Intel Open Port: The Server Room Blog : Tags : density

Part four of three

Hopefully if you are watching this, you have already seen the first three installments I did on surviving data center crisis. A quick recap, the premise ( aka crisis ) is, You are running out of capacity.

According to Green Tech World, TMC 2007 "81% of IT mgrs will exceed capacity for power or space in the next 5 years".

In the first three video segments I spoke to three complementary approaches, that taken together could give you as much as 50X the data center capacity in your existing power and space .

Summarizing:

Data Center Crisis - How to Survive... Refresh with todays advanced high performing servers
Data Center Crisis - Part 2 - Using Virtualization... Virtualize and Consolidate
Data Center Crisis - Part 3 - Getting Dense- Use every Watt

Today I want to address two follow-up questions:

One, Where to go next when I used up all this new capacity?
Two, Who can help me get there?

The answers, it turns out, are related.

Moving outside the box is the 4^th^ strategy, and like the other strategies, it can be used anytime, in complement with the other three strategies.

Step to outside the boxness:

Moving outside the box allows it manager to move work that can be efficiently run elsewhere ( things like email ) outside the data center, and focus on the highest business value or least movable work inside.

As to who can help you get here. The system integrator/IT Outsourcer community offers support in all four strategies I have outlined.

My recommendation is to examine your situation, and your growth projection, and create a plan using all four strategies that will preclude the major capital expense of data center construction. Avoiding that 10 to 50 million dollar capital hit should be a very compelling proposal.

0 Comments Permalink Tags: datacenter, data_center, efficiency, virtualization, refresh, density

This is part three - the implication being that it is a sequel to part one and part two. It is. That said, each of the sections have their own messages and may or may not help your data center. The first part talked about the benefits of bringing in the latest hardware. Intel has been delivering performance increases at a pace beyond "Moore's Law". Getting rid of old, slow, inefficient servers can give you 2-12 times the capacity instantly. The second "episode" talked about getting everything you can from each server. Use virtualization and consolidation to make sure your servers are full and busy. The most efficient bus is a full bus ( this is a metaphor, I am talking about the big yellow things carrying students, not the circuitry in the box )

My focus in part three is on density. My operating premise is that the data center manager wants to get everything out of the current data center and avoid, or at least defer, construction of a new data center. If your in the data center construction business, this is not for you.

To get the most out of our data center we want to pack every server we can power into the space. You can do this by executing three actions. 1) Use every watt, 2) Build the right servers, and 3) Optimize HVAC. In many cases twice the servers can be crammed into the existing rack space even without adding power. If you are able to redirect your hvac power savings to your racks, your results could be even better.

So, we potentially got 5x capacity from new quad core servers, 5x capacity from boosting utilization with consolidation, and 2x capacity with higher density. My math says 5x * 5x * 2x = 50x the capacity ( in the same space and power!) video