Posts Tagged Fully Managed Data Center

Tier System in Data Center

Mar 9

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A famous term associated with Data Centers is tier standards. Tier standards can be defined as standardized channels used to figure out availability in a data centers. Tier system is very much important for all the data centers let it be Fully managed data centers or partially managed data centers. Tier system was developed by Uptime institute. It helps companies to calculate performance and ROI (return on investment). There are 4 tiers in a tier system, with tier 4 being the best and tier 1 being in the bottom. Do decide which data center facility belongs to which tier Uptime Institute issue a certificate. This reduces the risk from companies which falsely claims for the certification for their facility. Till the start of the year 2008 more than 25 data center round the world had been certified by the Uptime Institute. This certificate helps customers to figure out the standard of the data center facility in which their servers will be placed. In the fast jet age it is very important for a customer to check the standard of a facility, since e downtime of few seconds can cost million of bucks. Process of certification begins with engineers at Uptime Institute review submitted documents of the design. Following the review Uptime employees visit the site and examine whether the site is newly built or just an expansion from a older facility. The inspection also includes various other service checks at the data center. In order to amplify the sustainability of the tier standards, Uptime Institute also added an grading system.

Tier 3 data center Tier System in Data Center

Below is a brief explanation of the four tiers of data center:-

Tier Level Requirements from data center
Tier 1 1) Non-redundant capacity IT equipments

2)Non-redundant and Dedicated distribution path for all the equipments.
Tier 2 1) Redundant IT equipments including all Tier 1 requirements
Tier 3 1) Distribution paths for the IT equipments are independent and normally one path serves equipment at a given time.

2) IT equipments should be completely compatible with the topology of the site architecture and also they should be dual powered.

3) other than these all the Tier 1 and 2 requirements
Tier 4 1) Cooling facility should include HVAC systems and chillers along with being dual powered.

2) All the distribution networks should be fault tolerant, let it be storage or electrical.

3) All Tier 1, 2 and 3 requirements.

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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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Remote Graphics Unit Explained

Nov 24

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A System which permit computer system to be separated from output/input devices like mouse, keyboard, display monitors, audio speakers is called a Remote Graphics Unit (RGU). Graphics sub-system of the computer is the main part being remoted. Typically there are three main causes behind using separate user interface of a computer from the actual computer are:

  • Decrease noise and heat from the rooms where many computer operators are working.
  • Smooth the progress of  computer maintenance by placing all computers in very close closeness to each other.
  • Locking computers away from users for government or commercial security.

RGU or Remote Graphic Unit originated with researches on graphics controller on mainframe computers in the 70s era. Earlier Remote graphic units are associated with high end workstations running Unix-like operating systems and later with Windows. Normally RGUs are used for some unique applications like Computer Aided Drafting, Financial Services Commodity Trading Desks, Remote Sensing e.t.c. Dedicated X terminals are also included, depending on the choice of the user how he wants to use RGU. A Remote Graphics Unit effectively split computers PCI-Express bus or PCI and then transmit only bus command over to the user side. RGUs process of working is different from that of DVI Extension and KVM Extension. Traditional graphics unit or GPU perform processing in DVI and KVM Extensions. Bus data however is way too small then rendered graphics data, theory behind the working of RGU is like it is possible to achieve better graphics and resolutions performance if only the distance of separation is large between the computer side and user side input/output devices.

Remote Graphics Unit

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19-inch rack – most famous rack type

Nov 24

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19-inch rack is the most famous standardized enclosure used for mounting multiple equipment modules. In a 19-inch rack there is a front panel 19 inches wide with ears that stick out on each side allowing modules to be fastened to the rack frame with screws. Rack-mount instrument, rack-mount, rack mountable, subrack, a rack mount chassis or just shelf these are some of the terms coined for the equipment which is planned to be placed in a rack. Electronic modules are also fixed at the height of  “U” one rack unit which measures 1.75 inches. Most commonly used to house professional video and audio equipment, this type of rack is most preferred one by Data Centers to place their servers. 19-inch racks allow dense hardware configurations devoid of excessive requiring shelving. One of the other uncommon used of 19-inch rack is industrial control, automation and power hardware.

There are four important steps inn Equipment Mounting:

Fastening – mounting equipments starts from the process of fastening. In order to receive particular type of threaded bolt mounting holes are tapped. However this hole tapped kind of racks are only used for the hardware that really changes like relay racks and network or telephone cabling panels. Hardware which is frequently changed is mounted on racks which are provided with slide rails, since there is a possibility that the frequent movement can break of a bolt or damaging a thread making mounting hole unusable.

2 u rack

Structural Support – mounting of the equipment is confirmed by clipping equipment’s front panel to the rack. One of the disadvantage of the process is that all the structural support is centered only to one side of the edge, so heavier equipment is designed to mounted on a second pair of mounting strips located at the back of the equipment. A variety of spacings are used between front and back strips, with 31.5 inches being the most common one. Equipment mounted is deigned to manage a range of depths and 39.4 is the most common used space because of the reason is more depth permit more space for to route cables at the back of the rack. Racks are commonly secured to the adjacent wall or floor so that it will not fall over. This process is done specially with 2 post racks.

Slides -  heavy equipment which is continuously used for servicing an in the process all the four corners are detached concurrently can cause a threat of damage. To avoid damage heavy equipment is either mounted via rails or mounted directly. A rail is mounted directly onto the rack equipment is then slides into the rack along with the rails which supports it. When the equipment reaches the place it is then bolted back to the rack. Rails also support the equipment in a position where it is clear of the rack and maintenance and inspection can be done easily.

