David Hughes, Senior Technical Manager, CommScope MEA, discusses ways to formulate an effective data centre strategy.
IDC’s (International Data Corporation) recently released predictions for the IT industry in 2014 show the Middle East spending exceeding $32 billion this year. Investment in data centre delivered services and managed services will continue to remain a focal point of operators’ strategy.
Furthermore, according to IDC, the growing popularity of 10 Gigabit and 40 Gigabit ethernet in data centres helped propel the entire ethernet switch market in 2013, with the Middle East and Africa leading the sales, where switch sales increased by almost 23 percent year-on-year.
As enterprises race to keep up with the data tsunami by adding capacity through co-location, upgrades or the construction of new data centres, their costs are increasing rapidly. While constructing a new in-house data centre or leasing part of a co-location facility can be a significant investment, budgeting is not the only problem that enterprises face.
As the demands on an enterprise’s IT infrastructure are growing so fast, many new facilities are out-of-date by the time they move from planning and commissioning to the physical infrastructure rollout – a process that usually takes around two years.
Plan, monitor & manage
There is no magic formula to prepare a data centre for everything the future holds, however there are a number of fundamental areas that should be considered carefully. Collaboration across all areas of the business is vital. This includes identifying the key organisational stakeholders, in order to understand the business and technology drivers relevant to a company.
The second element is to partner with technology leaders who have the proven experience, knowledge and the innovation to deliver the solution. This strategy is the basis for a plan that will help provide a scalable, agile and sustainable IT Infrastructure & facility.
We all understand how quickly technology evolves, this is driven in most part by us the consumer, demanding higher bandwidth and low latency. We are in a mobile age and these demands create challenges in the data centre. Consolidation and Virtualisation initiatives bring the “more for less” scenario, that not only creates capacity issues at the network level, but also within the facility itself.
Therefore the overall compute capacity for any IT strategy must include the four areas of Network, Power, Cooling & Space Utilisation.
The proactive management of a facility is also fundamental to its sustainability and risk mitigation. Adopting an effective Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) program will give you a holistic view of the data centre and its interdependencies, boosting operational efficiency, whilst maintaining business continuity.
A functional DCIM tool should be both scalable and vendor agnostic. This will provide an effective solution that grows with the business, manages areas that are important to the organisation, irrespective of the equipment installed within the facility. A true DCIM solution will also allow you to manage the overall compute capacity as the facility evolves and help you proactively plan mitigation strategies, in the event of system failures.
Future developments
As data centre design and operations becomes more complex, the ability to effectively scale and upgrade a facility is a top of mind issue. Modular data centres are being increasingly used by some of the largest organizations in the world, allowing additional IT & support systems to be brought into service, quickly and as required.
These modular solutions are pre-wired, terminated and tested, allowing for rapid deployment once they reach the site. Each module can be custom built to suit a customer’s requirement, containing the necessary cabling, storage, server & network resources for initial operations, along with the supporting utility services.
As more resources are required, simply add another module, to provide quick and seamless integration. This allows the data centre and its interdependencies to grow with the business, whilst realizing significant savings in capital and operational expenditure (Capex/Opex).
The cabling infrastructure is always seen as the last piece of the jigsaw, but should be treated with the same importance as any other aspect within the data centre. It is the foundation for everything that sits on the network and drives the business, so the quality, design and performance of the solution should not be underestimated and it is an integral part of the planning process described above.
Copper & Fiber media are still both prevalent within the data centre, with pre-terminated and tested solutions being favoured for their ability to support technology upgrades, allow for rapid deployment and risk mitigation. Singlemode & Multimode fiber options are available, although Multimode (OM3/OM4) can give a cost-effective and value engineered approach, to high-speed data upgrade paths (10/40/100G) especially given the distances involved in the data centre space.
Copper solutions use a Category 6A (10GBASE-T) architecture, giving 10Gb/s transmission capabilities. The advent of this cabling technology has driven the adoption of cost-effective 10GBASE-T copper switch ports, within the marketplace.
A final point to note is the pending Category 8 (40GBASE-T) copper standards. These are currently being compiled by the IEEE, with the intent of providing a 40Gb/s solution, over a standard RJ45 based infrastructure. This is predominantly for data centre (EoR/MoR) applications, adding greater distances and flexibility to the design.
This article was first published in Inside_Networks_ME. To read the full edition please see https://www.joomag.com/magazine/inside-networks-me-january-2015/0187363001420979680?short
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