IDCP Data Center Insider

William F. Slater
Editor, Data Center Insider

I have managed a data center for nearly two and a half years for one of the ten largest companies in the world. I also coordinate the management and approval of changes in IT assets across several business units, representing hundreds of servers, and scores of routers and WAN circuits. During my tenure, I’ve not only managed to keep my job (and my sanity), but I was a finalist for an international achievement award for data center management excellence for what I have been able to accomplish at the company where I work, with the support of my management.

As my debut article, I wanted to provide a short but useful list of things that you should be doing in your data center.

The Top Ten Things
You Should Be Doing In Your Data Center

1 Have a Disaster Recovery Plan and Be Linked in with your Organization's Disaster Recovery Plan, and Ensure that emergency contact lists are up to date -- This plan should include the not only things like details of backups and offsite storage, but also details about how to perform restores. This would include which servers should be restored first, such as the infrastructure servers. Now, more than ever, it is absolutely essential to be able to have and execute a viable Disaster Recovery Plan. Some companies call these plans a “Business Contingency Plan.” No matter what you call it, you had better have one, and one that works.
.......more

Data Center Insider

Editor
William F. Slater

Director
Barbara E. McMullen

Contributing Columnists
William F. Slater III
David Meck
John F. McMullen
Thornton May

Guest Columnist
William F. Slater III

Web Developer
Puneetasri Murthy

IDCP News - Barbara E. McMullen

Editor's Desk - William F. Slater III

ECLECTrIC WORLD - David Meck

Wireless Connection - John F. McMullen

Future of the Data Center - Thornton May

Guest Column - William F. Slater III

[Significant news and views on security, hardware,
architecture and certificate programs.]

What’s Selling at TECHXNY 2003?
Hot Burn Habanero Sauce, Outsourcing and Certifications - David Meck

Manning the Marist booth at TECHXNY this September was an eye-popping experience. First, there was F-----Dcompany.com’s Hot Burn Habanero sauce, combined with a book, a catchy URL and a leggy short-skirted person attracting a huge male audience just around the corner. BUT what really got my attention was the assortment of Out Sourcing booths at the south end of the hall sponsored by OutSourceWorld . It was the disunited nations of outsourcing. A polyglot of accents rang in my ears. Multicolored national flags stood as guideposts for countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, and India (of course)....... more

[Does your Data Center have one and are you in control?]

Don’t Let Wireless Become The 21st Century’s Apple II - John F. McMullen
Professor of Computer Science, Monroe College, Bronx, NY.

In the late 1970s, the advent of the spreadsheet “VisiCalc” caused analysts, financial planners, and other “non-data processing personnel” to purchase Apple II computers and bring them into the office. This was a time in which many end-users found the Data Processing Departments of their organizations to be non-responsive and, invariably, those departments proved them right by trying to restrict the introduction of these oddly-named so-called computers into the organizations (some of our consulting clients at that time asked us to deliver Apple II computers to them but to invoice them for “office furniture”)........... more

[Are you ready for this?]

Future of the Data Center
- Thornton May, Futurist

Like the lame Olympian patron saint of tool users [the god Hephaestos-Vulcan], data center innovations limp, crawl, and sometimes stumble into the enterprise. The ballet of technologies, processes and people that the contemporary data center manager is called upon to choreograph in real-time has grown to mind-numbing proportions. Devices never meant to talk to one another have to be integrated. ........... more

Managing the Data About the IT Assets
In Your Data Center
- William F. Slater
Editor, Data Center Insider

In my list of Top 10 Things You Should Be Doing In Your Data Center, item three specified that you should be keeping track of the IT assets that are located in your Data Center. This article will expand upon that idea with some real specifics on what your should be tracking, the structure of the data tables, and the types of reports that you can get from your data tables. A large data center simply has too many activities going on to try to manage it in your head, on a legal pad, or other scraps of paper. In addition, you will need to be able to routinely report on the IT assets that are housed in your data center. This article will explain how to provide that capability and what some of the reports look like. ........... more

Barbara E. McMullen
Director, IDCP

Meet David Meck on January 14, 2004 at 11 A.M.!
David’s column ECLECTRrIC WORLD appears every quarter in the Data Center Insider. For our follow-up Web conference this quarter, IDCP features David Meck who will talk about the “Value of Certification.”

YOU MUST SIGN UP TO PARTICIPATE. Space is limited for this WebEx conference. Email Ms. Barbara E. McMullen, Director, IDCP, with your name, email address, and phone number to receive your WebEx conference logon information.

Meet IDCP at the spring AFCOM conference
Once again IDCP will have a booth at Data Center World, AFCOM’s conference for data center professionals, April 5 – 8, Las Vegas, Nevada.

A Marist cohort begins March 9, 2004 for its accredited Certificate in Data Center Technology – You can acquire all six IDCP Associate certifications, the CDCP certification, and the Marist Certificate in fifteen months online.

.  FAQs and answers at
http://www.idcp.org/faq.htm

.  Critical dates :here

.  A walk through of the
   15-month program :
   Click here

IDCP Certification tests currently available are:
. Systems and Software
. Networking
. Facilities Management
  Sign up today!

IDCP discussion threads include John McMullen, David Meck, and Bill Slater on Data Center Insider topics.