Archive for category Managed Data Centers

Misconceptions about Automation in Data Center

Jan 28

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Automation brings many benefits to the data center like better service levels, less operational costs and above all an improved performance for the data center. But still organizations are afraid of adapting to data center automation. Ignoring the current some of the advancements made in automation in data centers previous developments added pointless complications and frailty to the whole process which resulted in some misconceptions about the data center. Some of the most common misconceptions about automation in data center are as follows -

Large amount of money is needed for professional consultants and services.

This is one of the common disbelief about automation in data center that you need a large staff of experts and various types of services to start automation in data center. With a commonly available automation tool your technical staff can easily start the automation progress and within few days can start production. This as simple as it looks you don’t need long scripts, coding, or any kind of special development.

Automation will result in job loss of many employees

There is no need of evaluating whether your staff is talented enough to handle all the projects you have. IT staff is not removed by automation, instead it frees the staff from some of the important repetitive tasks. Once free from such tasks they can concentrate on other important and logical working processes which will be helpful in development of business.

Automation will increase complexity

Automation is not for increasing complexity but it eased down many processes. Another common misconception about data center automation is that it is not for all the processes. Automation offer flexibility and it can automate whole process or few steps within a process, whichever suits you better. Also in both the ways you can add checkpoints at suitable intervals to make it more simple.

Automation will change everything

Automation works in such a process that it will increase productivity and won’t change your process significantly. A successful automation tool will help you to automate and arrange all your existing process taking care of the operational measures which are followed in your company.

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Virtualized, Green and Efficient Data Center

Jan 27

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Green Data Center 2 400x142 Virtualized, Green and Efficient Data Center

What are the requirements of a Effective, Green and Competent Virtual Data Center? You will get the answer to the question in below given paragraphs. A data center can be made virtual, efficient and green by referring to various necessities and matters. The best technique to merge the less utilized resources of the IT equipments like I/O networks, Servers, Storage, decrease cooling demands, and reduce consumption of energy. Virtuality and Green these two terms are seen as future solution for every business around the world. Likewise Data Centers which are green and virtualized are called as next generation data centers and they are better than other data centers in performance. Also these kind of Data Centers are supple, flexible, economical and environmental friendly. Today only virtualization is the solution for to solidify there business and customer service, but in the future there are wide chances of other technologies to grow as well which will help data centers to improve the quality of application service provided by them, with the conditions of reducing costs and not negotiating with the performance factors such as ability or availability required for processing and storing more data.

In order to improve the performance of the data center Virtualization and Cloud needs software as well as physical resources. These available physical and software resources are responsible for economical and environmental friendly performance of a data center. Worldwide components of green and virtualized data center are as follows:

  • Services, hardware resources, and software options should be installed on wide area, remote and local basis.
  • Processes, rules, best practices, and procedures should be followed in order to enhance the performance.
  • Managements should also measure the effectiveness of service delivery and resource usage.
  • Servers, racks, software, storage devices, I/O networks accesses and data protection layers all should be arranged in a tiered manner.

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There are many points which are expected from Green, Virtualized, and Cloud Data Centers. The list goes like that:

  • Should be fast in controlling and adapting to the new technological advancements.
  • Without the increasing cost and loosing performance it should maintain efficiency and effectiveness.
  • With the factors of energy efficient and environmentally friendly it should be economical in maintaining.
  • Automation is required throughout the data center and it should be seen as information plant not like a money eating center.
  • Secure from any kind of known risk to the data center let it be mechanical or physical.
  • Most important of all should be flexible, stable, easy to scale changes, and should be self healing.

Economical Data Center 400x288 Virtualized, Green and Efficient Data Center

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Understand Cloud Computing?

Jan 13

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It is not necessary that you have to be a tech guy to learn about Cloud Computing, nowadays everybody knows everything about  Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing is just like the previous technologies which changed the whole concept of web world, like Internet, Web 2.0 and wireless computing. They completely changed the way we work and live. These technologies made it easier for us to make our way into public consciousness using articles, magazines and other polar press items. Cloud Computing helped tech industry rejuvenating, authorizing consumers and making the field equal for small and large business. But before going for Cloud Computing you should analyze what your business need. Cloud Computing can be different for business that  is lively and can be different for dormant one. The conduit to liveliness needs a change of attitude from internal to external internet based technologies. This what is known as Evergreen IT. According to this new definition there is no option for working systems where heavy work is done using old systems that are so costly and complex that often people change their business. Evergreen IT generates possible ways to energizing new IT capabilities that works perfectly for your business and that to without disturbing your business path. There are three basic concepts of Cloud Computing, it helps us to understand what are the sore points of business for the large organizations. But first we should understand what Cloud Computing really is? It’s a basically a model in which a company outsources the management and ownership of the some part of the companies IT.

