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Server Virtualization Best Practices

With server virtualization now firmly embedded in the data center mainstream, a growing number of businesses are focusing on how to squeeze the greatest value out of their virtualized investments. Since server virtualization is based on the proposition that enhanced utilization will inevitably lead to improved efficiency, enhanced performance and lower costs, it’s only natural that virtualized server users will seek to reach a stage of optimal equilibrium. In a data center using virtualized servers, equilibrium is reached by hitting the sweet spot where systems run at maximum utilization levels without creating any instabilities or performance issues.

Here’s look at best practices followed by successful virtualized server adopters:

Do Your Homework. Performing some basic research, including initiating in-house discussions among stakeholders and approaching vendors for their suggestions, is a good way to guard against unexpected surprises. To keep your discussions on target, you should create a broad set of requirements that address short- and long-term goals.

Accept Reality. The projected consolidation rate affects just about every aspect of a virtualization project, including capacity, budget and executive buy-in. Unfortunately, when it comes to planning a virtualized server deployment, expectations have a nasty way of outdistancing reality. As they say in those diet commercials: “individual results may vary.” Try to be honest with your partners, and yourself, as you calculate your project’s estimated returns.

Remember, too, that even the most impartially developed consolidation estimates often fall short in the real world. So, no matter what your projection shows, don’t place more virtual machines onto your infrastructure than it safely can handle. A good rule of thumb is to add more infrastructure once server utilization hits 70 to 75 percent levels.

Temper Your Expectations. Too many CIOs and IT managers, even if they won’t admit it to themselves, view server virtualization as a gift from the blue that will turn their cash-strapped, barely functional data center into a streamlined powerhouse. While it’s true that reducing the number of physical servers needed to handle a given amount of work will help lower an array of data center expenses, server virtualization alone won’t fix fundamental data center deficiencies.

Don’t Forget the Support Resources.Virtualized servers still require real world support resources. High utilization levels leave almost no wiggle room for sub-par performance from power, cooling, networking and other vital services. Redundant resources and continuous service availability should be givens. If your current data center falls short in any of these areas, it’s time to make changes or find a new home.

Plan and Test. Don’t skimp on capacity planning and testing before rolling out virtual machines or assigning new applications to your virtual infrastructure. Thorough testing will also help your staff understand which virtual workloads are best suited to co-exist on a physical host.

Monitor and Record Everything. While businesses with non-virtualized servers can often sail through life using only rough estimates on server numbers and usage levels, the same attitude can lead to disaster in a virtualized data center. Virtual machines, by their sheer number, can lead to gross mis-estimations and confusion unless they are continuously monitored and recorded. You may also want to use a capacity analyzer to prevent virtual machine sprawl and to curb spending on licenses and support resources for unused machines.

Treat Your Mission Critical Applications With Respect. There’s a good reason why some applications are described as “mission critical”: it’s because your business can’t survive without them. Mission critical apps tend to consume the largest amounts bandwidth, memory, CPU cycles and storage, and will compete with other top apps for these core resources. While you may be able to get away with cramming dozens of lightly-utilized apps onto a single virtual machine, your most important and frequently accessed apps should be treated with more respect.

Don’t Forget the Human Factor. IT and data center staff members can provide valuable advice and insight on virtualization issues and challenges. Be sure to bring these people into your loop.

Keep Looking Forward. Advancements are still being made in server virtualization software and practices. Turn to thought leaders, including virtualized technology vendors, data center experts and staff members, to stay informed on new developments that can help you increase consolidation rates and get more value from your virtualized server environment.

Tips to Improve Network Performance

It’s no exaggeration to state that networks lie at the heart of every data center. Without fast, efficient and reliable network support, servers and storage systems become little more than expensive pieces of metal furniture. Obtaining the best possible network performance is an important first step toward ensuring overall data center excellence. But where to begin? Consider focusing on these vital areas:

Build a Solid Network Core.All types of networks, from WANs to SANs, depend on a solid network core. If the data center’s network core is inadequate, outdated, flawed or deficient in any significant way, network performance will suffer. As you begin working to enhance overall network performance, start at the network core.

