The Changing Face of the Datacentre
With business expectations of technology ramping fast and IT strategies shifting accordingly
, the very heart of organisational IT the datacentre itself looks set to undergo a period of massive change. iQ breaks down some of the Whys, Hows, and Wherefores.
The Background
Today's datacentres are as they are expected to be greater than the sum of their parts. It's a perfect microcosm of IT itself in fact. But, perhaps because of this, the definition of what the datacentre actually is has become a little blurred around the edges over the years. Time was that the datacentre could be defined simply as the physical facility used to house a business's IT systems and components its servers, storage, telecomms kit, UPSs, cooling, security a room in fact.
Now though, because of the datacentre's huge integral and strategic importance to the business, coupled with the convergence and virtualisation of entire swathes of business technology, the datacentre's presence and influence are no longer governed by the same physical constraints they once were. In short, the datacentre is evolving.
The Need for Change
Necessity is the mother of invention of course, and Paul Hammond, MD of GlassHouse Technologies says that this is certainly the case where the accelerating evolution of the datacentre is concerned. He cites the organic growth of IT infrastructures in turn leading to added complexity, siloed applications, and increased energy consumption as being among the key factors in bringing the datacentre to where it has arrived at today a hot building full of under-utilised servers".
Accordingly, he says, with a greater focus than ever on issues such as cost savings, service agility, and environmental friendliness, the datacentre is now set to go through a major and in all likelihood business-critical transition. "There's no doubt that the datacentre is in for dramatic change and its long-term future is anyone's guess. (But) whatever happens, it's all about making it easier and more cost effective to deploy and manage new technologies and serve the business."
The Shift
From a technical perspective, the change in the physical make up of the datacentre will essentially take the form of virtualisation and consolidation, says Hammond fewer servers occupying less space, using less energy, at lower costs while processing more data. However, while virtualisation has quickly become quite the sweetheart of the IT industry, just four or five per cent of datacentre servers have as yet actually been' virtualised, so it will be some time before virtual datacentres appear en masse. By way of specifics there's an array of current thinking as to what the immediate curve will look like though most commentators predict huge change.
According to AFCOM, more than half of all datacentres will have to relocate to new facilities, for example, while power constraints will also become a big factor with power failures and availability limitations "halting datacentre operations at more than 90% of companies". Large numbers of datacentre refresh projects seem the likely outcome, with recent research from outsourced datacentre operator Digital Realty Trust bearing this out.
In its survey of senior, Fortune 2000 datacentre decision-makers, a huge 86% of respondents said they would probably or definitely be expanding their number of datacentres sometime in the next 12 months, with almost half planning to expand in three or more locations an uplift of nearly 20% over the previous year. Datacentres look likely to take up more room too with planned square footage for the average expansion rising by an enormous 50% from 10,000 last year to 15,000 this, with the DRT survey reporting that a whopping 83% of respondents were planning to expand the physical space of their datacentres. 77% and 76% respectively are planning to expand their power and cooling capabilities too. All these are extremely telling statistics says Michael F. Foust, Digital Realty Trust CEO. "This survey confirms what our team has suspected the demand for datacentre space is accelerating across a wide cross-section of industries. It's particularly significant that 86% of companies are planning datacentre expansions in the next 12 months especially in the context of the current economic environment. Despite challenging market conditions, companies are making major investments in IT infrastructure, reflecting the critical nature of these assets to today's corporations."
The Reasons
The reinvention of the datacentre seems to be being driven not by any single compelling factor, but by several.
Strategic imperatives- Boards, and CIOs most particularly, are under greater pressure to than ever before to align strategic IT needs with those of the business.
IT imperatives- Our use of IT is itself undergoing something of a shift with huge paradigm changes like convergence and virtualisation now holding incredible sway and in turn demanding major adjustments at a granular datacentre level.
Operational imperatives- The growing clamour for watertight Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning and contingency have, for instance, been cited frequently and in several surveys as key drivers for datacentre expansions.
Physical need- Power, connectivity, cooling requirements as well as the integration of new applications and the need for more physical space.
Legislation & CSR- Businesses now face a tougher, more stringent, more complex legal burden than ever before, to the degree that legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley is now being felt even in the datacentre itself. In addition, datacentres are not only profligate users of power, but profligate wasters of it, and EU legislation comes in to force 2013 to police this more vigorously. Put simply, datacentre owners must either adhere to 2013 EU energy requirements now, or face some very expensive retrofits come 2013.
The Impact
The long term ramifications of the datacentre's immediate and ongoing evolution are difficult if not impossible to fathom fully though they are sure to be felt the length and breadth of the business in one way or another. Predicting the immediate future for the datacentre itself looks a little easier however. Several commentators predict a return to mainframe principals of old, for example. "Future-gazing conjures images of almost a new form of mainframe", says Hammond. "Ultra-datacentres" in remote locations, hidden underground or under bodies of water using local renewable energy sources. (Indeed some companies have already made headlines by following just this pattern)."
Kelly Smith, MD of Smartbunker also sees datacentres de-coupling data from systems in mainframe fashion. "A datacentre that fully virtualises becomes incredibly flexible in its ability to deliver services on demand, as well as becoming more efficient and easier to manage. So in concept it would have similarities with a mainframe computer."
"Mainframes are defined by their overall computational power, high utilisation rates, reliability, and the fact they can be maintained and upgraded while still in service. All these attributes will be realised by a fully-virtualised data centre. (But because it) is constructed from small computational units it will be far more flexible than would be the case with a single mainframe."
Subscribe to iQ for the full articleDiscuss this on our Forum The Changing Face of the Datacentre
By: Insight UK
An All-embracing Collection Of Pdf Editor, Convertor And Password Recovery Why Should You Opt For Pdf Format Data Recovery? Limitations And Challenges In Effective Web Data Mining Gaining Users Confidence, Microsoft Access Database - The Preferred Choice Xml Conversion: Why Companies Should Consider Converting Data Into Xml How To Go Through A Hard Drive Crash Recovery Information Of Macintosh Data Recovery Fundamental Data Relating to the Hilti Nail Weapon Laseraway - Botox Requires No Anesthesia No Recovery Time And No Surgery. Complete BKF Recovery Toolbox to Restore Invalid BKF File Why It Is Important To Use Data Eraser Program BKF Recovery in Server 2003 After Deletion of Archive Bit Information Georous Dresses For Multiple Data