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Flexible power solutions in minutes. Not weeks.
10 10 Power Protection
30 Natural Disasters are
not the only reason to a Yourturn
Myths Debunked Disaster Recovery plan
An Uninterruptible Separation of Fact and Fiction by Robert Gast
by John Collins
40 Strategies for Data
With a continuous stream of factors Center Consolidation
Budgeting for electricity, securing adequate necessitating both planned and unplanned
supplies of it and finding ways to use less Part 2 of 3: White Space
downtimes, having a plan in place for all
of it are all common topics of conversation by Ed Spears
IT disasters is essential to ensure quality
among data center operators. Ensuring the service, regardless of the circumstance, in
power their IT resources rely on is both todays IT-dependent world. Calendar
dependable and clean, sadly, can sometimes Vendor Index
be an afterthought.
All rights reserved. No portion of DATA CENTER Journal may be reproduced without written AN EDM2R ENTERPRISES, INC. PUBLICATION ALPHARETTA, GA 30022
permission from the Executive Editor. The management of DATA CENTER Journal is not PHONE: 678-762-9366 FAX: 866-708-3068 | WWW.DATACENTERJOURNAL.COM
responsible for opinions expressed by its writers or editors. We assume that all rights in DESIGN : NEATWORKS, INC ALPHARETTA, GA 30022
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All submissions are subject to unrestricted right to edit and/or to comment editorially.
FEATURE
story
V
structure. And not surprisingly, a less
irtualization has taken the complex infrastructure is generally less
data center industry by storm, expensive to build and to operate. Simpler
and it is closely followed by is (often) cheaper, but for large companies
its cousin: consolidation. to meet their IT needs with just a few data
Companies have sought to centers, those facilities must be very large.
reduce infrastructure (and thus capital and
operating costs) by focusing IT operations Local incentives
onto fewer, more highly utilized machines. The operating costs of servers over
Naturally, then, this process leads to a their lifetimes now outweigh their associ-
broader view of data centers in general: ated capital costs, meaning that the price
large companies operating multiple data of energy is as great a concern as the cost
centers may choose to focus their facilities of the equipment. So when an opportunity
into fewer and ever larger implementations to tap into low energy prices or other cost
in hopes of reducing costs and complexity. incentives, it pays companies to do so at
Depending on their locations, implement- large scale. In particular, low energy prices
ing fewer mega data centers may enable a are a tremendous draw, particularly when
company to take advantage of certain local utilities provide long-term price guaran-
benefits, like (relatively) low energy prices, tees. Another major enticement is local tax
tax incentives, climate, or availability of incentives. Many governmentsthanks to
alternative energy sources. their profligate spending, which has earned
Ultimately, mega data centers are them crushing debt loadsare looking
the result of a push to minimize cost and for any and all sources of revenue to keep
thereby maximize profit. Although the operating. Mega data centers bring the po-
reasons that companies like Apple, Face- tential for a flood of property tax revenue,
book, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and other as well as jobs and an impetus for further
organizations (like the U.S. federal govern- development, to such locations. Thus, these
ment) are moving toward a small number governments are often willing to offer
of giant data centers instead of a hodge- breaks on property taxes or sales taxes
podge of smaller facilities are not always for equipment. And companies are often
expressed in terms of dollars. Motivations ready to oblige by sourcing their mega data
like a reduced environmental impact (say, centers in such locations, taking advantage
from locating a data center in a lower- of these savings. And again, the larger scale
temperature climate to reduce energy spent the deployment, the greater the savings
on cooling), improved green reputation, companies can in effect stock up on data
availability of alternative power sources center capacity, just as any good shopper
(like hydroelectric or geothermal) and oth- would.
ers may be trotted out. And to some extent,
certain companies may pursue these at the Free cooling
expense of some profit, but companies are Although ASHRAE guidelines enable
ultimately in business to make money, and free cooling year round for many loca-
that motivation will underlie most of their tions, these benefits only apply to certain
actions, regardless of any stated reasons. allowable temperature classes. For the
Thus, data center consolidation recommended range (even though it was
which is driven by the desire to eliminate recently expanded) some locations offer
unneeded infrastructure and to reduce greater potential for free cooling than oth-
energy consumption, thus lowering capital ers. These conditions thus push the trend
and operational costsis generally moti- toward centralization. By locating facilities
vated by the same or similar factors relative in fewer deploymentspreferably in
to consolidation at the server or rack level. cooler climatescompanies can scale their
The following are some specific reasons for savings. Why not build a single large data
this trend. center in a cool climate with relatively low
energy rates and tax incentives (if you can
Reduced complexity grab all those in the same place!) instead
A distribution of IT resources across of a number of data centers in a variety of
multiple locations has its benefitsbut it locations having a variety of economic and
also has concomitant complexities. The other conditions.