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Drawbacks of Cloud Computing

Jan 12

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Its Cloud Computing which allows you to access all your documents and application anytime and anywhere in the world. Releasing you from detaining you from desktop every time. Cloud and computing and Colocation services are seen as future of web world. But nothing is perfect in the world and just like that cloud computing is not for everyone, there are several pros and cons associated with cloud computing. Here is brief descriptions of which type of user can enjoy the benefits of cloud computing  which should avoid using cloud computing. Few of the disadvantages associated with cloud computing are:

High Speed Internet  Required -  Cloud Computing’s performance in slow speed internet connections is absurd. Slow connections like dial-up make is Cloud computing  a pain for the user or it can be say it is impossible for the users to enjoy cloud computing on slow connections. Large documents and web-base applications need a lot of bandwidth to download. Is you are using a low speed internet connection then you may feel Cloud Computing will take more than a lifetime to be operational on that type of connection. In simple words Cloud Computing is not for slow connections.

Constant Internet Connection – Cloud Computing without proper internet connection is just like lifeless body. Because you are using internet for accessing both your documents and applications, in case if you don’t have an internet connection you can’t even access your documents. Departed internet connection means no work on the cloud computing and areas where internet connections are slow and are unreliable it can affect your business. Cloud Computing simply stops working without internet connection.

Limited Features – today many web-based applications are not fully featured when compared to their desktop versions. Just for an example there are n-number of things which can be done using Microsoft PowerPoint with the help of Google Presentation’s web based feature. Basics of using Microsoft PowerPoint on Cloud Computing are same but it lacks many of the advanced features of PowerPoint. If you are specially fond of power features, you will not look at cloud computing.

Data Stored is not secure – All the data in Cloud Computing is stored on Cloud. Its your duty to make sure how secure Cloud is? Whether only authorized persons are slowed to access to your confidential data. Concept of cloud computing is new and even if hosting companies say that the data is secured it can’t be a 100% truth. If you will see theoretically data on cloud computing is unsafe as it is replicated along multiple machines. In any case if your data goes missing you don’t have any chance of local or physical backup. Simply depending on cloud can let you down and there is always a risk of failure. In order to save the data only solution is downloading all cloud documents on your machines. However this is a lengthy process and every time your documents upgrades you will have to download a new copy of the application.

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Best Way to Keep Data Centers Cool

Dec 27

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Equipments in Data Centers work round the clock let it be day or night, hot or cold, data centers works continuously. Huge power is used in order to keep data center working. Main part of that power is used in keeping that equipments cool, because continuous working can cause overheating and eventually burning down of the equipment. Not few but most of the data centers waste their power in their cooling systems. Many research are being conducted by scientist round the globe to find out the solution. So far the best solution is shown by a team of engineers led by The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This whole project is backed up by company giants like IBM, Intel Corporation, HP they all are funding the team to bring new system which can cool the data center without using much power. Till now the team has find out a system that delivers the most favorable amount of cooling to the equipment. The system is not a complex machine meshed up in infinite wires and toughest looking programming codes but it works as simple as a pendulum. Simple first take temperatures readings from the servers which are feed into the Data Center Building controls through sensors. As a result air conditioning system keeps the facility cool on its own. The team wrote a software which was used to fill the gap between management systems. Previously these systems were running separately for facilities management and IT. Typically these systems were kept separate from each other in most of the companies. Not the team of scientists connected the two systems and now the companies are reaping huge profits. About 80% of the Data Centers have their temperature sensors on their computer air control systems better known as CRAH units. 11% of the data centers are following a better way then the previous one and placing their temperature sensors in the aisles between server racks. The best way is to link the servers up directly into the cooling system itself. As promised by the team their research will be ready commercially within a year. One strange fact in this research is that nearly 90% of the Data Centers are keeping their temperature down by 5 degrees cooler than required.

