With demand for storage and networking capabilities skyrocketing, in-house and hosted data centres are being put under greater pressure than ever before. So how do you future-proof a data centre? The truth is, you can’t, says Ciaran Forde, Vice president, Enterprise, Middle East & Africa, CommScope. What he does advise is to build a data centre that is capable of evolving over time.
By the end of 2012, IDC predicts the amount of digital information produced worldwide should hit almost 2,500 exabytes – put another way, that’s equivalent to 2,500 billion gigabytes. Compared to figures from 2008, that represents a huge five-fold increase.
Even in individual enterprises, this tidal wave of data has been colossal. US retailer Wal-Mart, for instance, handles more than one million customer transactions every hour – the equivalent of more than 16,500 transactions a minute. It’s therefore no surprise that Wal-Mart’s databases are estimated at more than 2.5 petabytes.
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 in excess of US$100 million on building its new 10,800 square-metre data centre – and this doesn’t even take into account the cost of on-going maintenance.
The construction of an in-house data centre or the leasing of space in a collocation facility can require considerable upfront investment, but finding the money needed 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 The demands on an enterprise’s IT infrastructure are growing so fast that many new facilities are out-of-date by the time the move from planning and commissioning to the physical infrastructure rollout completes – a process that typically takes around two years.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 are now looking at what they can 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.
The question of how to future-proof a data centre is often asked, but the truth is you can’t. There is no single way to prepare a data centre for the future. However, what you can do is build a data centre that is capable of evolving over time to meet changing demands and take advantage of new innovations.
Better planning
Many businesses have miscalculated their future needs when planning a new data centre and built one that is too small for their needs. Fearful of making this mistake, many more have built data centres that are far bigger than what they actually require.
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’d 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 and money. 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 that stem 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 new data centre and a lack of communication has led to problems later down the line.
Think of it like decorating a new house. You wouldn’t put one person in charge of soft furnishings, one person in charge of furniture, and another for flooring. If you did you could find that nothing in the house matches. The same is true in a data centre. If one person upped the server density without telling the person managing the air cooling systems, you could find that the data centre overheats 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 with one another. 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 over time, so it’s vital you make sure that 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 easily expand in stages as and when necessary, without too much disruption or expense.
At the very simplest level, this can mean making sure that there is enough physical space available on site 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.
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 to data centres outside of normal working hours.
Limitations
As Robert Burns put it, the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry, and the data centre is no different. 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 to you, 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 in the 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 in the long term, as it negates 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 a daunting task now, prudent planning for the long term will prove a sensible investment for any enterprise looking to build a new data centre or upgrade an existing facility.
