and (this may touch some nerves) the human resource (skills) required to man and run the centers? Regards, Brian On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Michuki Mwangi <michuki@swiftkenya.com> wrote:
On 2/29/12 9:56 AM, Brian Munyao Longwe wrote:
Dear Robert,
Like it or not Nicholas' point is fundamentally true.
Let's go back to Internet 101: You either have eyeballs or you have content. If you have content, the eyeballs will need to get to you so you need to sit your content somewhere accessible, affordable and secure. If you have eyeballs you need to provide them with a means to get to the content or else they will go to someone else who can.
+ 1
The problem with Kenya is not just that our energy is expensive. The biggest problem is that it simply is not enough. Ask Dr. Ndemo or Paul Kukubo what one of the leading questions any content owner asks when they come visiting to find out what all the buzz is about Kenya and whether they should consider putting up here? Yes, you got it - "can you meet our energy needs?" Without a fail in every case the answer is "no".
+1
This is an issue that needs to be considered very carefully if we intend to be a serious contender on the global scene.
Am not particularly in agreement with this statement in view of the comments above. I will substantiate this below.
Tried to find online stats about the average energy usage of a Google data centet but apparently these are well kept secrets. But I remember hearing sometime back that a single Google data center uses more energy than the city of Nairobi(sic).
I have information on Equinix and their largest data centers consume 80MW of power. (FYI Equinix is the largest Carrier Neutral Data Center provider in the world).
While i appreciate our desire to be a player in the international scene and host large content providers, etc. We tend to forget that when Google, et al are building Data centers their objective is to serve several hundred million users from those locations.
IMHO, we need to rethink the business case for hosting. I believe it is under-developed and needs more attention. Let me try and use what we already know to explain this.
Q. According to CCK there are 14.3 Million Internet Users in Kenya so if we are building hosting infrastructure (power being the main concern) how much power do we need to host content for 20 million users?.
A. We have sufficient capacity today (power and colo space in Kenya) to host content for 20 Million users. Fact - Google Cache's in kenya serve at least 20% of most ISPs traffic. The foot print of these servers (space and power) is tiny.
Q. To further expound on this, what foot print is required to run a data center providing a local Free Webmail service targeting 20 Million users?.
A. Too small with today's computing resources and green techniques.
Am actually curious to know what percentage of data centers in Kenya are running at least 50% of their installed capacity in relation to their operating costs. By this i mean, are their costs indicative of operating at 100% or at the 50% especially power, cooling, tech support, etc.
In conclusion, am more convinced that we need to start developing hosting solutions to serve Kenya before we can serve the world. Right now we are aiming to serve the world before we can serve Kenya. This is very evident with the fact that a server aimed at providing KCSE results is unable to support queries at peak times, but on the other hand we are keen on getting content owners to host locally.
It is common practice by investors to make unrealistic demands as a polite way to put off weak proposals. So maybe we should look at the power requirements from that point of view.
Regards,
Michuki.
-- Brian Munyao Longwe e-mail: blongwe@gmail.com cell: +254715964281 blog : http://zinjlog.blogspot.com meta-blog: http://mashilingi.blogspot.com "Give us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for, because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything."