Tag: information factory

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Green and Virtual Data Center: Productive Economical Efficient Effective Flexible

Green and Virtual Data Center

A Green and Virtual IT Data Center (e.g. an information factory) means an environment comprising:

  • Habitat for technology or physical infrastructure (e.g. physical data center, yours, co-lo, managed service or cloud)
  • Power, cooling, communication networks, HVAC, smoke and fire suppression, physical security
  • IT data information infrastructure (e.g. hardware, software, valueware, cloud, virtual, physical, servers, storage, network)
  • Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) along with IT Service Management (ITSM) software defined management tools
  • Tools for monitoring, resource tracking and usage, reporting, diagnostics, provisioning and resource orchestration
  • Portals and service catalogs for automated, user initiated and assisted operation or access to IT resources
  • Processes, procedures, best-practices, work-flows and templates (including data protection with HA, BC, BR, DR, backup/restore, logical and physical security)
  • Metrics that matter for management insight and awareness
    People and skill sets among other items

Green and Virtual Data Center Resources

Click here to learn about "The Green and Virtual Data Center" book (CRC Press) for enabling efficient, productive IT data centers. This book covers cloud, virtualization, servers, storage, networks, software, facilities and associated management topics, technologies and techniques including metrics that matter. This book by industry veteran IT advisor and author Greg Schulz is the definitive guide for enabling economic efficiency and productive next generation data center strategies.

Intel recommended reading
Publisher: CRC Press – Taylor & Francis Group
By Greg P. Schulz of StorageIO www.storageio.com
 ISBN-10: 1439851739 and ISBN-13: 978-1439851739
 Hardcover * 370 pages * Over 100 illustrations figures and tables

Read more here and order your copy here. Also check out Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) a new book by Greg Schulz.

Productive Efficient Effective Economical Flexible Agile and Sustainable

Green hype and green washing may be on the endangered species list and going away, however, green IT for servers, storage, networks, facilities as well as related software and management techniques that address energy efficiency including power and cooling along with e-waste, environmental health and safety related issues are topics that wont be going away anytime soon. There is a growing green gap between green hype messaging or green washing and IT pain point issues including limits on availability or rising costs of power, cooling, floor-space as well as e-waste and environmental health and safety (PCFE). To close the gap will involve addressing green messaging and rhetoric closer to where IT organizations pain points are and where budget dollars exists that can address PCFE and other green related issues as a by-product.

The green gap will also be narrowed as awareness of broader green related topics coincide with IT data center pain points, in other words, alignment of messaging with IT issues that have or will have budget dollars allocated towards them to sustain business and economic growth via IT resource usage efficiency. Read more here.

Where to learn more

The following are useful links to related efficient, effective, productive, flexible, scalable and resilient IT data center along with server storage I/O networking hardware and software that supports cloud and virtual green data centers.

Various IT industry vendor and service provider links
Green and Virtual Data Center Primer
Green and Virtual Data Center links
Are large storage arrays dead at the hands of SSD?
Closing the Green Gap
Energy efficient technology sales depend on the pitch
EPA Energy Star for Data Center Storage Update
EPA Energy Star for data center storage draft 3 specification
Green IT Confusion Continues, Opportunities Missed! 
Green IT deferral blamed on economic recession might be result of green gap
How much SSD do you need vs. want?
How to reduce your Data Footprint impact (Podcast) 
Industry trend: People plus data are aging and living longer
In the data center or information factory, not everything is the same
More storage and IO metrics that matter
Optimizing storage capacity and performance to reduce your data footprint 
Performance metrics: Evaluating your data storage efficiency
PUE, Are you Managing Power, Energy or Productivity?
Saving Money with Green Data Storage Technology
Saving Money with Green IT: Time To Invest In Information Factories 
Shifting from energy avoidance to energy efficiency
SNIA Green Storage Knowledge Center
Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
SSD and Green IT moving beyond green washing
Storage Efficiency and Optimization: The Other Green
Supporting IT growth demand during economic uncertain times
The Green and Virtual Data Center Book (CRC Press, Intel Recommended Reading)
The new Green IT: Efficient, Effective, Smart and Productive 
The other Green Storage: Efficiency and Optimization 
What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do

Watch for more links and resources to be added soon.

