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A Closer Look
Data Center Needs
The data center, as a repository of information assets, is an
integral component of the enterprise infrastructure. It
generally consists of mission critical, application-specific
data stored in large databases and on file servers. Current
technology trends such as network computing, the Internet
and massive data growth are dramatically increasing the
demands on this environment.
Companies must pay attention to not only their hardware
and software choices but also service and support options
to dependably deliver the information critical to today's
business needs. Selecting the appropriate server
equipment that resides at the center of this information
fabric is critical.
Data centers have three core needs for this server
equipment: performance (data processing capacity), high
availability and scalability.
Performance
for the data center is the ability to process
and transfer large amounts of data quickly within the
various server sub-systems, also expressed as
transactions completed per unit of time. Each of the
sub-systems in a server must be optimized as well as
balanced, so that the system delivers the maximum
performance and no one component becomes a bottleneck.
Performance also includes the ability of the server system
to accommodate peak business periods and occasional
spikes in the workload. The more a server is sized for
growth, the more likely it will have sufficient headroom and
be able to accommodate usage peaks. (See Scalability
below.)
Availability
is a measure of the ability of the server system
to deliver constant computing services to clients, also
expressed as a percentage of time that the system is
“available”. Data center equipment must be highly available
(approaching 100% uptime). If an application stops,
revenue generation can come to a halt. The design
features of reliability, component redundancy, pro-active
manageability, multi-node fail-over clustering capabilities
and the appropriate levels of service and support combine
to produce highly available systems.
Industry Trend:
Server consolidation is an important
trend that impacts the data center in
several ways. Applications running on
less powerful previous generation
servers can be combined onto a single
new server with several times more
processing power. Consolidation of a
server environment can occur in one of
several ways: logical, physical or re-
centralization.
Logical consolidation attempts to
normalize or standardize aspects of the
server environment, such as manage-
ment or backup procedures, and in so
doing, achieve a reduction in staff work-
loads. In a physical consolidation, the
servers are re-located into a centralized
data center to be "racked and stacked”.
The immediate benefits are improved
physical security, lowered system
management complexity across the
servers and a more efficient sharing of
peripherals.
The third type of server consolidation,
re-centralization, involves collapsing the
processing loads from several different
servers onto a single, larger server (or
servers). This approach is used to
reduce the number of dedicated servers
or to respond to changing business
flows. Re-centralization achieves the
greatest return on investment (ROI)
benefit and is most suitable for 8-way
server configurations. All three methods
require that companies employ a con-
solidation approach that encompasses
technology, process and people in order
to achieve the benefits (reduced staff
workloads, improved manageability and
floor space utilization) attributed to
server consolidation.