general trend of consolidation seeks to
enterprisesrely more heavily on their may still drive the growth of mega data companies. n
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I
feel your pain. Your current backup application came out Top five issues in analyzing backup and
when PONG was all the rage in computer games, and you are DR costs:
keeping it running with spit, glue, duct tape, bailing wire, and
many long nights and weekends. You have no real disaster 1) The backup target:
recovery (DR) strategy to speak of other than shipping tapes Tape sucks for recovery, but its great for archives. For every
off site, and the last time you really tested DR with any reasonable 20 terabytes of production data with a 2 percent change and 3 per-
hope of success was when your kids were still in grammar school. cent growth rate and using a traditional backup operation of daily
The amount of data you need to protect is doubling, your tape incremental and weekly full backups, you need to manage 110 tera-
drives work occasionally, and the person who wrote all the scripts bytes of tape media. Therefore, a shop with 100 terabytes would
to provide at least some level of automation just found another job. need 550 terabytes of tape (100 x 110 = 550). Your goal should be
Happy New Year. Although this sounds like a comedy of errors, to include tape as an archive storage tier, so you can minimize the
these are the cards that are dealt to many a backup administrator. need to recover from tape.
An organizations data is its lifeblood. Any corporate and
government executives understand this but still are unwilling to 2) Infrastructure and time:
allocate the right budget to the IT department to protect it. Why? The time required to backup your datacenter is equal to the
Backup and DR are insurance policies. They do nothing to current capacity of all the applications needing protection divided
enhance a business organizations bottom line or its mission. The by the performance in terabytes/hour of your current backup solu-
process is a necessary evil, just like going to the bathroom. If IT tion. The performance metrics must include the entire data path:
managers could, they would enjoy the meal and pay someone else network, backup server, storage, and backup target (tape or disk) as
to go potty for them. Why do you think cloud computing is mak- a whole. You could buy the fastest backup target on the planet, but
ing an impact? It allows IT to outsource the hard stuff to someone if you cant feed it fast enough it doesnt help a bit. Remember that
else so the core team can focus on the mission at hand which the time to recover using traditional approaches is usually twice
brings up the reason I am writing this. the time to back up.
In order to understand whether outsourcing backup and
DR to a cloud provider makes sense, you need to understand how 3) The network:
much it costs you today to provide a similar service level. This Your wide area network (WAN) needs to be robust enough to
holds true for determining whether the cost of that new solution is handle the amount of data change you have on a daily basis. WAN
internal or outsourced. If the solution will replace your old one and bandwidth should be measured for peak loads so that critical batch
make your quality of life much better, how do you justify the cost processing periods, such as end-of-month or end-of-year process-
to accounting? The goal is to create a win/win message for finance. ing data, are not at risk. This is why WAN costs can be the most
Yes, the solution does cost $X, and it will enable me to stay home expensive part of a good DR strategy.
drinking beer at night, but I can prove it will save us $Y in the long
run while providing a much more robust recovery paradigm for 4) The building and the plan:
our applications. The DR target site must be able to handle peak workloads,
Here are a few handy tips to validate any new technology even if in a degraded fashion, for all the critical applications the
solution to determine whether the cost of implementing it would company requires; and it must be available in a timeframe that
be justified. supports continuity of operations at minimal impact to the busi-
advanced design
versatile
solution
By investing in state-of-the-art manufacturing
technology, the BURNDY tradition of
innovation continues with products that are
better suited for todays needs.
For example, our engineers saw a way to replace multiple
grounding products with just one SUPER-CLAMP RaisedTM
10 Power Protection
Myths Debunked
An Uninterruptible Separation of Fact and Fiction By john collins
B
udgeting for electricity, securing adequate supplies cent to 8.3 percent under absolute specifications. That means that
of it and finding ways to use less of it are all common what utility services promising 208-phase voltage actually deliver
topics of conversation among data center operators. can range from 191 to 220 volts.
Ensuring the power their IT resources rely on is both And, in the U.S., utility power is only 99.9 percent reliable,
dependable and clean, sadly, can sometimes be an which translates into a likely nine hours of utility outages every year.
afterthought.
The truth is, the problems and risks associated with power
are intensifying as virtualization and movement to the cloud place A brief outage wont hurt my
an increasing amount of stress on storage systems, servers and MYTH bottom line
#2
network devices, which use components so miniaturized that
they fault and fail under power conditions that earlier generation Reality Losing power for as little as a
equipment easily withstood. quarter second can trigger events that may
At one point in time, IT merely played a supporting role in keep IT equipment unavailable for anywhere
the enterprise. However, it is now absolutely central to how most from 15 minutes to many hours.
companies compete. When IT systems are down, core business pro- And downtime is costly. Some experts believe the U.S. economy
cesses quickly come to a standstill. The cost of power and cooling loses between $200 billion and $570 billion a year due to power
has spiraled out of control in recent years, and data center managers outages and other disturbances.
are typically held responsible for achieving high availability while According to Price Waterhouse research, after a power outage
simultaneously reducing power costs these can be two very dif- disrupts IT systems:
ficult and conflicting aspects to manage, however, highly-efficient 33+ percent of companies take more than a day to recover
UPS systems can help with that goal, and products are available 10 percent of companies take more than a week
today that were not an option even after a few years ago. It can take up to 48 hours to reconfigure a network
In order to rationalize the costs associated with such up- It can take days or weeks to re-enter lost data
grades, and to properly select a system for your facilities needs, 90 percent of companies that experience a computer disas-
common misconceptions associated with UPS systems must first ter and dont have a survival plan go out of business within
be debunked. The resulting realities, a combination of factors that 18 months
have been influenced by industry trends and technology advances, Financially, power outages can mean substantial losses for
are often complicated by marketing hype, which can make that the the company affected. According to the US Department of Energy,
decision very difficult. when a power failure disrupts IT systems:
The following will address a few particular myths weve 33 percent of companies lose $20,000$500,000
heard, and use the subsequent truths to outline the best practices 20 percent lose $500,000 to $2 million
for selecting a power protection solution for any IT application. 15 percent lose more than $2 million
DA
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DESIGNING A
MEGA
Data center
by DON BEATY, P.E.
