InformationWeek Analytics: Tomorrow's Data Center

While data center architects have weathered much change over the past decades, there's a transformation on the way bigger than anything we've yet seen as data centers decisively move from business necessity to strategic advantage. Meanwhile, IT is working to understand how trends--including virtualization, cloud computing, escalating power densi-

ties and equipment weight, and new environmental awareness--will mesh with explosive growth in demand, even as the cost of traditional models escalates out of control, consolidation projects notwithstanding.

The primary way for most of us to meet growing demand will be to incrementally increase the efficiency of older facilities that weren't built to handle modern loads. For that to happen, IT must first bridge a divide with facilities groups that's reminiscent of the old days of IT vs. telecom. This partnership could yield surprising economic advantages, as can new technologies and techniques that we'll discuss in depth in our latest InformationWeek Analytics data center report, available at datacenter.informationweek.com.

There can be resistance to this détente, but those responsible for operating their organizations' data centers are feeling the heat, and not just from the airflow in overloaded facilities. While more than half of the 279 business technology pros we surveyed for this InformationWeek Analytics Report expect demands on their data centers to increase in 2009, only 25% will see their facilities budgets grow. Meanwhile, thanks in large part to the green movement and the hype surrounding cloud computing, your line-of-business leaders are being inundated with stats, drawn from across the industry, on how data centers are operating. They're taking notice.

While benchmarking performance against peers has value, it's also fraught with pitfalls. Single-number metrics fail to account for differences in data center operational realities, and thus are often as useful as comparing the miles-per-gallon rating of a Prius with that of an 18-wheeler. Meanwhile, IT is driving growth in energy use. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the energy consumed by U.S. commercial and industrial buildings is responsible for nearly 50% of our national emissions of greenhouse gases, and within those buildings, the power used by data centers has doubled over the past five years. Meanwhile, the national average rate for electricity has jumped 44% since 2004.

As if all that weren't enough to worry about, we've recently seen several anticipated upgrades stopped in midstride because of unanticipated structural, power, and cooling system constraints outside of the data center. In one case, the local utility refused to deliver more power unless the company paid for an entire substation upgrade. In another project we consulted on, the data center expansion was stopped cold because the building couldn't structurally support the new infrastructure and projected data center weight loads.

For some, the answer has been to outsource. In our recent InformationWeek Analytics report on cloud computing, we found that virtualization has enabled service providers to offer shared platforms at a fraction of the cost of physical facilities, significant because 68% in that poll indicated that cost was the most important factor in moving toward this model. This is driving the apparently supercharged growth of behemoth data centers, with Google, IBM, Microsoft and co-location providers spending billions on new sites. All have placed great emphasis on energy-efficient construction methods.

Squeeze That Dollar
Those with more modest resources essentially have only two options: Add floor space, power, and cooling, or increase efficiency to make existing resources go further. With so few respondents indicating that their budgets will increase next year, we don't expect many greenfield builds. That means the primary way for most of us to meet growing demand will be to incrementally increase the efficiency of older facilities that likely weren't built to handle modern loads.

Efficiency is not just about energy. In the data center, it's also about squeezing the last dollar out of what has been invested and extending a resource's life for as long as possible. Much of the disproportionate growth in data center investment is being driven by inefficient mechanical and electrical infrastructure design, and that's where a facilities partnership comes in.

Efficient designs also mean giving up entrenched data center stereotypes. Who wants to design a mission-critical facility that breaks with the tradition of a raised floor, or runs at 80 degrees? Yet, as we discuss in our full report, that's just what leaders like Google are doing, at great economic advantage. Their lessons can be used in our legacy data centers. In addition, in our practice we've found that it's considered cutting edge for a facility to monitor itself as a total system and dynamically respond based on sensing resource demands, rather than on preprogrammed schedules. This, too, is changing as centralized monitoring, control, and intelligent software become more affordable.

Kenneth Miller has more than 15 years of experience implementing complex IT systems and is currently a data center architect with Midwest ISO. Contact him at [email protected].

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