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AS OF 12/3/2008 11:22PM EST

What's Driving the Next-Generation Data Center?
By Michelle Savage

August 11, 2008 — Ask any three data center professionals to define a next-generation data center (NGDC), and you’re likely to get more than three different answers. Most would agree, however, that the NGDC is more flexible, less expensive to operate and better aligned with business goals than the “modern” data centers that existed five years ago.

Many enterprises today are powered by data centers that were built for outdated technologies, requirements and equipment. Data center professionals are finding that to meet mounting operational and capacity demands, they must build new data centers or remodel the existing ones.

Enter the NGDC, which Bob Seese, chief data center architect of Advanced Data Centers, said is “designed to be very energy efficient and located in an area of low-cost energy and immunity to natural disasters.”

“The NGDC was born of necessity; things just couldn’t continue the way they were,” said Steve Miano, managing partner at PlanNet Consulting. “Just as load demand has grown at astonishing rates, construction costs have soared over the past several years. Building and operating a data center are incredibly expensive, and as a critical business investment, organizations are carefully studying ways to reduce costs and get the most from the expense. This has driven some organizations to look to nontraditional markets when selecting a site, including areas of cool climate, cheap power and lower disaster risk.”

Miano said NGDCs are unique in that they are designed to be adaptable to rapid shifts not only in IT equipment, but also in power backup and distribution methods, and particularly the myriad technologies now deployed to cool high-density heat loads.

“Considering that power typically constitutes one-third or more of operating expense, striving for a lower power usage effectiveness is a good place to start,” said Miano. “PUE is the ratio of total data center power to power draw. Historically, the figure has hovered around 2.0, which means the data center is providing 2 watts of power for every 1 watt of draw. Today, the state of the art—which many organizations are achieving—is a PUE of 1.20. On top of energy efficiency, NGDCs incorporate green design, virtualization, scalable infrastructure and strict operations governance.”

Five years ago, data centers were designed very differently, experts say, as companies were dealing with the emergence of high-density data centers in fits and starts. “We were not convinced, as an industry, that 10kW-and-up cabinets would become a reality for wide-scale deployment,” said Miano. “We were hesitant to make the investment in support systems to accommodate high density. Now it is upon us, and there is no question that most modern data centers need to accommodate high density.”

Another key difference is that data centers are no longer growing out of their white floor space as regularly as they were in the past. On the contrary, with high-density servers, such as blades, disk storage, consolidation and virtualization, the need for floor space is actually decreasing. “However, the watts-to-power and tons-to-cool per rack are going way up, driving a need for increased real estate, and utility capacity for power and cooling support equipment outside the white space,” said Miano.

David Jacobs, a data center consultant at TechKnowledge Consulting, agreed that density requirements make NGDCs a must. “We’ve gone from eight to 10 servers in a cabinet to well over 100,” he said. “Delivering sufficient airflow to a cabinet to keep it cool is one of our biggest challenges. If you have air conditioning under a raised floor, the airflow is limited to the devices closest to it.” Baffles and power fans are an increasingly important part of NGDCs, as they get the air flowing to the places that need it most, Jacobs said.

Josh Woodruff, senior architect at CafePress, said cost and scale are also driving investments in NGDCs. “Storage needs are incessantly and exponentially growing, computing horsepower is always in growing demand, and memory footprints continue to get larger,” he said. “Managing the growth in demand without a linear growth in cost is key to a business’ ability to reap a positive return on technology investments, or at least keep costs from growing at the same rate as capacity. Businesses simply cannot have growth and cost climbing at the same rate and expect to remain competitive.”

Security concerns, which moved to the fore in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, are yet another driver of change in the data center. “Companies today need to design data centers with increasing layers of security,” Jacobs said.

For example, many of Jacobs’ clients build four layers of security around their critical equipment. “You must get through a network operations center, which is staffed 24 hours a day; lab space; and a development lab before you get to the true production data center—the part that impacts the business,” he said.

But perhaps the biggest driver of NGDCs, said Woodruff, is that the technology now exists to support them. Technological innovations have greatly fueled space, power and cooling efficiencies in the NGDC, he said.

Such innovations include CPU improvements, such as multicore processing and lower power consumption; blade servers and the related concept of using larger units of scale optimized for efficiency, such as preconstructed racks and containers; and virtualization, which maximizes hardware utilization without the typical attendant drop-off in application performance. Remote management or “lights-out” management is another key feature; while it existed five years ago, it has become more standardized. Most vendors now support standards-based management protocols such as the Intelligent Platform Management Interface, allowing users to maximize reuse and avoid vendor lock-in.

“Today’s NGDC must be up-to-date with the latest technological advances, including such options as water-cooled racks, on-site generation and DC power distribution,” said Advanced Data Centers’ Seese.

With the new technologies come new challenges for data center professionals. “They must keep abreast of technology advancements, including keeping teams up to date on the latest skills and technology trends, as well as being able to articulate the benefits of investing in newer technologies to executive management,” Woodruff said.

“When it comes to building new data centers, I would recommend building it with the latest innovations from the ground up,” continued Woodruff. “However usually that’s not an available option; typically businesses have existing data center environments that require upgrading. In the latter case, a phased approach is always recommended over a ‘flash-bang’ type approach, simply to minimize risk and optimize areas of efficiency as you go, as well as allowing you to measure each improvement individually to determine which of the latest innovations is truly giving you a bigger bang for the buck.”

Jacobs advised data center architects to involve the business leaders early in the process. “All too often, data centers are built by technologists [who] fail to involve business leaders,” he said. “The business side can provide invaluable information on where they’re taking the business, how much downtime they can tolerate and what type of disaster plan is needed.”

Related Search Term(s): cooling, data centers, power, security, virtualization

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