Use Quality Hardware.The network hardware market has become increasingly commoditized over the past several years, with vendors and customers both seeking ever lower prices. Yet cutting corners too deeply can lead to serious equipment quality issues, resulting in sub-par network performance as well as high rates of equipment failure. The best approach is to make sure that you’re using “name brand” hardware, which over the long run is almost always a better value than “white box” equipment.

Opt for Fiber. Use fiber whenever and wherever possible for long-distance, high-demand applications. Fiber’s quality and performance benefits over copper cables, including lower attenuation rates and high interference resistance, are well known and documented. Whenever there’s a choice, opt for fiber.

Seek Network Diversity. Expecting a single network carrier to provide optimal service continuously and over every possible route is sort of like trying to fly around the world on a single airline—potentially convenient, yet realistically impossible. Network diversity, in the form of blended bandwidth, gives you multiple carrier and routing options that are critical for ensuring network performance excellence.

Monitor Performance. You can’t accurately judge network performance or quality without first gathering and analyzing relevant data. If don’t have the time, manpower or equipment to fully monitor network performance, it makes sense to get a qualified outsider to do the job. In fact, if you aren’t positioned to handle monitoring on your own, you’re probably failing in other network areas as well. If this situation describes your data center, consider using in a capable provider to manage your network services.

Don’t Forget the Apps. Most network data traffic originates and terminates at an application. Having apps that use data efficiently is an important yet often overlooked key to optimal network performance. Vendor-supplied configuration settings, for instance, may not match your particular needs. Check your apps’ network settings today and make whatever adjustments are necessary.

Embrace the New. It’s easy to fall into a rut and rely on the same network technologies and practices year after year. Businesses tend to get into this position by exercising excessive caution. While it’s difficult to abandon a functional network strategy in favor of something that may, at least at first glance, seem somewhat strange and risky, failing to innovate means that your organization may be failing to embrace performance enhancing and cost cutting new network approaches. Addressing this situation leads us to our next point…

Create a Test Bed. In a world of rapidly expanding and evolving network options,  accepting or rejecting new technologies without on-site testing reduces a key part of network planning to the level of throwing darts at a dartboard. Dedicating just a single server to testing new or enhanced network approaches will let you create accurate real world performance forecasts at a relatively modest cost.

Learn From Others. While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it can also be a great learning tool. Looking at how businesses similar to yours deploy and use their network services can help you improve your organization’s network performance. On the flip side, studying businesses that have experienced major network meltdowns can provide object lessons in how not to manage network operations.

How to Tell If Your Data Center Is Losing Momentum

Every business wants to have the best possible data center. Yet perfection, and even “really good performance levels,” are elusive goals. Furthermore, many organizations that do manage to reach a state of data center nirvana eventually discover that they’re unable to stay atop the pinnacle for very long.

Pushing a data center to new heights, achieving increasingly higher performance and efficiency levels, requires both hard work and constant vigilance. Fortunately, data centers don’t usually slide off the peak overnight. Subtle warning signs indicating that dry rot is beginning to set in can often be detected weeks, even months before the damage becomes obvious (such as when overburdened systems lead to costly errors or missed project deadlines).

As you strive to keep your data center up to speed and on track, here are five warning signs that indicate the wheels may actually be starting to spin off your operation.

1.  Complacency. When data center management and staff feels that things are rolling along “well enough,” there’s a good chance they really aren’t. To maintain operations at optimal levels, data center administrators should always be looking to improve services, systems and business practices. Like a shark, the only way a data center can survive and thrive is by continually moving forward.

2.  A Lack of Innovation.Trends like virtualization and cloud computing are sweeping across the IT landscape. But if your data center hasn’t even started evaluating these important new technologies, or has reflexively rejected them, it’s time to take a closer look. While you certainly don’t want to leap onto every emerging trend or fad, failing to take advantage of important new tools and practices is bound to lead to data center stagnation and, inevitably, backsliding. Promising new approaches need to be fully evaluated and tested. Technologies that are deemed premature for immediate adoption should be placed on a schedule for future consideration.

