Countering Data Center Complexities

For the last five years, many organizations have believed that virtualization is the key in the reduction of data center complexities. Although virtualization brought significant gains, for many it has failed to eradicate the complexities from data centers, only shifting the complexities from one portion of the organization to another.

Forces driving data center complexity

According to Symantec’s study list, several factors attribute to increasing data center complexity: 65% of respondents cited the growing number of business critical applications, 44% growth of strategic trends like mobile computing, 43% server virtualization, and 41% public cloud. Effects of this increasing complexity in data center are increased cost (47% of respondents), reduced agility (39%), longer lead times for storage migration (39%), security breaches (35%) and data center downtime (35%).

How can you mitigate data center complexity?

Symantec’s survey suggests the following:

C-level ownership for information governance: Form an information governance shelter for high ROI projects such as data loss prevention, archiving, etc. whereby organizations can collaborate across focused projects.

Obtain visibility beyond platforms: Reduce downtime and miscommunications by proper understanding of business services provided by IT and their dependencies.

Evaluate the IT assets you possess and track their consumption in terms of by whom and by how much. This way, the organization can be sure that it is not running out of capacity, which will in turn reduce risks and costs.

Meet recovery SLAs and reduce the capital expenses, training and operational expenses by reducing the number of backup applications. About 7 backup applications for a typical organization is an ideal solution.

Address the huge information growth and reduce the cost of backing up data through implementation of de-duplication everywhere. Next to applications like SharePoint or Exchange, which are huge data offenders, place archives having de-duplication capabilities.

Simplify backup and recovery options using specific appliances across virtual and physical machines.

Proper training, standardization and information governance are the critical factors that can reduce data center complexity The tips mentioned above will greatly help organizations incrementally reduce the compounding complexities in their data centers.

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.