With the growing dependence on technology in the workplace, the data centre has become a vital component in the growth and success of the business.
The amount of data we gather continues to grow, and at some point we all consider upsizing or moving. So how do you make sure your data centre is right for you?
We speak to Matthew Gingell, Director at Colt Data Centre Services, to find out how the data centre has evolved, how design and build is changing and how businesses should plan their next strategic data centre move.
TechRadar Pro: How has the role of the data centre changed?
Matthew Gingell: The modern business has evolved to run on its data and the demands it makes on its data centre has evolved with it. Technologies such as cloud and virtualisation have transformed the operation of data centres.
Now every activity - from research and development to manufacturing and accounts – depends on data. As a result, the data centre has grown into the hub of the organisation.
To support the growing demands from businesses, data centres need to offer scalability and flexibility to deal with emerging technologies and tackle macro-economic variables such as rising energy costs, while also running in an efficient and environmentally friendly manner.
As a result, a fresh generation of data centres have surfaced offering state-of-the art, high quality and power efficient facilities that can be delivered in as little as four months. These are known as pre-fabricated or modular data centres.
Some can even flex to future requirements as the business changes. With the rate of change in the market it is no surprise that this new generation of data centres continue to grow in popularity.
TRP: With aging infrastructure, should businesses look to refurbish existing data centres or relocate?
MG: Now that the data centre had become a vital component in the growth and success of the business, this is certainly something worth asking. For a number of businesses, data centres are approaching the ten year old mark. In fact many go quite a bit beyond.
While these data centres may not quite be at the end of their lifecycle, they are not exactly at the peak of efficiency, or, their operational best- perhaps more risky.
Therefore, businesses need to thoroughly audit the data centre, the compute within it and the short, medium and even long term goals and needs of the business. Only with all of this information can a business decide on the right strategy.
There are plenty of short term steps that can be taken to improve the efficiency of a data centre which can have a significant impact.
Longer term and with a little more investment, refurbishment to some degree can improve operational costs, efficiency, and reliability. What we have found through our own work is that if the business decides to undertake the refurbishment, meticulous planning is key.
Cost control and deadline creep can be major issues, but none as impactful as the risk of downtime caused by carrying out refurbishment without shutting down the data centre – that's just not an option.
One thing is certain - a business cannot stand still and its data strategy needs to keep up. To decide whether refurbishing or relocating/outsourcing is the best option, organisations must first reassess their own capability and growing IT capacity needs.
An outsourced model would involve leasing or occupying space in a third party's facility, with varying degrees of management and control.
Some organisations may be reluctant to allow their data to be housed in a facility that they do not totally own or operate, but for others who view the data centre as a non-core competency to their business, they are usually prepared to allow a trusted third party to build and operate.
Either option will depend on reliability, resilience, uptime and crucially the organisations' attitude to capital and operational expenditure.
One problem is that many organisations quite simply do not have the capability to build or upgrade a data centre. Luckily, there are plenty of suppliers who can offer very professional and refined services to build, operate, outsource, colocate or just advise.
The key here is to use a trusted source with a reliable track record and the right skills to help.
TRP: Is the deployment method of choice for all new data centre builds increasingly modular?
MG: In one word, yes. There is no denying that the benefits of a modular or pre-fabricated data centre far outweigh any negatives, for both the supplier and the customer. Almost the whole industry is employing or will employ a modular strategy to data centre development.
However, it's important to be clear on the definition of "modular" as talk about modular comes in many different forms. Standard shipping style containers that tend to be relatively temporary and inflexible can be referred to as modular data centres, so too are traditional builds that build out in a modular way (but still using some traditional methods).
There is also a very interesting solution in between that is a pre-fabricated data centre. This is built to a traditional look and feel, with large contiguous space and flexible design, but is pre-manufactured and packaged before it arrives on site to be assembled and commissioned.
It can provide the benefits of both the "shipping container" in speed of delivery, can be built almost anywhere with decent access and has a known quality, delivery and cost because of its repeatable and proven design.
What's more is has the benefits of the "traditional build" with the added benefits of cutting-edge efficiency, flexibility in line with business needs and can even be recyclable at end of life.
The European market is considered to be mature in this industry, and any data centre build will use all or some of the concepts introduced by this 'Lego-brick' model going forward.
Businesses now need a data centre solution that can grow with their business and is built around business needs.