3.  Poor Data Center Planning.Data centers are usually designed to scale to an organization’s anticipated requirements over several or more years. Yet even the most carefully considered projections often fail to match long-term reality, falling victim to unexpected new technologies and practices. After all, how many data center planners in the 1980s or early 1990s anticipated advancements like cloud computing or virtualization? Back then, it was easy to find experts who viewed the Internet as an unimportant technology with relatively little commercial potential. Today, with a growing number of former data center-based services now heading directly into offices and onto the factory floor, it’s important to view the data center in a new light. Fresh approaches, like modular data centers based on a service-oriented model and data centers in multi-tenant facilities, with fast, easy access to enhanced network services and other essential resources, help businesses improve IT performance, scalability and flexibility while lowering costs.

4.  Failing to Automate. Inefficient data centers waste staff time on routine tasks that could be easily and cheaply automated. Automation and remote monitoring and management are now accepted IT practices. Besides allowing staff members to focus their efforts on business-critical work, automation and remote management services let businesses explore the possibility of creating data centers positioned at less costly and more efficient sites and to develop remote backup facilities that require only minimal human supervision.

5.  Inadequate Strategic Analysis. If it’s been years since your company’s management has taken a serious look at its data center strategy, including the role IT plays in both supporting business operations and creating new revenue opportunities, it’s time for a fresh start. IT leaders need to interact with other company managers and officers to alert them to future needs and opportunities. Most successful business have standing IT strategy committees or hold planning sessions at least once a year.

Cloud Computing: What Does and Doesn’t Fit

Running applications in the cloud can save your business both time and money, but only if you know what you’re doing. The truth is, not all business applications are equally suited for use in a cloud environment. That’s because the cloud works better with some types of applications—such as virtualized apps—than others.

Confused? Don’t know what to do? Don’t worry. Here’s a quick look at today’s leading application families and how well they fit into a cloud environment.

Virtualized Applications. Excellent fit.The cloud not only likes virtualized apps, it thrives on them. The best way of ensuring cloud success is to only use applications that have been optimized in terms of CPU, storage, interface and network performance. In fact, it’s best to conduct a data center-wide virtualization effort before even considering a move into cloud computing.

Database Intensive Applications. Good fit (But be careful.) Databases and cloud computing are compatible, but in some situations the two technologies don’t play well together. The cloud is highly suitable for storing large volumes of unstructured data and archival material, such as credit card and mortgage applications medical records and general file archiving.

On the other hand, high velocity database applications, running hundreds of thousands of transactions per minute—as database apps run by banks, retailers and other businesses often do—can struggle within the cloud. Such applications are governed by hardware limitations that exist inside all IT environments, so there’s often little or no benefit to sending them into the cloud. Check with your provider to see if your database application can thrive in the cloud.

Disaster Recovery Applications. Excellent fit. Cloud computing provides an ideal data recovery platform. Information stored safely in the cloud can be accessed anytime, anywhere. If a fire, flood or any other calamity strikes your business site—or even your entire community or state—your data will always be safe, undamaged and ready to use the instant you’re ready to restart operations.

Disaster recovery/business continuity experts have always advised businesses to regularly store a set of data backups at at least one remote location. Cloud storage takes this practice one step further by eliminating the need to find and pay for a secure storage facility while removing the cost and trouble of physically transporting backup media to the remote site. Cloud storage also allows data to be backed up continuously rather than periodically, greatly lessening the chance that any critical data will be lost forever.

Regulated Industry Applications. Good fit. (But be careful.)Businesses in tightly regulated fields, such as finance and healthcare, are increasingly using cloud technology to satisfy mandated data storage and data integrity requirements. Yet using the cloud to meet regulatory mandates requires using a provider that’s mindful of its customers’ demanding compliance needs. Not all cloud providers are able to meet industry-specific requirements, so you’ll need to discover how a provider will address your particular needs and responsibilities before committing to a service relationship.

Network Intensive Applications. Good fit. (But be careful.) You’ll need access to the fastest and highest quality network resources when moving a network-intensive application—one that frequently sends large amounts of data to or from other apps or services—to the cloud. Play close attention to network attributes such as capacity, latency, redundancy and routing flexibility when investigating a cloud services provider.

Bottom line. Cloud computing is arguably the most powerful and useful IT technology to arrive within the past decade. Cloud computing’s potential to help your businesses achieve new levels of cost and process efficiencies is virtually unmatched. What’s left for you to do is to use cloud computing in the areas where it’s most effective and while steering away from potential roadblocks.