The optimal designs for mega data centers require a holistic approach since
there is so much to be potentially gained by considering a broader range of
tradeoffs across all fields. In our experience, we have always found it beneficial
to invest in a microclimate analysis due to the high concentration of heat
sources (cooling system heat rejection, generator heat rejection, electrical
equipment heat rejection, etc.). The microclimate analysis becomes even more
important and challenging as the density (e.g. KW / rack) increases.
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Its a SNAP. Weve combined our Sentry PDUs with
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you drive energy efficiency, uptime and ROI.
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B
uildings are filled with multiple found running on IP-based networks. This have been made better with the creation
systems including IT, security, is great news for data center owners and of separate IP networks under the guise of
telephony, building manage- managers since taking the step to merging integrated systems; but what has also been
ment, building monitoring, separate systems onto the IP network saves created are some real IP-based monsters
automation and much more. time and money. Yet, there are still some in our data centers and buildings. Ideally,
These systems have always had their own aspects to carefully consider as the road to it would be optimal to get these different
management staff, infrastructure, software integration poses challenges along the way. topologies under real measurable control
and hardware, licenses, reporting features For building systems integration to work, using cost-justifications such as shared
and capabilities, maintenance agreements, certain steps must be taken. resources, shared staff, shared data, shared
head-end space, monitors, servers and reporting and increased buying power as
other peripheral devices. However, techni- Moving to IP Systems Is Only primary drivers. But something is prevent-
cally speaking, theres no need to have all of the First Step, Heres Step ing this, or at least slowing it down. What
these separate components to run a facility. Two force is so powerful that it can stop us from
In fact, today more can be done with less; saving money, sharing data, and mitigating
and Internet Protocol, a common means Theoretically, if systems were moved downtime in the data center environment?
for systems to communicate, is the enabler over to IP, they should now be integrated.
for this. Right? Not quite. When looking at all the What is the Speed Bump?
In the past few years, theres been a separate networks in todays facilities, data
shift of non-IT and formerly non-IP sys- center or otherwise, many companies are The problem of true integration of
tems porting over to the Internet Protocol surprised to see that there is still a negative data center, IT, and building systems is not
and traditional IT Network. Additionally, impact even with the change to IP. And technology, nor even technical. Rather,
there has always been a slow shift of change what is that negative impact? While IP itself it is cultural. The root of the problem
for systems to move on to unified plat- is a graceful and relatively elegant transport is competition, as competitiveness has
forms, even though the technical capabili- means, it can result in multiple disparate been rooted into the internal workings of
ties have existed to make this shift long ago. IP networks running through facilities, corporations right down to the department
However, this shift is moving much faster with lots of them still managed by separate level bowling team. Whats been created
now. Todays building and data center departments, using separate infrastructure, are separate departments with separate
management systems, automation and running on separate servers with differ- responsibilities, with different reporting
monitoring systems, security and access ent software packages and licenses, over structures, with the staff placed in separate
control networks, overhead paging, even different wired and wireless pathways. In rooms, in separate buildings, some with
clocks and employee time-keeping can be short, a bunch of separate non-IP networks separate entrances, with separate operating
Eat
i t hought i was
t he m ost e fficient
m achine h ere,
t hen t he e aton
9e ups a rrived.
1.866.631.4238 www.pducables.com
www.datacenterjournal.com
DESIGN
corner
Green Design
Features for
Data Centers
By dan prows
M
any companies are working Green data centers can come in
toward reducing their en- many shades of green as is relative to
ergy consumption and en- their level of sustainable design features
vironmental impact of their and construction. Achieving a specific
facilities, and sustainability level of a green building certification
is fast becoming an important part of makes it easier for most to relate to the
company culture. The increasing number of greenness of a project. However, at the
data centers nationally and the emergence present time green building rating sys-
of the mega data center has pushed data tems are not specifically designed to ad-
center energy consumption to a new level. dress the true nature of data centers, i.e. a
This energy consumption and its effect on no frills building with few occupants and
the environment, has data center compa- large energy consumption. The credit an existing building. Moreover,
nies seeking greener and more sustainable weighting of the rating systems is not in renovation most often utilizes existing
ways to address their concerns. balance when it comes to rating the value infrastructure and local services within
Every data center project has differ- of credits relative to their environmental a developed community. In short, reuse
ent requirements and circumstances, and benefit in data centers. To accomplish trumps recycling, energy efficiency design,
finding the appropriate balance between equilibrium, the majority of the credits and sustainable product selection when
corporate responsibility, sustainability, need to address the issue with the largest deciding which green features provides the
marketability, first costs, and return on environmental impact, energy. most substantial environmental benefit.
