This document discusses the need for organizations to optimize their data centers given economic pressures to do more with less resources. Many data centers are approaching capacity for power and cooling and struggle with capacity planning and disaster recovery. It also outlines various components of data center infrastructure that must be carefully managed like racks, switches, and HVAC systems to prevent overload conditions. Finally, it discusses how server virtualization enables disaster recovery across data centers by allowing instances to exist across locations, simplifying failover.

1. DATA CENTERS

3. Many are finding that specific targets for reduction have been set, especially in the near term

4. Server and storage growth do not appear to be keeping pace with economic times – in some cases, the needs for technology are on the rise

5. Server sprawl continues in a lot of cases – even with virtualized servers

6. The impact of storage growth is stressing backup and recovery subsystems and the frequency of missed backup windows remains for many

7. The typical data center will run out of power and cooling – many already have

8. Facilities and IT continue to struggle with an integrated capacity planning approach

9. Disaster recovery is something most organizations “hope” they can achieve, but wouldn’t want to test it

11. Data Center Infrastructure Data Centers are valuable resources as they get close to capacity those resources must be carefully managed Infrastructure includes Racks Switches and switch ports VLANs Patch panels and cables (of all types) Power utilization and monitoring Generators High voltage power components HVAC components By accurately tracking the usage of systems and their placement in the data center we can ensure that overload conditions do not occur 4 BMS

14. IBM Ethernet Product Families IBM m-series Ethernet/IP routers IBM s-series Ethernet switches IPv4 & IPv6 options, L2, L3 & POE upgradeable IPv4/IPv6, Full L2/L3, POS/SDH, MPLS, Carrier-grade QoS IBM c-series Ethernet switches IBM g-series Ethernet switches L2, L3 upgradeable, high-performance Metro access switch L2 edge switch, POE & stacking options

23. Geo-failover without geo-clusters

24. Complexity of failover is nearly eliminated

25. Leveraging the same infrastructure and storage functionality without extra software licensing and other overhead

27. Lower CapEx

28. Reduce OpEx

29. Unified Communications:

30. Collaboration

31. VoIP

32. Rich media

33. Operational Simplicity

34. Intelligent Edge:

35. Auto-configuration

36. Self-managing

37. High-Performance Core:

38. High density

39. Power efficiency

40. Redundancy

42. Capitalizing on Crisis:Effective Strategies for Optimization of the Data Center and Beyond Kristopher T Domich – Principal ConsultantKris.Domich@us.didata.com+1.703.932.1848