Space: The data-centre frontier?
Published: 16 Jul 2007 10:33 BST
...have typically achieved a 12-to-one consolidation when moving from physical to virtual servers, a startling figure on first impressions. Reza Malekzadeh of VMware told ZDNet.co.uk: "What has been driving VMware adoption is server consolidation. On average, an x86 server is running at 10 to 15 percent utilisation."
Reducing the number of physical servers required also means less supporting infrastructure is needed, such as network ports, power and cooling. Even if servers have been managed well and enjoy high utilisation rates, some level of consolidation is still possible, and newer machines with multicore processors are likely to change that even further.
While physical servers can be redeployed as virtual servers, this doesn't result in the best performance or utilisation rates. Malekzadeh makes this clear: "It's not just a product you buy and slap in your data centre. It's a strategy that you have to plan and implement." Indeed, to get the most of some of virtualisation's advantages, you'll have to be able to move virtual machines between physical servers depending on demand and you'll need to regularly review the situation.
What about wide-area connectivity?
Even after all these measures are implemented, some organisations are still faced with too steep a rent bill. Data centres are often in the same building as the people using them but by no means always — branch offices are common in larger companies. Wide-area connectivity is easier and cheaper to buy than it used to be, but can it solve the problem? The answer appears to be: "It depends". While wide-area links can be purchased at multi-gigabit speeds, there are other issues which mere bandwidth can't solve.
Remote data centres are an option but their viability depends on whether organisations are performing true, real-time transactions. This is almost certainly the case for the finance sector, where prices can change from second to second. Colin Hopkins, head of data centre strategy for BT Global Services, explains: "The finance sector needs synchronous transmission. This means no more than a 100km round trip, even over fibre, which puts [the data centre] at most a few kilometres outside the M25 for a company in the City."
Unfortunately, if companies need synchronous data transfer of this nature, then a basic law of physics means data centres can't be sited too far from a company's main operations centre, and no amount of technological progress is going to change that.
If, however, you can live with a bit of latency, then you have more freedom. There are still problems with this approach, since companies will still need to find a site that has an adequate and reliable power supply and is in economic range of the telecommunications network. This tends to restrict companies to urban areas with good existing communications. Hopkins comments: "What we're finding is that people are following the M4 or the M1."
Ultimately, replacing older, larger servers with newer, more compact models will reduce the amount of rack space needed, but will probably require a similar level of other infrastructure. There are other pressures on the data centre — conventional ones, like running costs, and newer ones, like the need to protect the environment — but fortunately the space issue is one which, given some careful management, needn't keep you awake at night.
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