investment, will always be a challenge. It is important to understand that
Because sustainable design is relatively new
and corporate leadership is usually limited
energy is more than operational consump-
tion. While energy efficiency in operations
Location
Location, location, location! Data
in high level sustainable design experience, is a vital piece to solving the sustainability centers are built in different locations for
companies tend to struggle with under- puzzle, the most important type of energy different reasons. If reducing heat load with
standing where to begin when designing to consider for the highest levels of sustain- the least amount of power is the primary
a green project that provides substantial ability is embodied energy. To address objective, go with the simplest solution.
environmental benefit. embodied energy as well as other chal- Free cooling! It costs nothing to use the
The first step in achieving a sustain- lenges relative to green data center design, natural environment to cool and there
able project is to obtain the Owners com- consider the following as a starting point in are no mechanical parts to fail. Select a
mitment to reaching a certain level of sus- achieving your sustainability goals. location in a cold climate (preferably in an
tainability and then establishing associated established area) reducing the external heat
goals to reach that level as early as possible.
Several of the greenest options involving
Renovation
This may come as a surprise to many,
loads on the building. If deepest darkest
Canada isnt the right fit, find a location
data center design and construction are but renovating an existing building is argu- with prevailing winds to take advantage of
applicable only to the pre-design phase. Lo- ably the greenest feature a company can passive cooling, or a cold water lake that
cation, site selection, and new construction make when choosing to bring a new data can facilitate a closed loop chilled water
vs. renovation decisions are all decisions center online. Regardless of how energy system.
that must be addressed early in the project efficient a new building is designed, the
timeline and play a vital role in developing
a sustainable project. So when these deci-
embodied energy required to design and
construct a new facility dwarfs the amount
One
IT Systems
hidden opportunity that IT
sions are being made, think energy. of embodied energy needed to renovate systems enjoy is the speed at which new
At the top of the data center world are the mega data centersfacilities whose
massive scale dwarfs the computer closets (by comparison) of most companies. But
the trend toward larger data centers among some large companies contrasts with
another trend elsewhere in the industry: many data centers are getting smaller. The
means and motivations of these companies that are downsizing their IT operations
vary, but a number of driving factors play a major part in most cases.
Does Consolidation Make many data centers into a smaller number of Economic/Financial
Data Centers Bigger or facilities will most likely end up with larger Factors
Smaller? data centers; a smaller company consolidat-
M
ing within a data center (i.e., eliminating Money (or, more specifically, a lack
any larger companies excess server capacity; replacing older of it) is a major motivation in companies
(and organizations like servers with fewer, higher-power servers; moving generally toward smaller data
governments) are seek- and so on) is likely to end up with a smaller center designs. Here are a few of the driving
ing to reduce costs and data center footprint (for example, it might factors.
operating complexities by convert freed space into an office area).
consolidating their data centers into fewer, Thus, consolidation seems to be driv- The economy isnt recovering as
larger facilities. In some sense, then, con- ing two disparate trends, but a number of much as you might think.
solidation is driving increased data center factors demonstrate clearly the reasons why Although employment numbers may
size. But it is also a driver toward smaller many companies are aiming smaller instead be down slightly, they are still high (and
data centers, since within a data center it of larger. Individually, smaller may simply they dont really represent the employment
involves reduction in the amount of infra- mean designing a smaller data center than situation accurately), the overall economy
structurean attempt to do more with less. might otherwise be expected, moving to a is seeing little by way of recovery. Many
The difference in the result of consolidation smaller facility or consuming less coloca- companies are still struggling with tight
depends on the situation: in some sense, tion space, or actually reducing data center budgets, and for those that view IT as a
consolidation can mean two different footprint within an existing facility. means and not an end, data center expenses
things. A large company consolidating are often viewed as necessary evils. IT bud-
Enterprise Backbone
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2012, Belden Inc.
gets are thus unlikely to see much in the tion of running a data center a headache nies in extreme cases. Like electricity, the
way of increases, requiring the data center to companies concerned about expenses. cost of water is unlikely to see a decrease
manager to do more with less. Further- For those that do operate or plan to build anytime soon, further driving downsizing
more, the lack of funds makes construction a data center, smaller sounds better from as a means to stay within budget.
costs even more burdensome, and with the perspective of cost: less infrastruc-
outsourcing offering a pay-as-you-go op- ture generally means lower costs. Higher Virtualization
tion, many companies see a way out of the operating costs also naturally puts a pinch
capital costs of building a data center. on available capital, meaning a companys If consolidation is peanut butter,
maximum capacity is decreased. then virtualization is chocolatein many
Energy costs continue to rise. ways, they go together. Virtualization pools
Name your reasonpolitical tensions Data centers eat water, too. compute, storage and networking resources
in the Middle East, inflation, regulations, Energy is the most widely reported and reallocates them according to demand
lack of new energy production infra- resource consumed in large quantities by in a manner independent of the capacity of
structure, growing demand in emerging
1X The Data Journal data centers, but water is used by many a given server or storage drive, for example.