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Trends in Data Center

Dec 25

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Companies need to enhance their technology investments, specially because of the economic ambiguity. Every industry was affected because of the economic recession.  Data Centers solutions providers were also affected and they are under pressure to preserve the levels of reliability, security, flexibility and efficiency and that to without increasing any cost even in some cases cost was asked to be reduced. To cover increasing demands from business Data Centers should be modernized if they want to harvest future rewards. Some of the best modernization available in market are automation, blade server and virtualization. In recent times two other data center modernization which are in limelight are utility computing and infrastructure as a service. Ass according to the industry experts in the upcoming year there will be shortage of cost cutting proposals. There is a excitement around that “cloud computing” is the best solution for cost cutting. Cloud is more a new kind of technology which fetches new worth to the enterprise, then being a cost cutting solution for the existing services and enterprise apps.

First step to be followed for the Data Center is to think like a Cloud-based service provider. Start using technologies which are used to boost the performance of Cloud computing. Also put into practice the service which will make the infrastructure more supple, so that resources are used to make the infrastructure to work like self-service instead of build to order. Sharp focus on right technologies and change of mind status are two requirements which are needed to increase value of the existing resources. Its true that virtualization is important, but its not universal remedy. There are many steps which are needed to be followed in a data center if someone wants their business to grow on normal rate in this economical roller coaster ride.

Data Center Trends Trends in Data Center
Automation of Server, Network and Storage Devices

Virtualization helps in enabling technologies for organizations to convey new hierarchal levels in efficiency to the data center. However disadvantage of virtualization is that it blurs the contact between the clients and server, storage and network devices. This happens because virtualization permit multiple resources to be configured on a single CPU. If you attempt to create interoperability and uniformed management it can be challenging to you. For this reason automation is gaining more importance then virtualization. In a Data Center where server management is automated it makes virtualization inappropriate to be used. In the data center where servers are automated, companies can enjoy the advantages of fast provision applications as well as that of virtualization and all this without taking any risk. Virtualization is preferred by most of the users and companies have to manage both virtual as well physical servers. Sometime they use different kind of tools for this process. Standard management is required on the tools which are required to manage virtual and physical servers. Also the changes should be monitored to find out the impact of change. Virtual machines need to be managed just like other technological machines. This is important to in order to avoid any possible performance problems along with service and security issues.

Blades Servers are the Best

We already discussed how Blade Servers are best server types used in contemporary Data Centers. All the important tasks in a data center are easily covered by Blade Servers, including supporting most important computing to workplace application. New delivery models like utility commuting and infrastructure as a service are also easily execute on Blade servers. Mostly customers look for change, energy saving, cost and time benefiting hardware and ultimate solution for them is Blade Servers. The technology behind Blade Servers is still growing and is expected to grow more mature in the year 2010. With time Blade server are expected to gain perfection from best option. They will be able to reduce data center footprints and also increase energy efficiencies. Nowadays server providers are also developing special blades for special applications. Say for an example cloud computing’s special requirement is an ultra dense, which can execute large amount of data swiftly and competently. On the other hand virtual organization requires amplified storage, data storage, network connections and memory. This is not a problem at all for Blade servers to run these applications sufficiently. Still special blade servers with modified capabilities are equipped to optimize the functionality of a server for a given application.

Data Center Trends 1 Trends in Data Center

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Before Choosing a Colocation Facility

Dec 23

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In the jet age communication and data access are two most important factors for business operations. Email, messaging websites and servers have to be up 24×7 and they should be protected for business communication to function. Specially Data Centers which have servers with mission critical information. Most important are company databases and servers, which should be kept up at any cost. Important factors in a colocation facility are:

Redundant Systems
Systems used in colocation hosting should be redundant and at every point of working they should have proper capacity. Many people get confused with multiple units considering them as redundancy. Ideal configuration for systems used in colocation facilities should be n+1, which means that if there are two units they should run at 50% capacity, and in any case if one fails other will handle the load. Same if there are three units working capacity should be 66%.

