Best ways to go about upgrading a data centre

Nov 12
11:43

2015

Innes Donaldson

Innes Donaldson

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Best ways to go about upgrading a data centre.

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As more efficient use ofIT assets becomes a clearand pressing priority for IT organizations,Best ways to go about upgrading a data centre Articles the need to align the data center’s facilities andIT processes becomes greater to maintain uptime, coordinate complex integrated systems and deploy shared resources reliably. Most companies hope to get as much as 20 years of dependable service from their data centers. Unfortunately, there are many obstacles to achieving that length of service. In particular, some of the key mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) components data centers rely on are not designed to lastthat long. In addition, rapidly changing data processing requirements demand that data centers remain flexible and support greater rack densities.

Organizations with a data center 10 years of age or older have several options: building a new data center, putting applications in the public cloud, leasing space in a colocation facilityor modernizing the existing data center. Many companies continue to cycle througha gradual transition awayfrom distributed data center architectures to even more centralized sites—and, in some cases, those that are gradually more localized. In part, this means IT strategies are moving out beyond consolidation plans to focus instead on improving and updating facilities where assets have already been centralized.

Modernization efforts go a long way in supporting the needs of mission-critical IT assets as the risk of downtime becomes more stringently unthinkable. Many companies looking to make the most of previous investments also choose to modernize their existing facilities, as it can often be done more cost-effectively than the other options and usually yields significant improvements in reliability, efficiency and operational effectiveness. Retrofitting can also help provide powerful new layers of security, intelligence and automation.

IT asset utilization joins the interests of IT and facilities and should be a top priority in all data center projects. Similarly, projects that combine multiple systems into a single hardware stack—such as heavily integrated systems—are a good means of finding common interests and savings through upgrade or retrofit projects. Through joint efforts to modernize the data center, IT and operations can demonstrate wise spending, agility, efficiency, and reliability.

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