5.375 x 7.85economies
with photoor all300
of thedpi
aboveenergy as well. Some consume large amounts of This approach thus enables greater utiliza-
costs continue to rise, making the proposi- water, putting pressure on utility compa- tion rates for equipment, meaning a facility
can generally get by with less equipment
(and thats where consolidation comes
Sherman, TexaS in). As long as the combined resources
can handle peak workloads, a company
can minimize its IT infrastructureand,
concomitantly, supporting infrastructure
like power distribution and UPS systems,
cooling and floor space.
Free Cooling
Exceptional 693,404 sq. ft., fully air-conditioned, high-tech
ASHRAEs recently expanded temper-
manufacturing facility on 76.765 acres
ature and humidity guidelines enable wider
Concrete floor with 100-200 PSI throughout (8"-12") use of free coolingyear round in many
locations (for certain allowable ranges). In
Ceiling heights ranging from 16' to 45'
any case, greater reliance on air-side or wa-
Steel I beam columns; masonry and steel walls with brick veneer ter-side economization means less need for
175,028 sq. ft. includes manufacturing area, administrative appendage, mechanical cooling infrastructure. In turn,
central utility building, and shipping/receiving this means a smaller data center. Likewise,
Compressed air supplied to the manufacturing portion via three compressors even for traditional cooling infrastructure,
best practices enable greater efficiency,
Water and Sewer supplied by the City of Sherman (water - 1.633 million
which reduces the amount of equipment
gal/day, sewer - 1.141 million gal/day)
needed to maintain a given operating
100% wet sprinkler system temperature. In both cases, best data center
Fiber optic capable and served by two T-1 lines (two fibers in a bundle) practices enable reduction in data center
source circuit with no redundancy size for a given capacity relative to a facility
Electrical power supplied by TXU/Oncor Electric: Total of 93.4 MVA with two that doesnt implement such practices.
independent 138KV feeds and four substations
One CAT 3516 back-up generator; separate A. Manufacturing: 625' x 250'
Modularity
B. Office: 250' x 250' x 342'
switch house, equipped with an C. Shipping/Receiving:
A modular approach to data center
automatic transfer capability 150' x 150'
design and construction enables right-
Truck docks available for shipping/ sizing of infrastructure so that a company
receiving, the central utility building, need not invest as much capital now to
chemical storage building, manufac- meet future needscapital that essentially
turing, and administrative appendage is wasted (and loses value) over the time
Conveniently located on Highway during which the equipment goes unuti-
75 and just 45 miles north of Dallas/ lized (or underutilized). By only adding
Fort Worth Metroplex capacitywhether it be uninterruptible
For more information contact: power supplies, cooling infrastructure, IT
BINSWANGER resources or even floor spaceonly when
1200 Three Lincoln Centre, 5430 LBJ Freeway, Dallas, TX 75240 it is needed, companies can operate a data
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Worldwide Coverage www.binswanger.com/sherman center that is as small as possible, saving
both capital and operational expenses
Natural Disasters
Are Not the Only Reason to Have a
Data Recovery Plan By robert gast
I
ts no surprise news stories are Although unplanned downtime (such frustration for Blackberry users. But in
prioritized. The more violent they as those associated with natural disasters addition to users being inconvenienced in
are, the more public interest and or hardware and software failures) can be situation like this one, the financial losses
the higher they rank. So it stands devastating, the majority of system and that result from a maintenance related out-
to reason disasters of magnitude, data unavailability is actually the result age can be substantial.
especially natural disasters make front of planned downtime due to required
page news. But another reason newspapers maintenance. In fact, statistics show that 2. Maintenance:
lead with disasters is because stories of this unplanned downtime accounts for only These are tasks involved with
nature trigger empathy. As human beings about 20 percent of all downtime, whereas program and software activities, such as
we readily identify with others affected by planned downtime is close to 80 percent. program fixes. Software, with its many op-
tragedy, even envision our own survival in Take the case of a 24/7 enterprise. Per- erational layers, is a very complicated piece
comparable situations. forming critically important hardware, of the computing puzzle. Rarely are any
For IT professionals, theres a similar software, security and data maintenance two implementations of business-critical
correlation when it comes to IT disasters. can be tricky when production servers software systems exactly the same. Apply-
As a group, we understand the magnitude cant be taken down during business hours. ing bug fixes, point releases or full releases
of responsibility involved in restoring pri- Yet, even with a round-the-clock busi- can be sketchy, and sometimes serious
mary production servers or recovering lost ness, downtime is essential for backups problems go unnoticed for days or weeks.
data in the aftermath of an IT disaster. This and implementing various software If the base software systems have been
is because we know all too well that unin- upgrades to protect the business and keep it customized, the implementation window
terrupted flow of accurate, real-time infor- competitive. and success uncertainty factor increase
mation can critically cripple a business. When it comes to planned downtime, exponentially.
