Whether you're concerned about where your power comes from (is it clean or how much loss does it suffer due to distance) or how a new blade chassis might affect your cooling, there's no way to deny that almost every aspect of the modern data center is linked.
The best way to get efficiency out of a system is to have a single owner. I'm proposing that all companies should assign a single "Data Center Owner". Ideally this person is someone who has a decent background in IT infrastructure, but also has interest or affinity for efficiency in general. Once this person is assigned you are much more likely to start collecting information about your "System" that encompasses the entire "Stack" Only then will you know what your system is costing you and what specific changes will mean to the performance of the system.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue!
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1 comment:
Mark,
I like the idea of a stack and I think this is a good start. There are some thoughts I would like to share with you on this stack.
1. What is the scope of the stack. Your stack goes up to the OS level. I think it goes up even further. Because the DC does not stop there and the efficiency as a whole is not only dependent on the facilities and the ICT equipment, but also what runs or is stored on it. So I would also include application and data/information as a stack(theme). Examples of change could be application rationalization and ILM.
I like the way you structured your target. It is realy important to look at what you are targeting. Is it efficiency then you need metrics in this area for all themes. But the target could also be resiliance/continuity/availability or flexibility/scalability. They all have their own metrics.
Then there is one more theme that I am missing. Organization. Stacks could be people, process, structure, information. You can build the most efficient, resilliant, flexible DC, but if you don't have the right ppl to govern, manage and operate your DC, you will fail on all targets.
Then there are a few smaller things like 'What makes a theme and what makes a stack'. There is probably no wrong or right, but I would have put different stacks in the real estate theme (power, cooling, building) and you can dispute weather or not to combine real estate with the physical theme. It is more a matter of choice and how you want to create a structure that everybody can understand and know where to find what.
I would personally integrate OS with the platform theme. Storage and networks also have their OS (though not as complex as servers), and then there are system related tools (like VMWare).
And for me Virtualization is not a stack, but an example of change.
Hope this helps you in your work to build a stack structure for all to use :)
Aernoud van de Graaff
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