Making it Modular

You’ve probably heard by now how a modular data center can provide a fast, flexible, reliable, cost effective and energy efficient way of deploying an always-on IT and network facility.

Modular data centers are gaining popularity because they can help any business gain more compute and network capacity without having to build or expand a traditional data center. You can put a modular data center almost anywhere, such as next to your headquarters building, on a spare piece of land, on a company parking lot or inside a warehouse. The costs are low and the benefits are high.

For the money, a modular data center lets you pack a lot of computing power into an often surprisingly small space. But what you may not have heard is how there are two basic ways of creating a modular data center, one of which provides many more benefits than the other.

Compare these two approaches:

Approach A

This is the original way of deploying a modular data center. You go to a provider—typically a major IT systems vendor—that offers a pre-built structure that’s fitted out with racks and a central aisle for servicing. Two or more of these structures can be “snapped” together to provide as much capacity as you require.  The power and cooling units are also modular and attach directly to the structure (often to its roof).

With this approach, the modular solution is really little more than a piece of hardware supplied by the vendor. As the owner, you’ll be expected to handle all of the necessary ownership obligations, such as arranging financing and figuring out depreciation. You’ll also be responsible for the modular facility’s placement, maintenance and management. In other words, you’re more or less on your own.

Suddenly, the benefits associated with having a modular data center don’t seem quite as compelling.

Approach B

A better, more modern and efficient approach to modular data center deployment is to turn to a provider with multiple years of experience supplying data center services to enterprises of all types and sizes. By licensing your modular data center as a service, you can take advantage of all of the concept’s benefits—such as fast, convenient and strategic deployment, easy scalability and integrated power, cooling and network systems—while effectively shedding upfront acquisition costs in return for a pay-as-you-go service. You’ll also be able to shift data center management responsibilities to the provider while you focus on business operations.

Unlike a hardware or software vendor that suddenly decides to get into the data center business, a service provider understands that customer support doesn’t end on the day the modular facility is delivered. By partnering with a skilled and dedicated data center specialist, you’ll always get the support you need when you need it.

Unfortunately, most data center providers haven’t yet fully embraced the modular concept; many industry players even view the trend as a direct threat to their core business model. So when looking for a modular data center service provider, make sure that the company offers a custom, integrated, modular structure that can be scaled to almost any capacity. Also check to see that vital support resources such as power, cooling and networking are integrated into the structure and not supplied as afterthoughts. The modular unit should also be able to accommodate any IT infrastructure.

Next, check the provider’s commitment to long-term support. The critical infrastructure services required to operate an always-on data center—including primary and backup power generation, power conditioning, cooling and network connectivity—should all be supplied by the provider. Finally, be sure that the modular offering is supported by a service level agreement (SLA) that guarantees 100 percent uptime.

Bottom Line

Along with virtualization and cloud computing, the modular data center model is a top-three data center trend. In fact, it’s generally believed that the modular concept represents the future of all data centers.

If you haven’t already started about thinking about deploying a modular data center, there’s a good chance you may find yourself doing so sometime in the future. When that day arrives, be sure you follow the right approach.

The following pages are related to Modular Data Centers which may help you learn more

Modular Data Center Services
Modular Data Center Platform
i/o Anywhere video

Transitioning To a Virtual Data Center

The data center is dead! Long live the data center!

A major benefit of virtual machines and cloud computing is that businesses no longer have to fret about where their servers are located. Your organization can be based in Arizona, New York, the U.K. or even Antarctica and have the same level of server access and availability as a company that has a traditional data center sitting in its basement.

Yet even virtualized servers accessed via the cloud still have to exist somewhere in the physical world—and that “somewhere” is almost always a data center. Sound confusing? It’s not. While virtualization and cloud computing may be killing the data center as we’ve all come to know and love it over the past couple of decades, it’s also giving birth to a new type of data center, a virtual facility that efficiently serves multiple customers located just about anywhere.

Virtual data centers take nearly all of the work of out designing, equipping and managing a data center. All that’s left for you to do is contact the provider and order a specific amount on processing, memory and network bandwidth resources.