Yet, while events like fires, floods, hur- there are three primary subsets:
ricanes and tornadoes are perhaps the most 3. Unique periodic events:
news-worthy for the general public, in the 1. Normal IT-infrastructure This refers to deployments of hard-
IT world, theyre just a few of the circum- Operations: ware and software, which can usually be
stances responsible for bringing a company These are activities that are performed scheduled with substantial lead-time. The
to a standstill. Downtime from power fail- on a regular basis to maintain system pro- reality is several undertakings have to go
ures, malicious software attacks, disgruntled tection and health. For instance, e-mail is a right for a server migration or new software
employees and a host of other problems can mission-critical system for most companies implementation project to go well. Its a
be just as devastating to a corporate data and for good reason. Recently, a delay in mistake to think any piece of hardware or
environment. For the most part, when busi- e-mail delivery for BlackBerry users on all software will come alive after following a
ness stops, costs mount quickly. U.S cell phone networks caused enormous few simple steps. Often despite good plans
R
mitigating the risks is essential for a company ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) ight now, your data center is under
to stay afloat in todays competitive market. CRM (Customer Relationship attack! You may not believe it
By following a few basic steps, protecting Management) because things appear to be running
your data can be a fairly straight-forward and HRM (Human Resource Management) smoothly. The servers are accessible and
doable task. Email users are not complaining. Everything
Web apps and content management appears to be under control. However...
just beyond that wall, above those
Establish a Co-location systems
ceiling tiles, or under the raised floor is
Facility a disaster waiting to strike. Even worse,
Keeping this in mind, begin by deter- it has your name written all over it!
Most IT professionals agree its just mining and ranking the companys systems
good business practice to have a plan B when from most critical to least. Then, start with a No one really knows when or how a
it comes to IT protection. For companies phased approach and steadily set up the co- disaster will strike. We just know the
with an approved business continuity plan location facility with the most critical first, potential is always there. So preparation
in place and a project budget to support it, rolling out the less critical ones over time. is critical to minimizing its impact on
establishing an off-site co-location facility is computers, networks, users and the
entire organization.
often the first step. Centralize Operations
Because a co-location facility is es-
Room Alert & TemPageR
sentially a completely duplicated hot site Finally, following the prioritizing of
ready to go at a moments notice, locality critical systems, consolidate and centralize AVTECH is the worldwide leader
and accessibility are primary considerations. remote servers to reduce the need for a sepa- in making monitors and sensors that
Equally important is having a clear vision on rate set of technical experts at each location
allow easy remote monitoring of
environmental conditions in computer
how the entire data center configuration will for regular maintenance. This also allows
rooms, data centers and other types of
be duplicated. Ultimately the goal in creating for a more efficient centralized management facilities. These conditions include:
a co-location is to provide a place to move a team to maintain your primary communica-
complex web of data and applications with- tion and maximize uptime. Temperature & Heat Index
out users experiencing any downtime regard- Whether in the aftermath of a di- Humidity
less of the reason for the switch. For instance, saster or recouping following a scheduled Flooding / Water
the same co-location facility used in disaster maintenance, the most important business Smoke / Fire
Main & UPS Power
recovery efforts can also be used for maxi- continuity task is resuming business critical
Room Entry, Motion
mizing uptime for business-critical systems operations. Start by determining where vul-
Relays, Cameras & More
and utilized to provide better management of nerabilities lie. Then, establish a co-location
the data center day-to-day operations. site ready for any interruption where critical When threatening conditions are
Once the location is chosen, hard- systems are given top priority. detected, AVTECH monitors will
ware and infrastructure need to be set up With a continuous stream of factors immediately notify managers via
to facilitate the next step, the transfer of necessitating both planned and unplanned
todays most advanced technologies,
enabling a timely support response
systems. This can be accomplished using downtimes, having a plan in place for all IT
or auto corrective action. This allows
tape, a removable disk, or with a continuous disasters is essential to ensure quality service, organizations to avoid or minimize
data protection product which enables you regardless of the circumstance, in todays IT- downtime, protect against costly
to replicate data from one or many locations dependent world. n hardware damage and eliminate other
and additionally allows the systems to be related expenses. With prices from $195
switched on demand. When this is com- About the Author: Robert Gast is an IT industry to $1195, there is a solution for every
pleted, the next task is determining when to analyst with Vision Solutions. As a technologist, organization and budget.
bring the servers online, to test, or configure author and speaker, he has been firmly anchored
them. in the IT industry for nearly three decades. Vision Call For A Free Catalog
Solutions is the worlds leading provider of
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First Windows, Linux, IBM Power Systems and Cloud
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vary from company to company depend- AVTECH.com
Cloud Initiatives
then, too. CIOs need to explain that
virtualization was only the beginning of
their companies journeys to private clouds.
C
fundamentally about leveraging the speed
and agility of virtualization with repeatable,
hief information officers this is less necessary than it once was. Last standardized, and highly optimized
understand private clouds and fall, for example, the Computing Technol- processes. Therefore, CIOs should move
the benefits associated with ogy Industry Association (CompTIA) infrastructure conversations to more
the technology, but they still surveyed a group of 500 IT and business compelling arguments about competitive
need to sell the initial invest- professionals and 400 IT firms. Among advantage in the market.
