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Meeting the Challenge of Data Center Evolution
In all probability, you are in the early stages of an evolutionary process that will transform your data center from a technology-based cost center into a strategic business asset. This transformation can have a positive impact on your organization’s bottom line and, more importantly, deliver a competitive advantage.
It is getting through the process — beginning with an over-provisioning model that is proving unsustainable, to the challenges created by virtualization, to a new model based on anticipating need and utilization — that poses challenges. You must deal with the problems of both the existing and emerging models. To manage your evolutionary process requires meeting the challenges of both.
As with all evolutionary processes, this one has its roots in need. In this instance, the need lies in the vast amounts of information required for successful business operations, and the underlying infrastructure that supports the flow of that information — with your data center at its heart.
The Unsustainable Over-Provisioning Model
Today’s data center is built on the over-provisioning model. When an application is deemed necessary, estimates are built on what resources it will take to run it. Then, because service level requirements do not apply only to average transaction processing, those resources are doubled, or event tripled, to address peak demands. As a result, the additional servers generally only handle the peak hour rush. The problem arises when the rush is over. Most servers run at only 5-10 percent utilization and, as a result, offer a poor return on investment (ROI). There are additional challenges. To maximize business returns and protect your company’s reputation, you must prevent service outages, meet appropriate compliance mandates and speed deployment cycle times for new features — all while keeping costs low.
Yet, you live in a world of diverse applications and system platforms — virtual, physical, clustered — and security and other devices, provided by different vendors. Configurations change constantly. Numerous processes and standard best practices, such as ITIL®, proliferate. You must manage this complex and diverse environment and align with business goals using inadequate manual processes and tools.
Overall, the increased scale and complexity of the data center environment, including the proliferation of virtual servers, is rapidly overpowering the over-provisioning model. For this and several additional reasons, the over-provisioning model is not sustainable over the long term.
RUNNING OUT OF POWER AND SPACE
The transformation of the data center is also bringing the concern of energy consumption and costs to the forefront of your mind. The over-provisioning of server resources is a huge drain on energy and cooling systems. Research shows that, even when idle, servers consume 30 percent of the power as when running at peak capacity. Electrical and cooling expenses over the life of a server are now significantly higher than the initial hardware and support investment so your facility costs for power, cooling and the mechanical infrastructure outstrip the cost benefits originally gained through over-provisioning.
If the current situation weren’t alarming enough, some estimates indicate that, in 2008, nearly 50 percent of data centers worldwide will lack the necessary power and cooling capacity to support high-density equipment. If more energy is required than is available, you must either cut resources or build new data centers. With the power shortage, it may no longer be possible to add a server or two at a moment’s notice, not to mention the increased capital investments.
CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT OUT OF CONTROL
Meanwhile, your customer support and operations teams struggle to keep up with the growing numbers of systems and applications — and the never-ending configuration changes (authorized and unauthorized) — that support critical business services and strategic initiatives. The objective of configuration auditing and management in the over all data center is to assure adherence and compliance to policies and regulations, but configuration drift can affect the performance of servers and applications. The effects of an unauthorized change in the data center can be staggering. Even though you may have strict change control processes in place to prevent unauthorized and potentially expensive changes, there are still situations which arise where a change has taken place and cause a degradation of services in the data center.
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