Colocation facility Before Choosing a Colocation Facility

Best Connectivity

Major points which decides the Internet Connectivity of a colocation facility are as follows:

  • Total Bandwidth available for usage
  • Accessible Internet backbones
  • Uptime guarantee
  • Packet loss, jitter and Latency

Carrier-neutral access and Tier -1 carriers, tier-2 carriers all get access to internet using Colocation data centers. Carrier-neutral can be used by any service from any carrier but customers are requested to configure their own routing. Also customers are should maintain their own connections to Internet backbones. Tier-1 is used by Internet giants like AT&T for direct access. Tier-2 is used for routing traffic amongst the multiple Tier-1 providers. In these kind of tiers speed and reliability depends on how effectively traffic is routed. Tier-2 is preferred by most of the clients since routing is configured by the Colocation facility. Also it is more reliable because of the presence of backbones, these backbones network performance and uptime.

Colocation facility 1 Before Choosing a Colocation Facility

Control on Climate

Design of the colocation facility itself affects the performance of the systems used in the colocation facility. Air flow between rack rows should be controlled by the server rooms. Hot air generated due to the heat produced by the servers should be blown in one direction and cool air to keep the servers cool should exit from another direction. Only dedicated hot and cols air flow can save the servers from overheating and finally burning down. Cold sir and humidity is controlled by correctly sized and redundant climate control units. As we all know climate requirements for the server are strict and they only work properly when they are installed under suitable working environment. Servers need 50% humidity and 70 degrees of temperature. Both CRAC units and chillers for the server rooms should be included in a Colocation facility. Cooling capacity is calculated by total tonnage by the square footage.

Power Required

Power to the colocation is like oxygen to the humans, if it fails to perform then you are in deep trouble. UPS and generators should be used for backup and they are necessary to keep the network online. UPS are used when power is shifted from regular to the generators. Generators should be there 24X7 for immediate backup power. Power system of a colocation facility should be properly working and should have following features for perfection:

  • Redundant and multiple UPS because of the reason UPS fails very oftenly.
  • Generator which can handle at least 1.5 time the total building load

Equal Distribution of Traffic

Both hardware and logic of distribution has an important effect on connectivity. The way traffic is divided plays an important role in the performance of routing. If your distribution covers three below given points than it is perfect:

  • In order to continually adjusting routes to find the most effective one Performance based distribution is should be used. Performance based concentrates on performance rather then price.
  • Switches and routers should be redundant and be working on full working for the customers.
  • Distributions should be done between more than 4-5 clients.

Colocation facility 2 Before Choosing a Colocation Facility

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Enjoying Virtualization

Dec 23

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For most of the people server virtualization sounds something complex, but if you will go through it you will find it much more easier. Virtualization is considered as one of the mainstream technology and it is the popular solution for data center management for every type of company. Understanding the basics server virtualization allows you to run multiple guest  operating systems which can be either same or different on a host operating system on a physical server. Operating systems are divided in order to reside each application on its own virtual machines or virtual server on the hardware platform. Benefits associated with virtualization are endless and it is specially very much good for small business. Most important benefit is lowering the cost for the owner and it also includes many smaller benefits like:

  • Improve physical space in Data center and also reduce server sprawl.
  • Hardware maintenance cost is reduced since number of physical servers are  also reduced.
  • Speed up the network thus making provision for new services.
  • Performance and resource utilization is improved.
  • Applications are quickly developed and organized and downtime is avoided due to maintenance windows.
  • Flawlessly mange and scale the infrastructure based on various industrial demands.

Virtualization 1 Enjoying Virtualization

There are many software which helps in organizing server virtualization. Some of the most famous and most conveniently applied virtualization servers are:

Windows Virtual Server

Windows virtual server is loved by those who only want to have Microsoft type of environment, using Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 operating systems. There are two versions provided by Microsoft for its Windows Virtual Server 2005 Standard and Enterprise Edition. Enterprise Edition supports can host a server with as much as 32 processors. Standard on the other hand support server with only 4 processors. The enterprise edition can be downloaded free of charge.

XenSource

It is launched almost three years ago. XenSource is based on a open source project sponsored by Linux and known as Xen. It is a good option for those who like open source products then proprietary ones. XenSource proved itself in cost effectiveness but it still has to prove itself in quality service.