ment to other executives CEOs and chief its findings were positive indicators about
financial officers. To C-level leaders, the executive understanding of the cloud. The What challenges would private
CIOs ability to explain concrete return on 58 percent of executives and IT staff who cloud introduce? Communication is
investment and demonstrated value makes said they had significantly increased their the key to avoiding the pitfalls that can
all the difference between embracing cloud knowledge of the cloud suggests that the derail valuable initiatives before they ever
computing or abandoning cloud initiatives CIOs role as educator should actually be begin. CIOs should work hard to avoid
that could have been hugely beneficial. So shrinking. confusion about expectations, results
how can CIOs present the business-friendly However, there is still a serious dis- and deliverables. The creation of a cloud
requires people, processes and technology,
benefits of the private cloud to their bosses? connect threatening the adoption of private
and CEOs should be made aware of that
clouds. CIOs and business-focused execu- fact from the start. Process re-engineering,
The value of private cloud tives are not necessarily always on the same aligning business goals with IT objectives,
education page about this technology or its benefits. and ensuring the right measurements and
CIOs not only understand private clouds people are in place are essential to eventual
For starters, CIOs need to look at and the benefits associated with automa- success. Is the CEO on board? The CIO
themselves as educators. Some might feel tion and management solutions, but they needs to know early on in the initiative.
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ver the past decade, ap- efficiency of the IT infrastructure. In short, apply the following nine best practices for
plication delivery control- ADCs demonstrate what is possible when ADC deployments.
lers (ADCs) have become IT harnesses exponential increases in pro-
an integral part of the IT cessing capacity. 1. Establish performance
infrastructure. I played a role baselines.
in developing ADC technology at F5 Net- However, as Uncle Ben once told
works, where I led the design of the BIG-IP Peter Parker in Spider-Man, With great Because ADCs affect both the
v9 product and TMOS platform. Based on power comes great responsibility. ADCs network and applications, they are often
my previous experience with ADCs and my are powerful but complex products that blamed for performance problems. Per-
current focus on application performance have the potential to impact network and formance baselines for the virtual server,
management (APM), I have distilled nine application performance for better or or VIP, and for servers in the back-end
best practices for maximizing ADC perfor- worse. They perform significant content pool can help to verify whether the ADC
mance. These best practices provide insight transformations, rewrite IP addresses, is in fact responsible for performance
into tuning parameters, offer troubleshoot- change HTTP headers, split and aggregate degradations. If the VIP and back-end
ing tips for ADCs, and are supported by an transactions across TCP connections, pool members are processing transactions
APM solution that delivers comprehensive and directly serve cached content. If not over a similar time distribution, then these
real-time transaction analysis from L2 to carefully configured to match the unique performance baselines absolve the ADC
L7 across the network, web, database, and network topology and mix of applications and point to the network or application as
storage tiers of applications. running in a data center, ADCs can intro- the source of the issue.
duce performance issues that are incredibly
ADCs evolved from load balancers difficult to isolate and fix. 2. Analyze transactions in
that typically employed a simple catch-and- real time.
release system to buffer packets, make a Like many other in-line network-
load-balancing decision, and then release infrastructure devices, ADCs excel at Although ADCs use periodic service
the packets with some form of network intelligently moving and manipulating checks to monitor server health, this
address translation. ADCs brought applica- large volumes of traffic at high speeds but method seldom detects intermittent failures
tion awareness as well as a new architec- offer limited metrics to help in tuning or degraded performance. As a result, the
ture based on a high-speed, transparent performance or troubleshooting problems. ADC will continue to direct requests to
full-proxy, enabling IT teams to precisely Management and quantification of the these poorly performing servers. IT teams
manage the delivery of application traffic performance of a deployment is often a dis- can avoid this inherent undersampling
within the data center. ADCs can inspect, tant afterthought. These shortcomings can problem by continuously monitoring trans-
direct, and transform network traffic; cache be addressed with an APM solution that action performance in real time with an
content; scan for security threats; perform measures in real time how well applications APM solution. With trend-based alerts that
SSL encryption or decryption; and execute are delivered over complex network infra- detect anomalous behavior, IT administra-
an abundance of other tasks to dramati- structure. Equipped with these real-time tors can proactively fix problems before
cally improve the availability, speed, and performance metrics, IT teams can easily they affect end users.
Report Analytics:
Complementing Business Intelligence
For Data-Driven Business Decisions
By Michael morrison
With the explosion of available data at an organizations disposal, and despite the
overwhelming offerings available to harness these assets, companies of all sizes
continue to grapple with capturing and presenting the information they need in an
engaging and understandable format.
I
n an effort to make more informed business decisions, many people who use or rely on data derived from BI reporting software,
departments and individual line-of-business users have turned BI complexity is an ongoing problem. Cost was cited as the most
to Business Intelligence (BI) solutions as a way to mine data important factor in the BI software selection process (29%) followed
for both reporting and forecasting purposes and to address closely by ease of use (25%). The fact that cost and ease of use are
increasing, business issues. Unfortunately, with failure rates the most important drivers of software selection underscores the
hovering between 50% and 70% according to some studies, and challenges that complex BI solutions present to the people who
business users continually looking for new tools to help them easily consume the intelligence for making data-based decisions. These
get at the data they need, BI alone is not always the answer. challenges are driving the emergence of a new category of solu-
Its well known that BI software can provide advanced report- tions within the BI market that industry analysts refer to as Report
ing and predictive analysis, but for many day-to-day reporting tasks, Analytics.
