I read recently that 50% of data centers will exceed capacity by 2012 - capacity being some variable combination of physical space, available power or available cooling. I am skeptical. I agree that if you project the current growth rate and available capacity and such, you could come up with the 50% number, but, we are far from status quo in our data center opportunities. I would hesitate to break out the wrecking ball. Today I see three, sort of distinct, opportunities that every data center manager should be looking at very hard before they write the big check for new real estate.
The first is efficiency. There are numerous avenues available here including consolidation (through virtualization), server refresh with more powerful ( and more efficient ) servers, and new approaches to cooling. If we quit thinking of the data center as a room, and start thinking of it as mainframe in a really big box, our approach to cooling can become radically different. Why make a data center comfortable? Instead just keep it within the boundaries of warranties. Nobody wants to be in there anyway. Data center optimization should be your first initiative - learn more opportunities for effiency from Werner.
The second path to capacity containment is external hosting. Improvements in network speed and reliability have nearly negated the need for local data centers, and many businesses already rely on geo distributed data centers. The shift to letting someone else build and run the raised floor area just makes sense. I think of the shift from self run data centers to commercially hosted data centers much like the shift from private to commercial suppliers for power and communications. It is also a shift that can be executed incrementally, moving just some of the application hosting to a service provider. A variation on this theme is the *SAAS*( software as a service) model - for example salesforce.com*. Virtually everyone in the application business is offering, or planning to offer soon, down the wire applications. Can you really run an email system for your staff better than a commercial system? By applying data center optimization and taking advantage of targeted hosting and SAAS, a data center owner can squeeze at least a few more years out of the current raised floor real estate.
For some businesses, or at least for some of their applications, commercial hosting or SAAS is not seen as viable. The application is too important a value differentiator, or the data is too big, or the work to special, or, whatever. This is especially prevalent in engineering and finance where large amounts of "top secret" compute are executed. Well, there is a solution here as well. When you need to "own every line of code, and how it is run" you can still shift some of the work to machines outside your data center and defer capacity expansion. I am referring to "cloud computing". The most recognized example of this is in the compute service offered by Amazon* that uses spare cycles in their server structure. I think we will see a growing number of large scale internet and service companies offering up clouds. With cloud computing you push a "unit of work" to be executed in a service providers compute cloud. With appropriate encryption and obfuscation, the "unit of work" can remain as secret and secure as you wish. The application, database, and work results remain under local management and control.
If I were looking at a shrinking capacity window( any type of capacity) in my data center, I would pay attention to these opportunities, and their variations. I would be looking very hard at my next $25,000,000 data center expansion to understand if an alternate approach and architecture could shift those funds to better use.
*Other brands may be claimed as the property of others
The Server Room Blog
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Adam Killam
in response to: RK Hiremane
Hi Ken,
Great article!
Do you have any pointers in regards to companies other than amazon who offer cloud computing services to financial services firms in Canada and the US?
Adam
J_Smith
in response to: RK Hiremane
Excellent points but I would like to offer a different perspective for the future of Data Center computing....transaction efficiency will redefine winners and losers in the future. Transaction processing, network throughput and application agility will determine the success or failure of most products in a services led economy...Financial Services, Credit Card Processing, internet commerce, health care supply chain, social networking, directory services and natural resource exchanges will all need to lead New Data Center creation and build out on an annual basis. In my opinion, the last Data Center is already out-dated and the next Data Center will have to be more efficient than previous versions and replaced or retired within 24-30 months. The future is a "Search for Processing Efficiency", a constant search for the most efficient and competitively advantaged "Engines of Profit" within a Data Center managers processor ecosytem. If that "Engine of Profit" is available to your competition at the same or similar price....then it is not much of an advantage. Just a thought....
K_Lloyd
in response to: Adam Killam
Glad you liked it. Amazon* has the most consumer friendly cloud(though still beta) that I know of ( click to purchase ) but others have, or are creating services, in this realm. The primary providers are from two groups today - those with "mega data centers" ( think Internet service providers) and those with lots of hosting experience ( think IT outsourcers ). If you have an existing relationship with any of the IT outsourcers, i encourage you to query them about their plans for "capacity for hire".
K_Lloyd
in response to: J_Smith
I really don't want to imply that companies should give up the competitive advantage of IT. I position using external resources ( hosting, saas, and clouds ) much like I would position buying externally created electricity. The advantage is in being able to use that electricty, and having access to nearly unlimited capacity removes any local constraints on growth. It is still be up to each business to get the most value from their data and processing, regardless of where the compute cycles happen.
matt
We are seeing more and more of our clients requesting external data centre services. It seems that many SME businesses are waking up to the idea of secure off site storage for their email and business critical applications. One of our clients, a large university in the U.K., have just moved their entire data centre to an external provider. For them its about passing the problems associated with power, cooling and connectivity over to someone else with a nice fat SLA.
neophyteblogger
Microsoft is working hard to offer "cloud computing" services as a part of its SaaS initiatives. It is setting up data centers worldwide.
Cost cutting through virtualization may also have to take into consideration the cost of electricity in nations; especially Asian countries, where the servers will be located. Uptime and security will be other issues.
K_Lloyd
in response to: neophyteblogger
I think we are experiencing a bit of an industrial revolution in computing. Data center managers should do all they can to optimize their use of resources, but also need to be aware of when and where to expand their use of hosted and cloud based resources.
Good points. I have also heard a phrase ‘follow the moon’ computing thrown around... With non-local datacenter not required, good capacity networking, virtualization and workload migration as required one can imagine in the future the workload is running on compute infrastructure in Asia while workforce in North America/Europe is utilizing it and vice versa when it is night for North America/Europe and day in Asia. Usually the cost of power during non peak hours in the night is less than peak rates in the day, there by providing some real benefits..