Considering the convenience and cost savings a virtual data center creates, it’s no surprise that providers are now popping up all over the place. Finding the right provider for your business, however, requires both careful research and some introspection.

Since a virtual data center can exist almost anywhere, location usually isn’t an important decision factor when choosing a provider. And price can’t be the sole determining factor, since it’s very easy for a provider to drive down costs simply by supplying inferior service. Actually, the only way of ensuring that a virtual data center will perform better than an on site facility, at an equal or lower cost, is by verifying all of the critical details beforehand.

Here’s what you need to understand and look for:

Scalability. Using a virtual data center is all about scalability—being able to dial resources up and down in synchronization with business needs. A good provider will let you buy service in small chunks at reasonable price points. While larger customers that order more resources typically receive quantity discounts, the provider shouldn’t hit you with special fees when you need to occasionally raise or lower a service setting.

Availability.You undoubtedly want your virtual data center to be available on a 24×7 basis. A good sign that a provider is committed to consistent availability is the use of industry-leading, “name brand” products, including servers, storage systems, network equipment and virtualization software. Also check to see if the provider is using state-of-the-art and redundant power, cooling and backup technologies. Finally, don’t settle for anything less than a 100 percent service level agreement (SLA).

Flexibility. Is the provider willing to work with you to meet your specific needs, or does the company simply offer a menu of “take-it-or-leave-it” package deals? An unwillingness to accommodate your requirements and preferences is a sign that the provider is putting profit before service.

Network. A virtual data center’s value hinges on the quality of its network service. Expect the provider to offer carrier-neutral access to a wide selection of networks. Remember, however, that network support is more than a simple numbers game. Make sure that the provider has made arrangements with an array of tier-one carriers, the ones you are most likely to use.

Support. Who will you go to when you have a problem with your virtual data center? What types of support are available? What’s free and what costs extra? You’ll want to know the answers to these questions before you sign the deal.

Security. How will your data be protected in both the virtual and physical worlds?  Make sure that the provider takes security as seriously as you do. Ask the company to describe the exact measures it uses to protect your data.

Commitment. Consider the provider’s overall commitment to service and stability. Any hot new technology—and virtual data centers are certainly hot—attracts its share of quick buck operators. Before aligning with any particular provider, examine the company’s track record, physical infrastructure and client list. Major deficiencies in any other these areas should raise a giant red flag and motivate you to look elsewhere.

Trends in Data Center Cooling

LIQUID COOLING

In the early days, liquid cooling was used in mainframe computers. Now, companies are developing several types of rack-level liquid-cooling solutions that bring chilled water or liquid refrigerant closer to the server itself.

Rack-level liquid-cooling solutions include rack doors with sealed tubes filled with chilled water that cool the air leaving the server; sealed racks featuring a connected closed-liquid cooling system, where the contained airflow passes through a heat exchanger at the rack bottom; modular, in-row liquid-cooling units mounted at the rack base; and overhead coolers where liquid coolant is routed through sealed plates at the top of the CPU.

USING LAKE & SEA WATER

Initial construction costs for these data centers are high, since longer pipes and more powerful pumps must be installed to connect and bring water in from the source. But using naturally-cooled water provides a huge long-term savings in electricity, since these data centers do not need water chillers.

AIR-SIDE AND WATER-SIDE ECONOMIZERS

Air-side and water-side economizers save energy by using outside air for cooling purposes. On cool days, air-side economizers provide “free cooling” to data center rooms. Fans bring in cool, filtered air from outside, and expel hot air ejected from the servers. On hot days, evaporative cooling is used to cool the incoming air.

Water-side economizers use outdoor air to cool water that is supplied to air-conditioning and liquid-cooling systems in the data center. Air-side and water-side economizers are best used in dry climates where there is little humidity.

It’s important to note that each technology has its own drawbacks. The effectiveness of cooling solutions depends on many factors, including the data center’s location and local climate, the construction and design of the data center, and the technologies used. Each data center has a different set of specifics that must be considered in choosing an appropriate cooling solution.

