The demands on IT operations for applications, processing, storage, and reporting never stop growing, and when growth is measured in square feet, that can be costly. Fortunately, increasing capability doesn’t necessarily require corresponding growth in data center size. In fact, it may be possible to shrink the facility even while capacity expands, reducing costs of power and cooling along with “real estate” requirements. Of course, part of the reduction will be attributed to faster, smarter chips and more dense storage, but that’s just the beginning.
Twenty years ago, adding a server in your data center meant just that: adding a physical box, adding racks, and adding to hefty demand for power and cooling. Virtualization has changed that. Now, a “server” need not be an actual machine, rather it can be a partition on an existing machine. It can be one of 50 or 100 servers coexisting in a single box, saving space and power, and simplifying cooling, cabling, and even management.
While virtualization is not new, it is ever changing. What we knew just a few years ago is far from state-of-the-art today and may not even be in the mainstream. Applications that did not run in a virtualized environment may do so easily now, and options continue to improve and expanding. The degree to which sites are virtualized varies. At Enventis, we find 90 percent of sites are virtualized. The good news for those toward who have not yet moved to virtualization is that there is much to gain by increasing virtualization.
One particular concern that IT managers have expressed is recovery of a virtualized site. For obvious reasons, difficulties, real or perceived, in recovering systems and data can be a show stopper. Actually, while virtualization changes recovery procedures, it need not make them more complicated. The data recovery services process is definitely different and requires planning, but the effort required to adjust is modest compared to the potential benefits virtualization can provide.
An increasingly popular approach for reducing data center size is the cloud, either private or public (or some combination of the two). In both cases, resources—servers, storage pods, security, firewalls, network switches and management applications—are shared, being dynamically allocated to users as needed. In private implementations the resources typically reside somewhere on user premises, either in the data center or at a backup site. Private cloud computing can reduce data center size in many of the same ways that virtualization does, but it can also reduce the size of the primary data center simply by offloading functions to a secondary site.
The public cloud is the ultimate space saver. That cloud and the functions you outsource to it are completely independent of your real estate, taking up none of your space and only the bit of connectivity required to reach it. The cloud can support your applications, data, backups and more. The only limit to what you relocate there is what you choose to keep in-house. For some users that’s a matter of security, although providers of cloud services take security very seriously. Nevertheless, we find that some users of the public cloud will keep sensitive data such as CRM or HIPAA-regulated records for example, in their private data centers.
The good news about these data shifting strategies toward virtualization and public and private cloud, is that none require a “plunge.” Options coexist in a hybrid environment, and all can be entered into gradually. Smart migration into any solution requires consideration of cost, return, benefits, risks, and mitigation of those risks. Ideally, you can make both the calculations and the moves before there is a pressing need for data center capabilities or space. Plan ahead and make your moves safely and logically, evaluate results, and map out a process that serves your strategic plans and business needs. After all, when it comes to IT, space may not be the final frontier, but it can be precious.
Article courtesy of Mike Schultz, Network and Data Center Engineering Manager, Enventis