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Interesting Data Center Trends – 2004 Q1
Cost Savings, Standards, and Certifications
William F. Slater, III
Here we are well into 2004, and I want to review some interesting trends that are influencing everyone who manages and/or interfaces with the data center.
Cost Pressures Drive Consolidation of IT Resources into Centralized Data Centers
Throughout the organization where I work, locations that formerly had anywhere from two to six servers are having those servers, shutdown, packed up, shipped out and re-racked in our Data Center. The sites themselves are then either being shut down, or are accessing their resources across a VPN. What does this accomplish? The answer is centralized management, and therefore cost savings. Servers placed in our data center get the following benefits:
1) a secure, air conditioned environment
2) centralized UPS and backup power
3) redundant Windows 2000 domain controllers
4) reliable LAN and network equipment
5) close proximity to several WAN connections
6) they are under my watchful care and management
And the Future…
Yet, looking down the road, our data center itself will undergo a big change. In the relatively near future (three years?) there will be consolidation of data centers worldwide into just a few facilities now affectionately know as “megacenters,” which will provide everything that the data center I manage now does, except in a bigger way, and in an even more secure, perhaps even sub-surface facility. And as you might guess, I hope to be there, helping plan and manage it.
Cost Pressures Drive Creation of a New Standardized Language
for Describing Data Center Management
With all the emphasis on cost savings, this trend toward understanding and managing computing has a new name. It’s now called “utility computing” and sometimes on-“demand computing.” And with these new names comes a new language to describe data center management and all the resources and activities associated with it: Data Center Markup Language (DCML).
DCML is a form of XML is presently being crafted into an industry-specific, standardized language to support utility computing concepts. This markup language, which is similar to XML, but very specific to the activities and component contents of a modern data center, is planned for helping revolutionize the management of data centers and to assist with ushering in the age of “utility computing,” in which great efficiencies are achieved by using standardized processes and terminology, to help drive down the cost of managing data centers (DCML.org, 2003). DCML therefore is aimed at exploiting XML and HTML common language source code to permit interoperability across a variety of hardware and software utility computing products (Kaplan, 2003). The end result of these efforts will be to turn this form of IT asset management into what is known as “utility computing.” DCML and the DCML.org supporting cast of vendors are working to do just that. In the DCML.org consortium, EDS and Opsware have signed up 30 other companies, including Akamai Technologies, BEA Systems, Computer Associates, and Mercury Interactive. The draft specification of DCML is due in Spring 2004, and it looks to be a promising endeavor, because the Chairman of Opsware, Marc Andreesen (of Mosaic and Netscape fame), is spearheading the effort with some leading data center management experts from EDS, as well as the consortium’s other participating companies (Thomas, 2003).
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