Posts Tagged Data Center India

Unseen Dangers of a Cheap Colocation Facility

Feb 3

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Final aim of a colocation facility is  to deliver 100% uptime, for this a colocation facility requires many other provisions like redundant power systems, sufficient cooling, and intelligent cooling. 100% uptime is impossible to imagine without these systems. When choosing a colocation facility always remember that there is something more important than money. There are few things to be checked about a data centers like:

  • Support and Security
  • Facility system maintenance should be planned and long term.
  • Whole infrastructure should be monitored properly.
  • Disaster Management

Security and Support

People working in a colocation facility has a big impact on the customers. There are many colocation facilities which operate remotely for saving cost, but the one which are manually operated have a different impact on customers. If your colocation facility is maintained and monitored by an expert team, it will surely help in increasing a reliability and uptime guarantee. Just like monitoring support of your colocation facility should also be there 24X7. Best data centers have a 24X7 support. Having an on-site personnel is like investing money in good deal, not only it will give customers a good impact about the facility but also it will help you to maintain and monitor your servers and any problems can be fixed more swiftly. Having maintenance without security is  useless and anybody can cause damage or harm to your data center. Security is an important feature for business round the globe let it be health management or gaming. It is important to secure your server because these server store valuable information of your customers. On-site personnel also plays an important role in security just like support.

Monitoring of servers 24X7

Monitoring servers round clock help in increasing uptime, and if you want to make your data center services available round the clock monitor servers 24X7. A low cost colocation facility cannot fulfill the need of 24X7 monitoring of your servers and thus making your servers susceptible to various failures and other power issues. On the other hand a superior class colocation facility offers you a application and server monitoring programs. with a high class facility issues like overuse, performance deviation and fluctuations can be detected easily. It is difficult to notify customers about the problems without monitoring. Mostly data centers cut costs in server maintenance.

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Top 10 Trends of Data Centers in 2010

Jan 30

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2010 will change many things about data center, it is expected that some powerful and strong technological advancements will change the view of data centers. 2010 will be completely different for data centers from the previous few years. Here are the few points which are expected to be changed in data centers:

  • Cooling System -  first and the most important one is cooling, slowly data centers are moving towards the liquid cooling. Credit for this change goes to IBM for bringing much revolutionary Z11 mainframe which are provided with water cooler options. It is believed that liquids are 4000 times more beneficial than air when it comes to removing heat. This kind of liquid cooling is suitable for the highest density deployments like (High Performance Computing) HPC.
  • Because of the reason that cooling, data feeds and power will be supplied from above the importance of raised floor plans will drop. Raised floors were never loved in the areas where rolling and static load is high. And after all it is much easier to deliver and maintain power inputs and cables from above.
  • Flywheels will take place of the traditional lead acid batteries and UPS for AC power protection executions. This is also important from the perspective of competence and preservation specially in the developed countries where rules are very strict about correct disposal of heavy metals.
  • Layout for the data center will change forever as the importance of manual patch pattern will reduce and will be replaced by join edge networks with some smart switching options.
  • DC power options will be more famous in data centers for the IT equipments. Some modern data centers will even offer both DC and AC options. This will help in utilizing better efficiency of DC and eventually increasing reliability.
  • Dependency on data center infrastructure will reduce as reliability will continuously sift towards application layer. Important basics will concentrate on repetition of the technology and high quality networks in order to allow swift migration of data between sites.
  • Backup generators will be replaced by new technology called CHP ( Combined Heat and Power) plant, specially in the data centers situated in city centers. This is because of the fact that power grids are no longer famous and efficient as they were few years ago.
  • Virtualization will continue to grow let it be network, server or storage. Operational efficiency will be replaced by operational flexibility and this will be important for the change in critical application space.
  • Colocation will loose importance to data centers hosting. Data centers hosting will be preferred by IT as a service offering since business will most probably shift to cloud computing models.
  • Locality of data centers will change and they will be no longer be in situated in outskirts of cities. Myth of choosing data centers near corporate headquarters will not be preferred any more. Moreover because of the power restrictions in city centers Data centers will be left with the choice of providing receptive applications only.

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Misconceptions about Automation in Data Center

Jan 28

Posted by in Colocation Services India, Data Centers India, Fully Managed Data Center, Managed Data Centers | No Comments

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.

Data Center Optimization 1 304x300 Virtualized, Green and Efficient Data Center

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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Drawbacks of Cloud Computing

Jan 12

Posted by in Colocation Services India, Data Centers India, Fully Managed Data Center, Managed Data Centers | No Comments

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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What is DCML (Data Center Markup Language)?

Jan 5

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The Data Center Markup Language or better known as DCML is a an XML based condition which is used for representing main contents of data centers and also the information used in managing all those components. With the combination of OASIS DCML is developed by Data Center Markup Language Interest Group. Development of DCML started in early 2004, when it was first seen in its draft form. To understand DCML can be used for linking a server monitoring system with server provisioning system. By doing this next time when a new server is provisioned it will be monitored automatically. In such case the DCML document that is transmitted to the monitoring system includes information regarding the IP address and all the other special services running on that machines and special ports that will be monitored as well. Other important information like the application server belongs to and in the case of server goes down whom should be contacted . All the information is imported into the system of NOC personnel, which can use in the case of any alert occurs. Framework specifications of DCML are used to define overall concepts structures and approach to DCML’s manipulation of all the Data center elements along with policies governing their management. DCML allows people and systems managing data center and other IT environments to exchange policy, operating information and configuration in a standardized manner which works on a wide range of products and processes. Below given are the few process which are possible with a given set of unified DCML description:

  • Replace or remove components
  • Permit communication between various data center management systems
  • Expansion of functions like adding services or servers
  • Configuring and reconfiguring newly added software and hardware

DCML What is DCML (Data Center Markup Language)?

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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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Rightsizing Servers

Dec 24

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Commonly people consider performance with speed. If go deeply and find the meaning of the word performance in dictionary it will be defined as how good something performs the functions or actions for which its is assigned. When you are dealing with servers in Data Center, you should care for more than speed. Traditionally speed is measured according to latency and response time. Cost effective measures are also important. To understand this more fact take an example of automobiles or cars, there will be different customers. One who are interested in mileage will not care for speed of the car. What they want from their car is maintainability and all other criteria related to economy. Going the same way when you look at servers you care more for performance per watt, performance per dollar per watt and performance per dollar. Data center admins discover the definite energy consumption and how much work is done with that energy.

Look at the performance of your CPU systems in real world. Mostly the memory sizes which are produced by used benchmarks is smaller then the amount of limited disk I/O. This is the reason why CPU utilization in the industry is so low and thus the balance of server systems are not well. Solution for the problem includes using balanced servers which use main platform resources like memory, disk, network and CPU in a right manner. Another option to solve the problem is to use fewer memory in order to have fewer disk admissions. Although this process adds a little cost to you but it can help you to improve the performance to a great level. Performance defines cost effectiveness of your business process. Along with performance and cost consider power too. Working of benchmarks may get affected by the working environments of your company. So it is suggested that these companies create their own workload process. These process will be more effective in finding out the activities of the applications used by your servers.

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Challenges in Operating Data Center

Dec 24

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Data center are important for every kind of business. Saving your data keeps your companies operating and nay downtime can cost you a lot of time and money. Maintaining a data center, running 24X7 is a big challenge and the companies which provide data center solution face many problems. Early when computer era started dedicated rooms were created to keep computer equipments safe, cool and free from other contaminants. Only these dedicated rooms later evolved into Data Centers. As the computer era was developing very swiftly, various departments congregated these dedicated rooms to form earliest data centers. With dot com bubble client-server networking become significant for IT companies and the dedicated rooms were changed to higher designs. Now these dedicated rooms are grown up into fully managed Data Centers, and maintaining these is not easy and include several challenges like:

Operating cost of Data Center

Cost of operating Data center is very high and companies often got shut down due to this factor. Companying a large data center with all the essential equipments is not a small job. All the necessary equipments and servers are expensive. Companies providing data center solutions have to pay employees who are skilled in maintaining servers in Data center. Also those employees have to work round the day. Getting employees for a data center is very costly business. Solution for this problem is that instead of buying the equipment and hiring all the staff on your own, companies can use the service of some other data center providing their services. This process helped many companies to decrease their cost of operating with providing good service.

Physical Space

Early data centers were small not more than a room or few rooms, but as the industry grown larger and larger seize of Data center grew considerably and nowadays they cover acres of land. It is hard to manage the servers, important equipments and cables in a Data Center. Finding space for the huge data center is a big problem for many companies. You can outsource data center from other companies, instead of building dedicated space for large data center.

Reliability and Security Dilemma

Now even if the companies pass the challenges of staffing, equipment expenses, and physical space, companies still have to face the challenge of providing security and reliability. Reliability of a company is directly related to the reliability of Data Center and if the data center goes down for any possible reason it will affect the companies business. Security and reliability is only possible if the staff is properly trained and they security is at the right place. Another factor for good reliability of a data center is disaster recovery plan. Disaster recovery plan is the reason for the coming back of a company.

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