For many businesses even if they are outsourcing their data centre strategy in colocation, they are increasingly looking for a modular style architecture so they know they can expand on demand.
TRP: What's the best way to plan for a data centre upgrade?
MG: Before starting to plan, organisations need to think about the business, not just the IT need. Any changes to an organisations existing data centre should be driven by a strategic business demand – such as minimising cost, risk and disruption, and delivering greater efficiencies.
Once such needs have been identified, organisations need to consider how meeting these needs will impact the enterprise. This includes a robust risk assessment, communication with stakeholders, assessment of current capabilities and future requirements– it all needs to be calculated.
An enterprise should even consider starting from the worst case scenario. What would data centre failure mean to the business? What about downtime to communications, client management and accounts? How could it mitigate this happening during the live upgrade?
There are three key areas all businesses should consider when planning a data centre upgrade: the environment, infrastructure and the servers themselves. It's also important to consider the wider business.
When the whole organisation has bought into the need for the upgrade and the plans are well thought out, the new measures will be easier to implement.
TRP: How has technology helped to drive data centre efficiency and innovation?
MG: Given the continuously developing nature of the data centre sector is must be proactive and reactive to the changing and growing demands.
For example, when the cost of energy rose, the power of the data centre became a key factor for measurement. With this increased focus on energy efficiency and the social responsibilities associated with running large data centre estates innovative technology and guidelines were released into the market.
The greatest driver to innovation in the data centre has not been the technology it's built with, or even the technology within it, but actually the larger technology changes that have been challenging businesses, such as cloud, BYOD, big data and mobile.
It's these pressures on the business that have forced the industry to become more flexible and responsive to the market needs. Flexibility allowing the business to dial-up and dial-down its power is now available.
Today, even a business using colocation in its data centre strategy is insisting on more flexible terms and configurations to match the speed of change they are faced with.
The truth is that best practice in data centre configuration management is a combination of the right tools, the right people and the right external validation and auditing, such as Uptime Institute's Management & Operations Stamp of Approval.
It's about doing all of these things well, in tandem, and using the wide variety of information now available about what's happening inside the data centre to the business' advantage.
TRP: Why has PUE become the best form of measurement for data centre efficiency?
MG: In recent years, efficiency has become synonymous to every data centre conversation. As a result, measuring power usage efficiency (PUE) is one of those measurements and has become the de facto standard for measuring energy efficiency, environmental impact, and cost of running a modern data centre.
PUE has become the metric of choice. There are various benefits to reducing power consumption and PUE helps data centre teams regulate their approach to improving efficiency – measuring environmental impact, energy efficiency, and the cost of running a modern data centre.
It's not perfect and other metrics are coming to light to plug the gaps, but it's simple and easy to implement. If used correctly on an on-going annualised basis, it's a great metric to track and manage data centre efficiency over time.
TRP: What advice can you give to businesses to help them improve their PUE?
MG: With a vast data centre estate across Europe we were well aware of the benefits of reducing power consumption but a couple of years ago we decided to regulate our approach to improving efficiency.
We worked out a standard set of guidelines for our operations crew to systematically ensure that from simple to more complex solutions, we were maximising efficiency in every data centre we have. As a result we reduced our annual energy bill by more than €4 million.
12 steps all businesses should consider in order to improve PUE are:
- Measure, record and track power use on a regular basis
- Regulate air flow – prevent hot and cold mixing
- Align hot and cold aisles
- Reduce airflow leaks
- Check flooring
- Introduce aisle containment
- Control air temperature
- Regulate humidity
- Check transformer voltage
- Remove isolation transformers
- Turn off 'zombie' equipment
- Measure again…
TRP: Given that building data centres are planned around a 10-15 year forecasted requirement, how can businesses balance long term planning, constantly changing business requirements and technology innovation?
MG: Even the best technology related business case can't predict the long term future – change in technology and business is constant. Even planning beyond two years is a challenge, so how can fifteen years be at all feasible?
Part of the answer is having solutions that can flex with the business. Starting with the infrastructure, it's important that the data centre itself can adjust to the business requirements overtime. Where capacity can be dialled up and down in line with live business requirements.
Therefore, my advice for today's CIO's is to ensure the data centre they are using is flexible enough to adapt to the change in and around their business.
Traditionally this may have been something which was almost impossible to achieve, but with new techniques available within modern data centres, this flexibility is now fairly easy to achieve.
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