What this all means

The result of a green and virtual data center is that of a flexible, agile, resilient, scalable information factory that is also economical, productive, efficient, productive as well as sustainable.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and IRM

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

There are many business drivers and technology reasons for adopting data center infrastructure management (DCIM) and infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) techniques, tools and best practices. Today’s agile data centers need updated management systems, tools, and best practices that allow organizations to plan, run at a low-cost, and analyze for workflow improvement. After all, there is no such thing as an information recession driving the need to move process and store more data. With budget and other constraints, organizations need to be able to stretch available resources further while reducing costs including for physical space and energy consumption.

The business value proposition of DCIM and IRM includes:

DCIM, Data Center, Cloud and storage management figure

Data Center Infrastructure Management or DCIM also known as IRM has as their names describe a focus around management resources in the data center or information factory. IT resources include physical floor and cabinet space, power and cooling, networks and cabling, physical (and virtual) servers and storage, other hardware and software management tools. For some organizations, DCIM will have a more facilities oriented view focusing on physical floor space, power and cooling. Other organizations will have a converged view crossing hardware, software, facilities along with how those are used to effectively deliver information services in a cost-effective way.

Common to all DCIM and IRM practices are metrics and measurements along with other related information of available resources for gaining situational awareness. Situational awareness enables visibility into what resources exist, how they are configured and being used, by what applications, their performance, availability, capacity and economic effectiveness (PACE) to deliver a given level of service. In other words, DCIM enabled with metrics and measurements that matter allow you to avoid flying blind to make prompt and effective decisions.

DCIM, Data Center and Cloud Metrics Figure

DCIM comprises the following:

  • Facilities, power (primary and standby, distribution), cooling, floor space
  • Resource planning, management, asset and resource tracking
  • Hardware (servers, storage, networking)
  • Software (virtualization, operating systems, applications, tools)
  • People, processes, policies and best practices for management operations
  • Metrics and measurements for analytics and insight (situational awareness)

The evolving DCIM model is around elasticity, multi-tenant, scalability, flexibility, and is metered and service-oriented. Service-oriented, means a combination of being able to rapidly give new services while keeping customer experience and satisfaction in mind. Also part of being focused on the customer is to enable organizations to be competitive with outside service offerings while focusing on being more productive and economic efficient.

DCIM, Data Center and Cloud E2E management figure

While specific technology domain areas or groups may be focused on their respective areas, interdependencies across IT resource areas are a matter of fact for efficient virtual data centers. For example, provisioning a virtual server relies on configuration and security of the virtual environment, physical servers, storage and networks along with associated software and facility related resources.

You can read more about DCIM, ITSM and IRM in this white paper that I did, as well as in my books Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) and The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press).

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Convergence: People, Processes, Policies and Products

Converged and dynamic infrastructures, cloud and virtual environments are popular themes and industry trends with different levels of adoption and deployment occurring. Although are you focusing on products, or the other Ps, that is people, processes and policies (or more here).

Industry Trend: Data growth and demand

The reason I bring this up is quite often I hear discussions that are centered around the products (or services) providing various benefits, return on investment or cost saving opportunities.

Very little discussions are heard around whats being done or enabled by vendors and service providers, or what is being adopted by customers to tie in people, process and policy convergence.

Industry Trend: Removing organizational barriers to enable convergence technology

Put another way, the discussions focus around the new technology or service while forgetting or assuming that the people, process and policies will naturally fall into place.

Will customer policies, process or procedures along with internal organizational (e.g. politics) issues with how people leverage those converged products also evolve?

I assert that while there are benefits that can be obtained from leveraging new enabling technologies (hardware, software, networks, services) their full potential will not be realized until policies, process, people skill sets and even more important, organizational or intradepartmental turf wars and boundaries are also addressed.

Industry Trend: SANtas converged management team and family
Converged family team

This does not mean consolidating different groups, rather it can mean thawing out relations between groups if there are challenges, establishing an abstraction or virtual layer, a virtual team to cut across different technology domains combing various skill sets, new best practices, policies and procedures in order to streamline management of physical and virtual resources.

Chuck Hollis (aka twitter @ChuckHollis) of EMC has an interesting blog post (here) that ties in the themes of different IT groups working or not having situational awareness that is worth a read. You can also read this Industry Trends and Perspective solution brief that I did earlier this year on the topic of Removing Organizational Barriers for Leveraging Technology Convergence.

Here are some additional related posts:

What is your organization doing (or have done) to enable convergence factoring in people, processes, policies and products or is it a non issue for you?

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved