Data Centre Efficiency.PDF

7/30/2019 Data Centre Efficiency.PDF

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IBM Global Data Center Study i

Data center operational eciencybest practices

Enabling increased new project spending by improving data center efciency

IBM Global Technology Services

Research Report

Findings rom the IBM Global Data Center Study


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ii Data center operational efciency best practices

Data center operational efciency best practices: Enabling increased new project spendingby improving data center efciency is an IBM study that developed a data center operationaleciency model or assessing the capability levels o todays data center and describes the waysIT organizations can progress along the path o data center transormation. The report waswritten by IDC, which also executed the survey and interviews on behal o IBM.

The authors would like to give special thanks to the ollowing individuals or their assistance andsupport in developing this report:

Dr. Ian Stewart, Director o Advanced Computing, University o Bristol

Antonio Buratti, CIO, ABI (Associazione Bancaria Italiana)

Pierre Debagnard, General Manager o Albiant-IT, BPCE Group

Xiao Xiao Bin, IT Manager, INESA Inormation Solution Group Co. Ltd

Martin Constant, Corporate Director o Inormation Technology, NORAMPAC


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IBM Global Data Center Study iii

Executive SummaryTodays data center is changing rapidly. Many enterprises

are integrating new technology solutions to modernize and

evolve their organizations. Most are pursuing a path to ensure

appropriate levels o IT service delivery and cost eciency

and alignment to business goals. For some data centers this

means providing state o the art levels o availability, exibility,

and scalability, while or others the goal may be to provide

sucient levels o services while keeping new capitalexpenditures to a minimum.

Either way, data centers can be placed on a spectrum o

eciency and exibility. IBM and IDC have developed a

data center operational eciency model or assessing the

capability levels o todays data center and describing the ways

IT organizations can progress along the path o data center

transormation. There are our key stages that describe the

typical evolution o a data center as it relates to eciency:

Basic, Consolidated, Available and Strategic.

Data centers that are operating at thehighest level o eiciency allocate 50 percentmore o their IT resources to new projects.

Figure 1: Data centers that operate at the highest level o eiciency allocate50 percent more o their IT budgets to new projects than those operating at thelowest eiciency level.

Applying the results o a January 2012 global study o CIOs

and IT managers to the eciency model, 21 percent o todays

data centersabout one in vehave reached the peak o

eciency and are operating at the highest level.

Basic data centers

New projects

35%

Maintaining existinginrastructure65%

New projects

53%

Maintaining existinginrastructure47%

Strategic data centers


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iv Data center operational efciency best practices

Improving data center eciency can yield tangible benets to

the organization. This study ound that Strategic data centers

were able to deliver:

Greater investment on strategic initiatives. Sta spend more

than hal o their time on new projects versus maintaining

the inrastructure, compared to only 35 percent or Basic

data centers (Figure 1). Further, 39 percent are planning

transormational projects to reengineer their IT servicedelivery as compared to 23 percent.

Greater eciency. They enjoy more than 2.5 times the

stang eciency, averaging 27 servers per administrator

compared to 10 or Basic data centers. Greater exibility. More than hal o the companies support

a high rate o organizational change compared to just 6

percent or Basic data centers.

There were our distinguishing characteristics o companies

that have moved toward a more strategic approach:

Optimize the server, storage, network and acilities assets to

maximize capacity and availability Design or exibility to support changing business needs Use automation tools to improve service levels and

availability Have a plan that aligns with the business goals and keep

it current.

While the right solution cannot be dictated by a single,

standardized blueprint, and reaching the Strategic eciency

level may not align with the goals o all organizations, many

IT proessionals are looking or something analogous to

a playbook that provides context or designing an

appropriate strategy.

About this study

The inormation or this paper came rom a global survey o 308

IT executives in seven countries to understand the current state

o their data center operational eciencyprocesses, tools,

and technologiesacross eight separate areas: data center

operations, acilities management, servers, storage, network,

applications and tools, governance and stang. The survey

was supplemented by in-depth interviews with IT managers and

CIOs rom North America, Europe and Asia. For additional study

details, see Study Methodology.


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IBM Global Data Center Study 1

Contents

1 Defning the state o the data center

3 Distinguishing characteristics o a Strategicdata center

8 Recommended investments to improve your datacenter operational efciency

11 Moving up the efciency ladder: Case studies

14 Moving toward a Strategic data center

14 How IBM can help

15 Study methodology

Defining the state of the data centerThere are two critical concepts to keep in mind when

evaluating the state o data center eciency and alignment

with the needs o the business. First, there is no single magicbullet indicator o movement rom one eciency stage to the

next. The data center environment is a compilation o servers,

storage, network systems, mechanical/electrical systems,

applications and tools, governance procedures and sta. The

only eective means to measure the eciency o data center

operations is to take a holistic approach that considers multiple

measures across all elements. Second, the evolution o the data

center is a journey, one in which the destination may change as

the business needs change. This ramework should thereore

not be considered a recipe that should be ollowed blindly, but

rather a playbook that should be exibly applied based on the

individual needs o the organization.

Emerging rom the survey responses were our distinctive

stages that dierentiate data centers rom one another as

IT organizations move toward business alignment (Figure

2). Each stage characterizes the data center based on a

combination o eciency, availability and exibility.

Basic:The environment is relatively stable and is

maintained based on short-term objectives, with standalone

inrastructure as the norm. Companies gain the advantageso server consolidation but have not implemented tools

to improve availability levels, which vary widely rom

application to application and site to site. Consolidated: Server virtualization and site consolidation

are used to take out sizeable numbers o systems and

acilities and thereby lower capital costs. Server and storage

technologies are well utilized and the possibilities or

improving availability through virtual machine (VM)

mobility are beginning to be realized. Available: IT inrastructure is treated as a general resource

pool that can be allocated and scaled reely to meet the

changing demands o workloads and to ensure uptime and

perormance while providing high rates o utilization. The

ocus is on measuring and improving service levels while

building out governance procedures that capture

business requirements. Strategic: Widespread adoption o policy-based

automation tools lowers the manual complexity o the data

center and ensures availability requirements and dynamic

movement o applications and data. Instrumentation and

metrics are consistently used to validate compliance with

governance polices.


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2 Data center operational efciency best practices

Figure 2:The our distinctive stages o data center maturity are based on a combination o eiciency, availability and lexibility.

Operations

11+ years Data center age < 3 years

2.5+ Power usage eectiveness < 1.5

Facilities

None Mechanical/electrical redundancy Full

High Mechanical/electrical upgrade disruptiveness Not at all

Servers


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Distinguishing characteristics of a

Strategic data centerWith almost 60 percent o the respondents indicating plans

to upgrade their data centers in the next two years and 68

percent indicating rapid technology adoption, it is useul to

understand the key diferences that characterize Strategic

data centers. Not all organizations have environments that

require data centers built to support high rates o change,

and some may never require the near-real time exibility

and always on availability typied by the Strategic level.

However, or those that do require these capabilities, this

ramework provides a roadmap or thinking about the uture

data center and underscores how companies can build an

inrastructure that prioritizes availability and exibility as

well as cost containment.

Companies that operate a Strategic data center consistently:

Optimize the server, storage, network and acilities assets

to maximize capacity and availability Design or exibility to support changing business needs Use automation tools to improve service levels

and availability Have a plan that aligns with the business goals and keep

it current.

When taking a more strategic approach to data center

operations, IT organizations put the needs o the end user

at the center o their strategy. As data centers move up the

eciency scale, many have already taken out a signicant

portion o hard cost via consolidation and virtualization, and

the real ocus is on providing business benets.

These include not only application availability and

perormance but, even more important, the ability to respondrapidly to business changes. This ocus on business outcomes

can result in huge payo or organizations where revenue

generation, innovation or competitive advantage is the goal;

in comparison, eciency and cost containment are typically

oundational elements.

Globally, the distribution o data centers ollows a bell curve

with 21 percent, or about 1 in 5 data centers, operating at

the highest Strategic level o optimization, with more than

hal moving into diering stages o Consolidated and

Available environments.


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Moving beyond consolidation to high levelso optimization

Consolidation through virtualization is a necessary rst

step in the path to achieving data center eciency. Most IT

organizations initially introduce consolidation into the data

center at the server level to cut costs by reducing redundancy

in physical servers. This is oten ollowed by virtualization

in storage and networking environments, usually driven

by a similar goal o consolidation to streamline and reduceexpenditures on physical inrastructure.

Virtualization is table stakes or data center capability, and in

act by the time data centers reach the Strategic phase they

have high levels o virtualization across their servers, storage,

and network environments and are advanced in the use o

sotware and automation tools. Leaders achieve signicantly

higher sta productivity by managing 8.2 virtual machines

(VMs) per server, compared to 4.5 VMs per server or

Basic data centers. Key asset optimization characteristics o

Strategic data centers compared to Basic data centers include

(Figure 3):

48 percent o all their servers are virtualized, compared to

27 percent 93 percent use virtualized storage, versus 21 percent 92 percent use deduplication technologies, compared to

14 percent.

Figure 3:Strategic data centers are characterized by virtualization across allcomponents o the physical inrastructure.

48%

27%

93%

21%

92%

14%

Percent o serversvirtualized

Use storagevirtualization

Use datadeduplication

Strategic Basic


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Designing or fexibility to meet changingbusiness needs

Change is accelerating, putting pressure on inrastructures to

keep pace. Almost 90 percent o executives operating Strategic

data centers indicate they are the rst to adopt or among the

rst to adopt new technology. Having a plan that is designed

to be exible to respond to the ever changing needs o the

business and technology is critical.

Flexibility also means having the right level o availability and

redundancy to ensure meeting the service-level agreements

(SLAs). Availability and redundancy characteristics o Strategic

data centers as compared to Basic data centers include

(Figure 4):

47 percent can upgrade mechanical and electrical

equipment without disruption to operations, compared to

9 percent 90 percent have active-active congurations or their

primary data center, versus 21 percent 100 percent have a backup or secondary site or disaster

recoveryover hal o which are hot sitescompared to

15 percent 46 percent take a sophisticated approach to storage

backup including synchronous replication, geo-replication

or consistency groups or multiple snapshots, compared to

8 percent 45 percent have a network design that exibly supports new

services, compared to 31 percent.

Figure 4: Strategic data centers are designed with the right level o availabilityand redundancy or meeting business needs.

47%

9%

Upgrademechanical/

electrical equipmentwithout disruption

Primary datacenter replicatedwith active-active

Strategic Basic

Replicationused or storage

backup

Network designfexibly supports

new services

90%

21%

46%

8%

45%

31%


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Employing automation tools to improve service levelsand availability

Automation is typically the next step in the data center journey.

Introducing higher levels o automation enables greater levels

o exibility and helps support even higher levels o availability.

Greater reliance on automation tools and technologies ofoads

manually intensive tasks or system administrators, reduces

error rates and ensures the perormance o applications against

their SLAs. Management characteristics o Strategic datacenters compared to Basic data centers include (Figure 5):

For server management: 81 percent move VMs across physical hardware, compared

to 27 percent, enabling much higher levels o exibility

and availability 100 percent use automation tools to manage their virtual

server environmentand 58 percent use automation

tools to move VMs automatically based on service level

agreements (SLAs), without the need o manual

interventionversus 1 percent 32 percent oer a sel-service portal that enables cloud-like

capabilities, versus 4 percent, and another 48 percent plan

to oer one in the next 12 monthsmeaning 80 percent

expect to oer one by 2013.

For storage management: 85 percent have automated tiered storage, versus 12 percent 87 percent use a service catalog approach or storage,

leading to higher levels o availability and automation,

versus only 3 percent.

For network management: 60 percent use automated network management, compared

to 20 percent 30 percent versus 3 percent use policy management

processes to automatically provision network services,

which drives aster response to service as well as network

recovery times in minutes and seconds instead o hours

and days.

Figure 5:Extensive use o automation across server, storage and networkmanagement enables the high level o availability and service levels thatcharacterize Strategic data centers.

58%

1%

Move VMsto meetSLAs

Implemented astorage service

catalog

Strategic Basic

Network servicesautomaticallyprovisioned

Monitorthermal

conditions

87%

3%

30%

3%

31%

0%

For acilities management: 31 percent use sotware tools to monitor thermal conditions

versus 0 percent, providing insight to adjust to real-time

operating conditions.


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Having a plan that aligns with business goals andkeeping it current

Organizations with Strategic data centers are ar better

prepared to take advantage o market opportunities as the

economy rebounds. They have heavily utilized consolidation

projects to optimize the number o data center sites they

maintain. Moreover, we nd they are signicantly more likely

to continually evaluate the target number o data centers they

should have in a continual ocus on strategy and execution.

For example, IT organizations with Strategic data centers

were much more likely to have expanded and modernized

their capabilities during the recent economic downturn. Over

60 percent o Basic data center operations made no strategic

changes or investments over the past two years, and more than

70 percent dont expect to do so over the next two. In contrast,

nearly all Strategic data centers experienced some orm o

expansion or growth over the past two years, and more than 80

percent o them expect to do so over the next two.

Additionally, IT organizations operating Strategic data centerswere more likely to regularly engage in ormal planning

exercises. Characteristics o Strategic data center planning

that increase exibility compared to Basic data centers include

(Figure 6):

68 percent plan to build in smaller increments o capacity

rather than build out all at once, compared with 53 percent 25 percent orecast the space needed to support the 1020

year useul lie o a data center, compared to 0 percent 77 percent orecast power demands, versus 14 percent 33 percent plan to implement low- and high-density zones

to support the varying power demands o new technology,

versus 2 percent.

Strategic data centers are in a better position and are nearly

twice as likely to pursue transormational projects. Fully 39

percent o Strategic data center managers are planning projects

over the next ve years to signicantly change the way they

deliver IT services to their organization, compared with only

23 percent o Basic data center managers.

Figure 6:Managers o Strategic data centers enable alignment with businessobjectives by engaging in regular orecasting and employing expansionstrategies that ensure lexibility.

68%

53%

Build capacityin smaller

increments

Forecast space(10 to 20 years)

Strategic Basic

Forecast powerdemand

Implement high- andlow-density zones

25%

0%

77%

14%

33%

2%


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85 percent o Strategic data center managersplanning major projects, and 77 percent othose planning projects overall, say they willturn to outside help.

Data center managers across the board understand that this

will require investment in outside tools, technologies and

assistance. O those planning a major project, over three in

our said they will turn to outside help, with an even greater

percentage (85 percent) among Strategic data centers. Whats

more, Strategic data centers are signicantly more likely to

leverage more o-premises capabilitiesincluding hosting,

collocation and alternative sites or disaster recoverywhile

still having 64 percent o their capacity on-premises.

Recommended investments to improve

your data center operational efficiencyWhile cost containment is certainly a critical benet o data

center eciency, probably the most important benet comes

in the ability to better serve the needs o the core business and

respond to shits in market demand. Evidence shows that the

journey toward greater levels o data center eciency requires

signicant changes to the organizations tools, technologies

and processes.

Once companies understand what stage they are at and

where they want to go on the eciency spectrum, theywill need to consider appropriate investments in time and

resources. Because there are dependencies required to move

rom one stage to the next, getting to the Strategic level

requires a succession o steps. Leveraging the distinguishing

characteristics o leaders applied to each discipline area can

help determine how to get started, including:

Data center operations and acilities management Servers Storage

Network Business resilience Governance, including applications, tools and stang.

Data center operations and acilities management

Strategic data centers pay careul attention to their acility

design and understand the need or a holistic view that treats

the data center as a single system. They plan to meet the

business needs over the useul lie o a acility by orecasting

power, space, capacity and availabilitywhich leads to better

predictability and lower disruption during changes and build-

outs. Insights rom leaders include:

Right size capacity and availability. Forecast capacity

and availability to meet the business needs o primary and

backup centers. Then continue to manage or eciency

using real-time monitoring and management sotware. Design or exibility. Ensure that investments provide the

scalability required to support rapid changes in demand

and technology by, or example, building new capacity in

smaller increments over time and designing mechanical/

electrical systems so that equipment changes can be made

without disrupting operations. Optimize total costs over the long term. Ensure trade-

ofs between capital and operating costs are included in

acilities design, and measure energy eciency and power

consumption on a real-time basis.


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Building a new data center has providedus with more space, more eicient and greencooling and power, and more robust servicedelivery. Incorporating greater levels oredundancy was a key component o that.

Martin Constant, Corporate Director o Inormation Technology, NORAMPAC

Paper and Packaging industry, Canada

Servers

Strategic data center operators have consolidated their server

inrastructure to achieve the undamental eciencies rom

server management. They understand the need to tackle the

harder projects to leverage automation and sotware tools

to drive higher levels o availability and improved quality o

service. Specic insights to leverage include:

Move beyond consolidation to virtualization. Improve

SLA perormance by using sotware tools and automation

to move virtual images between physical servers and data

centers based on policies. Prepare or cloud computing. Plan to use a sel-service

portal that allows VMs to be automatically ordered online,

with a choice o size, operating system and service level. Take advantage o the latest technology. Knowing how

to optimize systems and move workloads will allow you

to take advantage o converged inrastructures (server,

storage and networking systems that are sold together with

management sotware in a pre-integrated package).

Storage

Strategic data centers are dealing with all aspects o storage

optimization and management. They realize the need to

get ahead o the explosion in storage by using sotware and

policy-based management systems to reduce the hands-on

labor required to provision and manage storage. Insights rom

leaders include:

Increase storage optimization. Leaders implementour to six times more storage optimization techniques,

including virtualization, deduplication, thin provisioning

and others. Reduce the time spent by storage architects. Implement

storage management technologies, especially storage

service catalog, to drive sel-service and policy-based

management. Dont overlook storage backup and archive. With all the

ocus on the volume o storage, leaders realize they need

to manage the ull liecycle o data. Consider using more

sophisticated approaches to storage backupincluding

geo-replication or consistency groups or multiplesnapshots. For archiving, consider using eDiscovery data

mapping or dened processes or audits.

We are already using automatedhierarchical storage, storage virtualizationand deduplication as well as dynamicresource allocation (on demand).

Pierre Debagnard, General Manager o Albiant-IT, BPCE Group, France


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Network

There are many external pressures on the network today, such

as the explosion o smartphones and how they have greatly

accelerated the demand or access to applications and data;

the growing use o video; and the adoption o cloud

computing. Leaders realize the need to have a data center

networking strategy in place. They are also moving beyond

traditional network optimization techniques to approaches

that include network management and automation in orderto improve overall IT eciency and exibility. Insights rom

leaders include:

Develop and execute a network strategy.Take a holistic,

long-term view that considers the network, servers, storage

and applications and end-to-end manageability balanced

against business and nancial goals. Implement network management and automation.

Use tools and processes that enable continuous network

adjustments to meet policy-based application requirements,

and use predictive tools to avoid unscheduled outages. Design or fexibility. Incorporate into the architecture

the ability to automatically provision network services based

on policies, with minimal human intervention.

Business resilience

The ability to manage IT risk is essential or enabling growth,

dealing with changing business conditions and addressing

new regulations, security threats and service outages. Leaders

distinguish themselves in their approaches and their ability

to mitigate negative risks while enhancing their ability to

optimize potential opportunities. Insights rom the strategies

o leaders include:

Review your business continuity plan. Avoid reliance

on tape alone or data backup and recovery, whether at

the data center or a remote location. Combine onsite and

remote disk storage or backup. Understand the impact o systems not being available

to specifc business processes or applications. Leaders

provide the optimal level o availability to meet business

needs by using an active-active conguration, which allows

or rapid ailover o systems in the event o ailure. Examine business and regulatory compliance

requirements. Gain an understanding o your potential

long-term data archiving needs, including how search

capabilities afect your ability to meet compliance

requirements. Have a dened process or audits and have

archive eDiscovery capabilities.

Governance, applications, tools and stafng

Strategic data center executives establish an environment that

is supportive o using a number o management best practices,

including:

Use a centralized portolio approach to application

management. Leaders will also apply diferent service and

support levels to individual applications i the application

owner is prepared to pay. Focus on both hard, upront capital costs and ongoing

operational costs when deciding on data center

investments. Leaders use monitoring and management

sotware to ensure a total-cost ocus in ongoing operations

as well as when making point-in-time investment decisions Implement decision-making procedures and policies.

Leaders employ documented procedures and policies

to ease decision making regarding ongoing data center

operations.


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We currently manage applications viaindividual tools, but we are planning toimplement a single management platorm inthe uture.

Xiao Xiao Bin , IT Manager, INESA Inormation IT Services industry, China

Moving up the efficiency ladder:

Case studies

Associazione Bancaria Italiana (ABI): Moving rom Basic

to Consolidated

ABI, the Italian Bank Association, is a nonprot organization that

represents the interests o Italian nancial institutions both athome and abroad. Headquar tered in Rome, the associations

oces are located within the Palazzo Altieri, a national historical

monument lled with signicant works o art.

In 2010, ABIs IT inrastructure consisted o 110 servers and

50 switches and routers hosted in 6 separate server rooms

dispersed throughout the building and managed by a sta o

6 IT administrators and a total o 19 IT department sta. These

systems supported 600 internal connections and several

thousand external connections through a web portal. There was

no virtualization, the server rooms were not properly equipped

or cooled, and the need to maintain each one separately led to

stang ineciencies. Looking to take its inrastructure to the next

level, ABI decided to push orward with consolidation, beginning

with centralizing its data center into a single acility.

One o ABIs unique challenges was the requirement to locate the

new data center in its existing headquarterswhich, as a cultural

heritage, is under signicant restrictions that limit structural

modications. Nevertheless, ABI identied a suitable space, an

860 square oot high-ceilinged hall located within the palace, and

began renovating the site.

Ater determining it could not completely retrot the site (or

example, it couldnt introduce raised-foor cooling), ABI opted

to equip the hall with an innovative cooling system based on

APC in-rack water cooling blocks connected to chillers above

the rack cabinets. By transorming its data center this way, ABI

believes it has reduced the average power consumption o the IT

inrastructure by about 35 percent, or 25 kW.

Our system provides cooling directly tothe IT equipment, alleviating the needto provide room-wide air conditioning.By transforming our data center we havereduced the average power consumption of

the IT infrastructure by about 35 percent or25 kW.

Antonio Buratti, CIO, ABI

Now that ABI has modernized its acilities, with a ocus on

mechanical/electrical and power and cooling, it has opened the

door to completing its transition to a Consolidated data center.

It is planning to urther consolidate servers rom rack-mounted

units to blades, whose higher server densities can now be

supported by the more ecient cooling system and, in tandem,

to introduce greater levels o server vir tualization. In addition, itis planning to incorporate advanced management tools that will

urther increase the eciency o the data center by enabling the

operation o the entire acility, rom monitoring racks to operating

acilities security systems all rom a single dashboard.


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University o Bristol: Investing or a Strategic data center

The University o Bristol is a leading UK research university with

a broad portolio o High Perormance Computing (HPC)-based

studies, including climatology, aerospace, gene sequencing,

social medicine, economics and computational chemistry. Its

dedicated HPC data centers support the computationally-

intensive research and teaching needs o over 600 researchers

and students.

In addition to its main corporate data center, the University has

two separate data centers that are exclusively used to house its

HPC and research data storage systems, which are operated at

the Available eciency level. The data center inrastructures o er

high levels o virtualization and redundancy through clustered and

distributed system conguration. The larger data center has 38

racks within an APC hot aisle enclosed solution, and the smaller

one has 12 APC racks in a similar hot aisle conguration. They

house a total o over 600 server nodes and 1.3 petabytes

o storage.

In 2006, the University devised a ten-year data center plan,which called or a major upgrade to its inrastructure with the

addition o new data center capabilities to urther increase its

levels o optimization. Unortunately, the campus is tight on

available space, so the University came up with the solution o

transorming an old water storage acility into a new data center.

The unique space presented some unusual challenges, including

the need to move equipment up ve stories as the water storage

acility was on the roo o the Physics building, and to ensure

that no electromagnetic intererence aected the Universitys

research radio telescope that was housed on top o the same

structure. Fortunately, it also oered advantagessuch as some

ree air cooling since the Physics building is on one o the highest

points in Bristol.

In the end, the new acility provided over 190 square meters

o foor space with a number o state-o-the-art capabilities

representative o a Strategic data center. These include a

modular design with two enclosed hot-aisle pods that act like

separate data centers. These APC Inrastructure hot-aisle water-

cooled enclosures can be easily scaled when the Universitys

computing needs grow. The modular approach lets the University

support uture scalability while saving on upront capital costs

and avoiding overbuilding. Currently specied at 20 kW per rack,

the acility is designed to and can support higher densities in

the uture.

We have developed lights-outadministration tools that let us manage boththe data center and the HPC and researchdata storage systems with a staff of four

FTEs. This alleviates the need for staffmembers to enter the data center for routinemaintenance and monitoring tasks.

Dr. Ian Stewart, Director o Advanced Computing, University o Bristol

Further characterizing a Strategic level o eciency, the data

center now supports a number o state-o-the-art automation

capabilities, including lights-out administration which alleviates

the need or HPC sta members to enter the data center or

routine maintenance and monitoring tasks and allows both the

data center and all the computer equipment to be managed by

a sta o our HPC system administrators. Automated scripts

communicate with APC sensor equipment to monitor the

machine room environment and take appropriate actions, all

the way up to being capable o shutting down the compute and

storage systems i something goes drastically wrong.

Looking to the uture, the University is already planning to expandits current 38 rack units to 48, targeting a completion by late

spring 2012. It is also aggressively pursuing green initiatives,

considering both the use o more power-ecient processors

and making more ecient use o that processing power through

more intelligent sotware. Not only will this urther reduce

operating costs, but it could also extend the lie o the data

center.


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Albiant-IT, Group BPCE: Operating at the Strategic level

Albiant-IT is the services provider dedicated to hosting and

managing the data centers o the banking Group BPCE, a

French company oering a comprehensive range o banking and

nancial services to a wide range o corporate and consumer

customers. The group has 36 million customers served by 117,000

employees and 8,000 branches. To support these operations

Albiant-IT operates a total o our datacenters across two sites,one in the Paris metropolitan area and one in the south o France.

The our datacenters combined have a capacity o 80,800 square

eet extendable to 97,000 square eet and currently host 18,000

servers. 80 percent o the servers are x86, with the remainder

consisting o Unix servers and seven mainrames.

Albiant-IT has made strategic investments in its datacenter that

enable it to operate optimally. It operates at a ve nine availability

SLA (99.999 percent uptime) and in act has a measured 100

percent uptime since it put its current acilities in place more than

two years ago. It currently has a ten-year capacity plan in place to

account or its internal IT and hosting services inrastructure.

The datacenters operate in a hot-hot (active-active) mode with

a 2(N+1) architecture. Each datacenter replicates into the other

and workloads can be moved as necessary. Capacity can be

added in a modular ashion, both by increasing energy capacity

and by equipping new rooms within the existing physical

acilities. Energy consumption is measured at the acility level

according to the energy capacity plan in place. A great deal o

ocus is placed on optimizing power usage eectiveness (PUE);

the acility is currently operating at a PUE ratio o 2, with the goal

o achieving 1.7 in the very near uture. There is an entire system in

place to optimize energy consumption that relies on a number o

variables, including a rooms population, air fow, hygrometry and

temperature optimization.

There is widespread deployment o virtualization, with overall

server vir tualization levels over 60 percent. VM movement is

supported in an automated capacity (or example, in case o

server ailure). Vir tualization is also incorporated into the storage

environment, with deduplication and dynamic resource allocation

on demand. Backup is perormed onsite via tape and on disks

with geo-replication. The network is architected to recover

rom an outage in real-time. Governance is provided through a

change committee representing each o the client organizations

within the bank, and the core decision making criteria are always

ensuring the ability to deliver high availability and minimize

operating costs.

We operate at a 99.999 percent SLA andhave had 100 percent measured availability

since our current facility was deployed twoyears ago.

Pierre Debagnard, General Manager o A lbiant-IT, BPCE Group

Even though the datacenter is operating in most respects at

the Strategic level, this is not to say there are not uture areas

o urther optimization that Albiant-IT is considering. One o the

areas is the introduction o a converged inrastructure. Albiant-

IT, with its BPCE clients, is considering implementing such an

inrastructure providing it helps reduce costs and enables a quick

return on investment (ROI).


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Moving toward a Strategic data centerData centers are under constant pressure to scale and evolve

to meet the changing needs o the underlying business. To

adapt to these challenges, each data center takes a slightly

dierent approach.

Today, about one in ve data centers operate at the Strategic,

or highest eciency, level. Companies not yet operating at

this level can achieve greater eciency by emulating theour key behaviors o IT organizations that operate Strategic

data centers:

Optimize the server, storage, network and acilities assets to

maximize capacity and availability Design or exibility to support changing business needs Use automation tools to improve service levels

and availability Have a plan that aligns with the business goals and keep

it current.

