The pressure of keeping data centre operations running smoothly is being felt like never before. As the latest research from Information Age demonstrates, several factors as diverse as globalisation, consolidation, IP convergence and the rise of high-density computing, are all adding to the increasing burden of managing the modern data centre.

The survey, which canvassed the views of more than 500 IT decision-makers, explored the priorities of data centre operations today, and looked at the strategies being implemented to retain control of this critical corporate asset.

The challenges

Some of the challenges being faced by data centre managers are not new: the speed at which new services can be provisioned or reconfigured was cited as a principle concern by nearly half of respondents. These traditional challenges are being augmented by new ones; a significant proportion also reported problems that related to power and cooling. As high-density servers, such as blades, have been introduced, power demands – and the associated energy costs – have spiralled.

However, despite the clear issues with power, the respondents were optimistic that the difficulties would not persist: powering their servers was the lowest ranked challenge respondents said their organisations faced over the next three to five years. Instead, the major challenges were seen as security, attracting skilled workers and the fallout from the convergence of voice, video and data traffic onto a single IP network.

That IP convergence was such a concern underlines the monumental changes underway in the data centre. It is not just the home for email, web and business application servers: increasingly all corporate communications will rely on the smooth operation of the data centre.

As the complexity of the data centre dramatically increases, so too does the pressure to sustain availability. According to two-thirds of the respondents, the need to keep operations running 24/7 was cited as a major priority.

There may be several reasons for this. Macro-economic trends such as globalisation means that many businesses ‘never sleep’. But other more prosaic explanations emerge: the number of senior executives hooked on checking their BlackBerry at all hours places an extra burden on IT managers to keep systems available at all times. Indeed, the survey shows that the loss of email systems is regarded as having the biggest impact on the business (25%). However, it is worth noting that respondents were only asked about a 60 minute interruption – the numbers may have changed had a longer disruption been considered.

Survival tactics

To counteract the pressures being placed on operations, many organisations have sought to rationalise their infrastructure through the consolidation of data centres and server locations and through the rationalisation of legacy systems. The vast majority of respondents (74%) reported that their systems were now consolidated into between one and five data centres/server locations. However, 12% still have over 10 data centres.

Alongside the push to reduce the number of sites, many of the respondents were seeking to centralise management of their operations. Nearly half (46%) reported that IT assets are tracked and managed from a central location. A further 17% of respondents reported tracking assets locally, but managing them centrally; fewer than 12% said they made no effort to track or manage IT assets at all. For many of these respondents, such efforts were undertaken in conjunction with a best practice framework, such as ITIL.

Despite this trend, there is still a long way to go for some: a surprisingly high number (one in eight) reported that they do not attempt to centrally track or manage IT assets at all. A further 20% only manage their IT infrastructure locally.

Further reading

• Centrist thoughts
  There is enormous pressure on organisations to centralise their IT, but the resulting concentration of computing power in data centres is proving complex to manage.
  
  
• Gravitational pull
  Businesses are looking to impose control over their dispersed IT assets.