VMWare

It is the leading software of the virtualization process. Launched in 1998 it was VMWare which bought virtualization to the mainstream through  X86 computing platform. There are option for everyone from small to big business and at the wide range of price points. Features of VMWare are never ending and it benefit’s the host for every server environment.

Virtualization 2 Enjoying Virtualization

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Types of Cloud Computing

Dec 23

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Types of Cloud Computing-3

Whenever IT always need to add capabilities or increase capacity without investing in a new infrastructure, licensing new software, or training new staff first word that came to your mind is Cloud Computing. Any subscription based or pay-per-use service over the Internet is included in Cloud Computing, it helps in extending IT limits. You may have come across various analysts, IT customers and vendors talking cloud hosting and its features. Based on the various discussions here is in rough what really means:

Utility Computing

A comparatively new but well acquired form of Cloud Computing. It is major support is from industry giants like Sun, IBM and Amazon.com, and various others who are offering virtual and storage servers which can be accessed by clients on demand. Newbie’s use Cloud Computing for non-mission critical, supplemental needs but it will be soon be replaced parts of data center. Other providers are offering solutions that will help in creating virtual data centers from commodity servers. These virtualized servers enable users to stitch up storage, I/O computational capacity and memory.

SaaS (Software as a Service)

In this kind of Cloud Computing a single application is delivered through browsers to thousands of customers using a multi tenant architecture. From the customers point iof view it means no extra investment in software of server licensing. From the vendors side only a single application to maintain and costs are way low as compared to conventional hosting.

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Web Services in Cloud Computing

This is closed related to SaaS and Web service providers offers APIs. These APIs in place of delivering full-blown applications allows developers to develop functionality over the Internet. Full range of APIs offered are ADP payroll, Google Maps, Bloomberg, U.S. Postal Service and may other credit card processing companies. Small time API vendors include Xignite and Strike Iron.

Platform as a service

This is another variation of SaaS, it delivers development environments as a service. Application is build by you which will run on the provider’s infrastructure and later delivered to your users through Internet from the server of the provider. These services do not offer you complete freedom as they are controlled from vendors end, but instead they offer pre-integration and inevitability.

Managed Service Providers (MSP)

This is one of the oldest form of cloud computing. Managed service is basically an application which is directly exposed to IT Companies instead of end users. Best example is application monitoring service or virus scanning service for e-mail. Some of the most famous managed security services are delivered by IBM, SecureWorks and Verizon. Other famous offering include CenterBeam’s and Everdream’s desktop management services.

Commerce Platform Services

This is a hybrid of SaaS and MSP. Its basically work is to provide service hub that can be used by users to interact with each other. Most commonly they are used in trading business like expense management system that allows users to order secretarial services or travel from common platform and then organizing the service delivery and pricing inside the specifications set by the user. You can also call it as automated service bureau.

Types of Cloud Computing

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What is Client Server?

Dec 23

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Client Server

Client server networking or computing helps in partitioning tasks or distributing work load between service providers and service requester’s, who are known as clients. Client Server is a distributed application architecture. It is seen that frequently servers and clients operate on a computer network on separate hardware. Server machines which share its resources with its clients, are high-performance host running one or many server programs. On the other hand a client does not have to share any of its resources, but on the other hand requests a servers service function. As a result clients begin communication sessions with servers which listen to incoming requests. There are many advantages associated with client servers, like:

  • Data is stored on the servers, thus providing the clients a greater security than client machines. Also Servers control the access and resources in a more proper way only appropriate clients are allowed to access and change data.
  • Client server technologies are available for the use which were initially designed for friendliness and security of the user interface.
  • Can function with multiple clients of each with different capabilities.
  • Client server architecture allow the responsibilities of computing system to be spread amongst many independent computers which are connected to each other with network. It makes it more easy to be maintained, for an instance it is possible to upgrade, relocate or repair servers with clients remain unaffected and unaware of the process.
  • Update in the data is easier to control then the P2P pattern, since the data is centralized .

Everything has brighter and darker sides, client server with lost of advantages got a lot of disadvantages too like:

  • Client server lacks robustness of P2P network. Like under the circumstances of critical server fail clients requested cannot completed.
  • Traffic jamming on the network is one of the most common issue since the beginning of client server pattern. Server can become overload if client requests to a given server increases.

Client Server-1

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