What’s inside the data center?

Data Center

With rapidly growing businesses, data center’s need arose to keep huge data. Although cloud is there but still company must have a network and electrical backbone which assure close monitoring and inspection. Server virtualization is an efficient way to adopt capacity in existing data center. Increase in server virtualization can reduce data center energy consumption. Companies were able to save 50% of data center energy just by virtualization and turning off which is not being used.Futher rack density should be considered to increase efficiency and capacity. If you can’t recover enough capacity after optimizing then collocation or cloud may also be the options

Disaster Recovery in Data center

Data center disaster recovery is not an option but a necessity owing to the rapid growth of IT market. As IT is pervasive in almost every business now there is requirement of 24/7 availability. As a result disaster recovery budgets are also higher than ever before. In survey of Tech Target’s Data center and reader’s choice 2013, 23% users showed disaster recovery and redundancy as a key driver for server expenditure, the sixth most popular choice.

• Your data center’s disaster recovery plan must accommodate with the high availability requirement. Disaster recovery plan may include on- site recovery plans and Mobile recover units.

1. On-site recovery plans are almost meant to save data center from mishap of power outages. Now data center are investing a huge amount over huge backup and power saving units, below ground fuel storage for generators to save from longer power outage.
2. Some companies like Sunguard, Rentsys offers mobile recovery plan includes self-contained power and weather resistance. These companies build each unit in a tractor –trailer truck that can be dispatched at requirement. Mobile recovery unit called “Mobile metro centers” are connected to Disaster recovery Company’s data center via satellite to avoid latency .It protect critical apps or whole application.
3. Some companies prefer to outsource the disaster recovery plan due to the lack of experienced IT staff or huge resources to manage it. They prefer to render the responsibility to a managed service provider or cloud hosting company. It allows them to more focus over business operation.

• It is troublesome to synchronize the disaster recovery budget with your business budget. It is necessary to keep cost down while optimizing and maintaining security for any mishap. If any company has a huge amount of data then for making data secure it is required to backup data from primary storage to disaster recovery site. This task can take your budget to uncontrollable amount. Hardware and software based WAN optimization can lower the cost. The speed of data transfer should be monitored and data hops have to happen for within a reasonable amount of time.

• Redundant copies of data at remote data center allow data center to recover damaged and malfunctioned data or launch workloads to remote system to manage traffic. It is required to carefully consider the remote storage and server network deployment needs. Redundancy means occasional virtual machine snapshots and conventional backup approaches. Some technologies like thin provisioning and data duplication satisfies remote storage system needs. Complete data backup may also affect bandwidth, so proper management of network bandwidth is also required. Server must be able to run required resources to protect data.
• Different business demands and various complexities enhance complicacies to redundancy decisions. It is worth to acquire resources but without proper configuration of those tools and compliance with business goals, outcome will not be satisfactory.

1. A data recoverability testing should also be conducted because the redundancy of data is of no use if we are not able to recover data at disastrous condition.
2. Regulatory Compliance and data retention period should also be considered as not all data is of same importance; rather some data is for contemporary use and must be deleted after a fixed period of time. IT officials should check compliance for data center redundancy.

Geographically split data center management

Geographically split data center management is able to reduce recovery time. Being Ecommerce affected market, not only it has become essential to split data centers at proper distance with little recovery time. All data center must have its direct access storage device. The network cloud plays an important role as it is the switch between two data centers. Incoming data request can be routed to any of data centre depending on some criteria with the use of proper internal plumbing.

• One data center is converging point of all data traffic. All modification and changes are done over primary storage and then it is duplicated to secondary storages. If primary storage fails, secondary storage takes its place.

Modular data center: a solution

Modular data center are also in demand. Although percentage of companies who has acquired modular data centers are less as 9% yet but other companies are also willing to join them .Modular data center is portable   method of deploying data center. These data center comprises purpose engineered   component to offer scalable data center capacity with various cooling and power option.

Modular data center can be classified in two forms:

1. Containerized data center in which all data center equipment is fitted in and then it can be transported to desired location. Cisco containerized data center is an example of containerized data center.
2. Flexible data center in which all data center equipment is fitted into a facility made up of pre-fabricated components that can be built frequently over a site and then it can be added as capacity is needed. It is made up of sheet metal components which is formed into four data center halls which in turn linked by a central operating building.

RFP and RFQ tips for IT managers:

RFP and RFQ are two fundamentally different thing .RFQ (Request for Quote) is the quote by an enterprise or government. RFQ takes place when IT manager are resolved about their technical requirement and has assessed the problems. The vendor has to just deliver that technology to them .RFP (Request for proposal) is used to explain certain system requirements and encountered challenges. The vendor offers with various technical configuration and architectures. Here IT vendor assess the problem and responds with specific technology

Writing wrong RFP in lack of proper knowledge may lead   your business to survive over less optimal resource which will affect Quality of service level. IT personnel should state workload requirements with its dependencies, future requirements. Keep yourself away from using biased language which will mislead vendor.