Don’t Skip These Best Practices for Data Center Consolidation

Data center consolidation is quite similar to two people who have been living on their own at separate locations move together into the same house. Consolidation often results in the duplication of items and resources. Consolidation should ideally prevent redundancy, remove inactive components of data, and achieve a single face for the same data. Keeping this in mind, let us consider some of the often-missed best practices to be followed in data center consolidation.

Put legacy applications to rest

Even though you may need data to remain consistent over a period of time, the application that created it in the first place may be outdated. If you could archive data as well as its meta information in a format that can be operated by any system over time, then you can more easily put legacy applications to rest.

Capture every asset you have

Make sure you have a stable (and comprehensive) record of all the resources you have before going in for consolidation. Very often data center asset information is spread across the organization’s workflow.

Put data in the cloud

Consolidation does not necessarily have to involve moving data onto new data centers as you can shift them onto virtual cloud based platforms that offer greater benefits in terms of speed of operation, reduced costs and faster recovery mechanisms in the event of a crash. Do the math and the business logic to determine if the cloud is the right platform for a part of your data.

Above all, it is essential to ensure that the consolidation operation is in line with your businesses needs and requirements. Use these tips to ensure that your data center consolidation doesn’t ruin your professional life.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.