Data centers, as centralized repositories are important in businesses, as these is where large amounts of data are stored and managed for an organized dissemination of information. Further, it is primarily responsible for a company’s online infrastructure such that having a bad data center is equal to having a bad infrastructure.
Ideally, most organizations, regardless of business size, need a data center that should run on their servers and networks—both online and offline, especially those with huge amounts of online traffic.
But, just like any other systems, the data center has advancements as well, which IT and data professionals need to keep pace with to maximize costs and for the betterment of the business too. More so, a data center certification can assist specialists in truly becoming experts in their field.
Listed here are the data center trends that you should watch out for.
1. Hyperconvergence
Hyperconvergence means bringing together of all essential IT system components into a single system managed through a software layer, which is critical within data center infrastructures. One of the driving forces of having this is virtualization since this exposes inefficiencies of SAN storage. Virtualization of storage and network layers is becoming important too.
As convergence is seeming to be a trend today, converged infrastructure management platforms are also important to have an integrated unified view necessary in filling the gap between virtual networks and physical infrastructures.
2. Higher Power Density
It is anticipated that by 2020, six times of electricity will be consumed by data centers in the United States. Thus, larger capital investments would be deemed necessary in order to have a fully operational data center.
Lower-density data centers, on the other hand, will require procurement of supplementary IT cabinets and other associated infrastructure such as power whips, power strips, and patch panels to have enough power.
However, moving to a facility that can accommodate a higher density can help in reducing your cost and improve your performance simultaneously. You can also support the same amount of equipment with lesser cabinets should you upgrade your technology and increase power density.
3. Technologies
Real-time tracking of components and environmental measurements that are necessary for a smooth operation will be possible by incorporating new, smart technologies into the data center.
For instance, sensors used for measuring temperature, humidity, and electricity will be combined with network equipment monitoring in maintaining high levels of uptime while reducing capital and operational expenditures of data centers.
IoT integrating data are among the available platforms too that can help in keeping computing facilities functioning at optimum capacity.
4. Security
As multi-tenant and hosted data center facilities are becoming compulsory, so does having greater security measures to better protect your infrastructure since sharing it with other tenants can put your data at risk.
Also, as security breaches are likely to happen in data centers considering that authorized personnel and vendors are its primary sources, moving to a data center with high physical security prevents unauthorized access and keeps data in acquiescence.
5. Flexibility
Having flexibility means that changes in the contract, data center space, building systems, and the entire environment should be accommodated to achieve growth while operating.
It is important to find a provider that offers flexibility to enable you to scale everything easily. For instance, you want to increase power while having a cost efficient space, they should be able to provide your requests—without additional expenses.
6. Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Systems
DCIM systems are necessary for delivering a thorough understanding the events transpiring in the environment so that you can manage it more efficiently. These structures usually offer dashboards to allow you to see everything in real time to turn relevant data into effective planning and analysis information.
Further, DCIM serves as the stethoscope in measuring efficiency, which is crucial in the data center’s performance optimization. It also enables you to tell when infrastructure improvements can help reduce operational costs and be used in planning for organizational growth.
7. Standardization
Standardized IT services are important in IT infrastructure management, being it the hybrid data center. This is where you’re able to run IT services on premises and cloud, deliver it quickly and at a lower cost, and also support with security to avoid security breaches.
A highly sophisticated and mature hybrid data center that supports and drives business transformation should be developed and be adaptable simultaneously, to enable standardization of supporting infrastructure.
8. Connectivity
With the ease of speed’s influence on customer expectations, businesses have no choice but to keep pace with the ever-changing consumer demands today. Data centers that promise efficiency is a must in this age—without necessarily paying for larger costs and suffering from delays.
Pulling thousands of services providers between data centers should be possible, and should happen in just seconds to lessen dependency on individual providers. All these while taking into consideration harmonization between the data center and connectivity requirements.
9. Availability
Encountering downtimes can cause a tremendous toll in your finances, and one that should never be sacrificed for utilization rates. If deploying services just to meet consumer demands should be done—without risking availability, it should certainly be not overlooked.
Considering moving to an operational resiliency model to maximize performance and gain 24/7 availability, since several IT organizations have proved it to be effective. Also, since operational resiliency goes beyond traditional business continuity and disaster recovery, IT professionals should coordinate with other experts to successfully bring about a company-wide strategy.
10. Data Center Strategy
At present, IT environments are comprised of private cloud, public cloud infrastructures, and legacy. With a data center strategy, you can get its greatest predictability. Then again, operational systems running both inside and outside of the enterprise can result in complications of your IT.
Having an integrated approach should indeed be considered, together with alignments between IT and business teams to be able to migrate to a hybrid data center that drives business value. A data center strategy can also contribute improvements in the company’s agility, security, and IT performance.
While these are just a few of the trends in the data center, these promise to deliver new virtual capabilities and meet processing demands. Knowing and understanding all these is important in staying on top of the competition, as you’re able to utilize software platforms needed to maintain high availability while taking on new technologies.