its sophisticated functionality is overly complex. For tasks like From ERP-generated reports to even mainframe reports,
these, business users and self-service data consumers may find the organizations of nearly all sizes generate thousands of reports
technical challenges of BI a deterrent and as a result, often rely on monthly. But those reports are largely unusable without invest-
the IT department to generate custom reports. This not only creates ing time and money into burdensome processes. Report Analytics
more work for an already over-taxed IT group, but also introduces software leverages an organizations existing reports and reporting
delays and frustration for the users who require accurate and timely processes and provides consumers with a self-service environ-
information in order to perform their job effectively. ment. This allows them to extract the relevant intelligence from
The underlying issue is that business users often have all the any combination of these existing documents themselves and
information they need but that information resides in existing transform that information into dynamic, interactive reports for
reports and business documents scattered throughout the organiza- easy analysis and visualization. Whether the reports or business
tion. Since they have no easy way to dynamically organize, integrate documents originate inside an enterprise or from external sources
and analyze the intelligence trapped in these static documents, they like customers or suppliers, Report Analytics allows business users
are often left with less than ideal options. For instance, business us- to create, distribute and publish these reports without time delays
ers can rely on predefined BI reports from a data warehouse or en- or involving IT. And lets face it, with increasing cost pressures and
list the expertise of the IT department to program custom reports. decreasing revenues, anything that bolsters productivity is critical in
According to a recent Computing poll of more than 250 todays real-time business environment.
Report Analytics & BINot an Either/Or About the Author: Michael Morrison is President and Chief Executive
Proposition Officer at Datawatch Corporation, a provider of report analytics products
and services. For more information contact Michael at Michael_Morrison@
For many, Report Analytics sounds like it overlaps with Busi- Datawatch.com or visit www.datawatch.com.
ness Analytics or Business Intelligence. In all actuality they are com-
W
ith companies relying house more data in less hardware. Leading- Cloud computing can help organiza-
on IT more heavily than edge power companies can now integrate tions shrink their data centers in several
ever, data center capacity seamlessly with virtualization management ways. By offloading applications and infra-
requirements are steadily systems like vCenter of VMware or SCVMM structure to externally hosted public cloud
rising. Unfortunately, of Microsoft to enable live migration of vir- data centers that use the public Internet
so are the costs associated with data center tual machines in case of power events. This to exchange data, companies can reduce
construction and operation. As a result, is a significant improvement over the legacy the number of servers they must own and
organizations are increasingly searching for server shutdown capability that is no longer maintain in their own facilities. Alternatively,
ways to reduce the size of their data centers addressing the need for business continuity businesses can deploy private cloud solu-
without compromising their ability to meet which is inherent of any fully-virtualized tions that utilize the same basic technologies
business requirements. environment. UPSs and advanced power as the public cloud but reside on privately
The good news is that companies inter- management systems integrate seamlessly owned or leased servers. Through the so-
ested in following the trend toward smaller with software from VMware, Microsoft and phisticated use of virtualization and automa-
data centers can employ a wide range of other manufacturers to coordinate automatic tion, private clouds dramatically raise server
techniques to shrink their computing foot- migration or shutdown and infrastructure utilization rates, thereby lowering floor space
print. IT consolidation is best approached management in a virtual environment. requirements.
by a combination of three primary strategies,
design-level, white space and grey space. By 2. Deploy blade servers: 4. Leverage capacity
employing a combination of strategies in planning and asset
each area, data center managers can not only Often used in conjunction with vir- management tools:
make the most out of available footprint, but tualization, blade servers are plug-and-play
also assure mission-critical systems always processing units with shared power feeds, Deploying more server and power re-
have the clean, reliable electricity they need power supplies, fans, cabling and storage. By sources than is necessary wastes floor space,
to drive long-term success. compressing large amounts of computing but determining exactly how much capacity
Part one of this series discussed design- capacity into small amounts of space, blade is required can be difficult, especially if
level strategies for IT consolidation; the servers can dramatically reduce data center virtual servers or a private cloud infrastruc-
following will recommend six white space floor space requirements. They also enhance ture are used. Capacity planning and asset
tactics for shrinking the size of your data IT agility, since companies can simply plug management tools can help size a data center
center without shrinking its operating capac- in additional blades any time their process- optimally for current and near-term needs,
ity, availability or efficiency. ing needs grow. saving money while trimming the physical
footprint.
1. Utilize virtualization: 3. Leverage cloud
computing: 5. Implement a passive
Virtualizing and consolidating servers cooling scheme:
enables data centers to conserve floor space In an effort to lower overhead and
by replacing large numbers of lightly utilized increase IT efficiency, businesses around the Today, most organizations dissipate
devices with a smaller number of heavily world are rapidly adopting cloud computing data center heat by placing computer room
utilized devices. solutions. Indeed, some 15 percent of all IT air conditioning (CRAC) units around the
Consolidating storage resources spending in 2011 will be tied to cloud ser- periphery of their server floor. Unfortunate-
through virtualization can similarly reduce vices or infrastructure, according to analyst ly, CRAC-based cooling systems are often
a data centers footprint by enabling it to firm IDC. incapable of handling the greater power
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