For most companies, getting there will not happen overnight.

It typically takes organizations several years o planning and

strategic investments in each area o the data center to achieve

Strategic status. While North American organizations and

companies with more than 500 employees had the highest

proportion o Strategic data centers, this level o eciency is

achievable or any company. Strategic data centers were ound

in all regions o the world and in smaller companies.

Most companies, whatever their size, plan on using outside

help with the projects that advance eciency, a realization

especially shared by Strategic data centers. To achieve thehighest levels o eciency, data centers must continually

re-evaluate their perormance, reviewing their investments in

tools, technologies and governance, and must have the right

level o skills and assistance. Doing so can yield benets in

greater stang eciencies, greater levels o exibility and the

ability to spend more time on strategic IT initiative to support

the business.

How IBM can helpIBM helps enterprises around the world plan, optimize

and automate their data centers in order to support their

business growth and objectives. IBM has a broad portolio

o data center acilities planning and design, cloud, IT

virtualization, network modernization, business resilience

and automation services that can help you meet your data

center eciency objectives.

You can get started on your data center eciency journey

by taking the Data Center Eciency Sel-Assessment. This

no-cost online tool will give you a quick snapshot o your

eciency status across acilities management, servers, storage

and networks.

For more informationTo learn more about how IBM can help you progress on your

journey to greater data center eciency, you can contact your

IBM representative or visit the ollowing websites:

ibm.com/data-center/study

ibm.com/services/smarterdatacenter
http://www.ibm.com/services/us/igs/data-center/assessment.htmlhttp://www.ibm.com/services/us/en/it-services/data-center-efficiency-study.htmlhttp://www.ibm.com/services/us/en/it-services/data-center-efficiency-study.htmlhttp://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/igs/smarterdatacenter.htmlhttp://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/igs/smarterdatacenter.htmlhttp://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/igs/smarterdatacenter.htmlhttp://www.ibm.com/services/us/en/it-services/data-center-efficiency-study.htmlhttp://www.ibm.com/services/us/igs/data-center/assessment.html


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Study methodology

The inormation or this white paper came rom a global survey

o 308 IT executives, conducted in January 2012, and was

supplemented by in-depth interviews with data center managers

representing each stage o data center eciency. The survey

population consisted o IT executives who have responsibility

or or infuence over their organizations data center strategy,

rom organizations o over $50 million in revenue with at leastone enterprise-class data center. Respondents were randomly

recruited and screened rom international panels and came rom

seven dierent countries: the United States, Brazil, Canada,

China, Germany, France, and India. Global data was derived by

weighting IT spending on server systems, storage, enterprise

networks, packaged sotware and services (excluding telecom

and outsourcing). Respondents were recruited by phone to

complete the survey over the Internet. Both phone and web

portions o the survey were administered in the local language.

The surveys asked respondents to provide inormation about

their data center, tools, technologies and processes across eight

separate areas: data center operations, acilities management,

servers, storage, network, applications and tools, governance

and stang. The questions were designed to unearth the data

centers eciency level in each o these areas. The data rom

the survey was imported into an IDC model designed to assess

and categorize eciency in each o these areas and to roll it

up into an overall data center eciency rating (Figure 7). The

model examines the levers by which data centers can improve

their inrastructure and identied a number o areas, including

availability/resilience, cost-eectiveness and the fexibility to

provide the capacity needed by the business.

The demographics o the respondents were:

60percentfrommaturecountriesand40percentin

growth markets

63percentfromlargeenterpriseand37percentfrom

small and mid-sized businesses

83percentwereITmanagersand17percentwerechief

inormation ocers

25industriescoveringnance,communications,industrial,

distribution, public sector and others.

The inormation rom the survey was supplemented with ve

in-depth interviews with executives responsible or data centers

in North America, Europe and Asia. The respondents had

responsibility or ull data center operations and represented the

ull spectrum o data center eciency stages.

Figure 7.The study identiied our stages o eiciency worldwide ordata centers.

17%

Basic Consolidated Available Strategic

32%30%

21%

Eciency level

1 standarddeviation

1 standarddeviation%

ofsurveyrespondents


20/20


Copyright IBM Corporation 2012

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Produced in the United States o AmericaApril 2012

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