Modular Data Centers: A Perfect Fit for Enterprise IT

A growing number of enterprises are discovering that a modular data center is the perfect fit for their IT needs. A relatively new concept, modular data centers    give organizations a flexible, reliable and energy efficient way of deploying an always-on IT and network facility quickly and at an affordable price.

For enterprises that are still stuffing their critical IT systems into unconditioned, unsecured and unmonitored places, such as server and telecommunications closets or spare office spaces, a modular data center opens the door to secure and redundant IT and network services. The approach provides a ready-made solution for the various problems associated with improvised and poorly planned data centers, including overheating, insufficient or unprotected power resources, poor security and improper equipment installation.

Here’s why a modular platform may be the answer to your data center needs:

Rapid Deployment. Enterprises can procure and deploy a modular data center in a fraction of the time required to design and build a new data center or overhaul an existing data center.

Fully-Integrated. Next-generation modular data centers, like the i/o ANYWHERE™ platform, includes 100 percent of the critical infrastructure needed for an always-on data center, including compartmentalization, continuous cooling and concurrent maintainability, as well as primary and backup power generation, power conditioning, network connectivity and a management operating system that provides monitoring, alarming and remote control capabilities.

Scalability.  Thanks to its building-block design, a modular data center can easily scale along with your business, allowing extra data center capacity (i.e. power, cooling, network connectivity) to be deployed quickly. Since you never know where your business needs may take your data center, you should look for a modular platform that can easily scale to tens of megawatts of uninterruptible power and thousands of cabinets in a single deployment.

High-Density Computing. A scalable modular data center is designed to meet your growing IT infrastructure requirements. Look for a provider that can configure the platform for today’s high-density IT environments.

Geographic Flexibility. By taking a modular approach, your enterprise gets to decide the data center’s physical location without sacrificing any vital support and service resources. A modular data center can be deployed anywhere in the world and is not confined to a particular geography or terrain. Ideally, you should look for a platform that offers international plug & play capabilities. This will help to reduce in-market costs for setup and inspections.

Quality Design. While some initial market entrants supplied modular structures that were nothing more than repurposed shipping containers (a discomforting thought), a modern, high-quality modular data center is designed from the start to function as an enterprise-grade data center solution. A state of the art structure completely protects both equipment and data and is managed to a 100 percent uptime service level agreement.

Flexible Configuration. A scalable modular data center allows all basic components—including servers and cabinets—to be easily added as business and IT needs evolve. Make sure the modular platform you choose can accommodate large storage arrays and main frames. Many of the current containerized offerings force you to put your IT gear in their cabinets or event use their equipment.

Lower Costs. Thanks to interchangeable components and various pre-designed features, a modular data center typically costs significantly less to deploy and expand than its traditionally built counterpart. A faster time to deployment also allows enterprises to begin deriving financial benefits from their new data center much sooner.

i/o Data Centers To Save Customers More Than $25 Million

New Study Reveals IT Departments at Risk of Overpayment for Cross-Connects

i/o Data Centers, the leading provider of enterprise colocation and data center solutions, today revealed the results of a new internal study focusing on the impact of its free cross-connect policy. Cross-connects, or the ability of colocation and data center customers to connect to telecommunications networks and directly to each other, are frequently a major source of expense for IT departments.

“We’ve never charged for cross-connects, and almost all of our competitors do, but it hasn’t been until this analysis was completed that we realized the magnitude of the impact on IT departments,” said George Slessman, CEO of i/o Data Centers.

The study concluded that i/o Data Centers will save its existing customers more than $25 million over the next three years. Additionally, the study also identified that cross-connect fees make up 22% of competitor revenues. Kindra Martone, Senior Vice President and General Manager of i/o Data Centers, added: “What this means is that IT departments are potentially paying 22% more on average than they should be for data center services.”

The study focused on i/o’s latest data center, i/o PHOENIX, which has been referred to by Data Center Knowledge, a widely read industry blog, as one of the world’s largest data centers.

i/o PHOENIX is a carrier-neutral data center and has access to more than a dozen telecommunications carriers including AboveNet, AGL, Cogent, Level3, Qwest, tw telecom, Telia Sonera, Verizon and XO Communications.

“We don’t believe in toll-boothing our customers”, says Slessman. “We provide a premium offering to our customers, and this includes free cross connects.”