Don’t future-proof your data centre: Prepare to evolve

This year, the amount of digital information produced worldwide should hit almost 2,500 exabytes– put another way, that’s enough data to fill 167.7billion standard iPads. Compared to IDC figures from 2008, that represents a staggering five-fold increase.1

Even in individual enterprises, this tidal wave of data has been colossal. US retailer Wal-Mart, for instance, handles more than one million transactions an hour. It’s therefore no surprise that Wal-Mart’s databases are estimated at more than 2.5 petabytes.2

This data explosion is driving up data centre costs for enterprises as they race to keep up with demand by adding capacity through upgrades or the construction of new data centres. Online retailer Amazon.com is expected to fork out US$100 million3 on building a 10,800m2 data centre – and this doesn’t even take into account the operational costs.

The construction of an in-house data centre or the leasing of space in a collocation facility can require considerable investment, but finding the money to fund this isn’t the only problem enterprises face. The demands on an enterprise’s IT infrastructure are growing so fast that many new facilities are out-of-date by the time the move from planning and commissioning to the physical infrastructure rollout completes – a process that typically takes around two years.

Faced with challenges like these, it’s easy to see why enterprises want to ensure that their IT infrastructure can quickly adapt to future demands. But with demands on data centres growing faster than ever, achieving this goal is no easy task. It’s for this reason that I’m
often asked for advice on how to future-proof a data centre, but the truth is you can’t. There is no single way to prepare a data centre for the future, but what you can do is build a data centre capable of evolving.

Better planning
When planning a data centre many businesses have miscalculated their future needs and built one that is too small. Fearful of making this mistake, many more have built data centres that are too big.

The advent of virtualisation was to blame for many mistakes like this a few years ago. Businesses built data centres on the proviso that they would only be able to run one application per server. Then along came virtualisation and suddenly they could run multiple, virtual servers on a single physical machine, conserving a vast amount of power, money and space. All of a sudden they had lots of spare servers gathering dust.

Although virtualisation is now commonplace, many businesses still encounter problems with their data centres stemming from poor planning in the building phase. In order to properly plan a data centre, it’s important to take a holistic view of the design and build. In some cases, people have been put in charge of different sections of a data centre and a lack of communication has led to problems. For example, if one person ups the server density without telling the person managing air cooling systems, the data centre could overheat too quickly.

To avoid any issues like this, there are a number of planning tools that you can take advantage of. A Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution will give you a view of the data centre as a whole, allowing you to manage all parts of the data centre, and see how they connect. This can help you to control power costs, reduce the risk of downtime, and boost operational efficiency.

In addition to this, you can also use data centre capacity planning tools to calculate how much capacity you will need in the future as your requirements change.

Pain-free upgrades
Every business’ needs change, so it’s vital you make sure your data centre can grow with your business. Rather than building a data centre you can ‘grow into’, it’s best to build one that you can expand in stages as and when necessary, without too much disruption. At the simplest level, this can mean ensuring that there is enough physical space to add new cables or servers in the future.

So that changes can be made with ease, businesses are increasingly deploying modular data centres that can plug into existing systems. IDC expects around 220 modular data centres to be deployed globally during 2012, up from 144 last year.4

A modular data centre is essentially a purpose-built module containing servers, and standardised storage and networking components. Some modular data centres will also contain cooling systems. These modules can be attached on to existing data centres. This approach is typically much quicker than building a bespoke solution to expand an existing data centre or building a brand new one.

To make upgrades even easier, many solutions are now fitted with pre-terminated cables that can be plugged in to other components, eliminating the need for cables to be wired on site and the risk of mistakes being made by engineers.

The impact of upgrades on performance is also a concern for companies in the age of the ‘always-on’ business. Fortunately it is now possible to upgrade data centres whilst they are in service, which means that there is no need for IT professionals to make changes outside of normal working hours and no impact on mission-critical support systems or applications. This is especially important in organisations such as hospitals or airports where downtime can potentially put lives at risk.

Limitations
Despite how much planning you undertake, there can always be surprises that crop up. By taking the time to plan properly and using all of the tools that are available, your business’ data centre should be much better placed to overcome whatever challenges are thrown at it in the future.

Financial constraints can also prove a limitation for some enterprises. Building a data centre does after all require a substantial up-front investment. For this reason, it can be tempting to reduce expenditure by using cheaper equipment, but this can turn out to be a false economy. Rather than looking at what is cheapest, businesses should look to investment in quality technology that will provide the best value, long term.

Take Category 6 and Category 6A cables for example. Whilst cabling a data centre with 1Gbps Category 6 Ethernet cables can support the needs of most data centres today, many enterprises will look to move to 10Gbps Category 6A cables in the next few years as data traffic continues to grow. Although it may be less expensive to install Category 6 cables today, installing Category 6A cables could work out more cost effective, long term, by negating the need for an upgrade in a few years time. This is one of the reasons why the cabling standards bodies recommend Cat 6a cabling as the minimum requirement in the Data Centre Cabling Standards.

All things considered, it’s worth putting in the extra effort to make the right decisions for your business. Whilst laying the groundwork to meet future needs may seem daunting, prudent long term planning will prove a sensible investment for any enterprise looking to build a new data centre or upgrade an existing facility.

Endnotes
1. Source: IDC, http://www.opentext.com/2/global/products/products-opentext-ecm-suite-for-sap.htm
2. Source, The Economist - http://www.economist.com/node/15557443
3. Source: Data Centre Knowledge - http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/11/07/amazon-building-large-data-center-in-oregon/
4. Source: Data Centre Knowledge - http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/02/06/the-state-of-the-modular-data-center/