19 inch Rack

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KVM switch review

Nov 22

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A hardware device which allows users to control multiple computers from a single mouse, video monitor or keyboard is called a KVM switch. KVM is an abbreviation for Keyboard, Visual Display Unit, Mouse or Keyboard, Video, Mouse. Multiple Computers can be connected to KVM, but usually only few computers are controlled at any certain point of time. There are also few KVM switches which work in reverse and i.e. s single computer can be connected to multiple keyboards, monitors, and mice. This kind of configuration is useful when operator wants to access a single computer from two or more locations. Latest KVM switches can be connected to USB devices, multiple computers and speakers. There are many kind of KVM switches available in market like USB KVM, PS/2 KVM and IP KVM, all offered in 16 Port KVM, 8 Port KVM and 4 Port KVM. You can also integrate KVM switch into LCD Drawers whilst occupying only IU of space. Both PS/2 and USB devices are supported by KVM on same switch. KVM switches can provide remote BIOS Level access to as much as 128 servers. KVM are quite popular and organizations from hospitals to banks use them, specially because their networks are widely spread out. One more feature or advantage with KVM is Climate monitoring, i.e. they provide resolutions to guard hardware at the Data Center.

KVM over IP

For hardware KVM switch there are many software available for use. Input Director, VNC (Virtual Network Computing), MaxiVista, PC Anywhere, Synergy and Synergy + are some of them. They do switching in software and forward input over standard network connections. Advantage of these software alternatives of KVM switch is that they reduce number of wires required plus it makes users forget that they are using two computers because of the screen edge switching. Now looking for disadvantages first of all these software alternatives usually require additional software to be installed in each of the target computers so that clients can remotely attach to it. Software alternatives are impossible to use is the computer has stopped responding to system network connection or it is very busy also, if the Operating system is not installed on the host side these software can’t be accessed.

KVM over IP-1

Local Remote and KVM over IP are the two remote KVM devices available. Out of these two KVM over IP is more widely used. A KVM over IP uses a dedicated microcontroller and potentially specialized video capture hardware in order to capture mouse and keyboard signals, video, they are compressed and converted into packets and then sent over an Ethernet link to a remote console application which convert them back into dynamic graphical image. To make it available throughout the BIOS boot process KVM over IP switch is connected with a system’s standby power plane. KVM over IP allow multiple computers to be controlled remotely across a wide area of network, telephone line, local area network using TCP/IP protocols. KVM over IP devices have been applied in many different ways. PCI based KVM over IP is used for the graphic capture portion. It uses variation of a technique called screen scrapping where the PCI bus master KVM over IP card access data directly from the graphics memory buffer. However in these cased PCI card must know which graphics chip is working with and what graphics mode this chip is currently in. This is because contents of the buffer can be interpreted properly as picture data.

KVM over IP-2

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What is Data Center Bridging

Nov 20

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Data center bridging

Augmentation of Ethernet local areas networks for the use in Data Center this whole process is known as Data Center Bridging. The Task Group of IEEE 802.1’ Work Group carries out the efforts to improve the quality. Ethernet is traditionally a primary network protocol in Data Centers for computer to computer communications. Ethernet is designed in such a way that in order to best effort network, it may deliver packets out of order or drop packets when devices or network are busy. In internet protocols responsibility of the transport protocols is traditionally judged by transport reliability. Best advantage of Ethernet is to add extensions to the existing protocol suite in order to provide reliability without inviting penalties of TCP. There are good chances of higher granularity in bandwidth allocation control. Also to use it more competently. Ethernet is also a good transport for server cluster traffic and storage.

New Ethernet protocols are developed or enhance the connectivity offered by Ethernet protocols by IETF or IEEE. Enhanced version of Ethernet are:

Data Center Ethernet or DCE – enhanced Ethernet based on the Data Center Bridging on the Data Center Bridging standards. Layer 2 multipathing implementation is also included. It is based on the IETF’s Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL0 proposal.

Converged Enhanced Ethernet or CEE – this generic term is used by many vendors like IBM, HP, Dell e.t.c. other vendors also refer it simply as enhanced Ethernet.

Priority-based Flow Control

Some of the famous Data Center Bridging Standards Task Groups are:

ETS orEnhanced Transmission Selection – common management framework for assignment of bandwidth to 802. 1p CoS based traffic classes.

Congestion Notifications – congestion management for protocols that are capable of transmission rate to avoid frame loss are Congestion Notification. Many protocols like TCP are benefited because it respond to congestion in more periodic manner.

DCBX or Data Center Bridging Capabilities Exchange Protocol – basically a exchange protocol it is used for transmission of configurations between neighbors in order to ensure reliable configuration across the network.

PFC or Priority-based Flow Control – main motive of this mechanism is to make sure under congestion in DCB networks loss is zero. It provides a link level flow control mechanism that can be controlled separately for each Class of Service CoS.

DataCenter Ethernet

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Network Operations Center

Nov 19

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A single place or many places from where computers, servers, telecommunication network or television broadcast are controlled is called NOC (Network Operation Center). It is pronounced as “knock”. Huge companies usually operates one or more NOC in order to provide geographic redundancy or Managing different networks in the case if one of the site is offline or unavailable. Certain dangerous or alarming conditions which can affect the networks performance on a large scale are monitored by NOC. Like NOC monitors communication line alarms because of various errors like bit errors, line coding errors, circuit downs and farming errors. NOC also monitor any possible power failures. Not just monitoring problems NOCs also analyze problems, carry out troubleshooting and communicate with other technicians. If the problems is too heavy, like optical fiber cable cut and power failure NCOs have to contact the technicians to solve the problem.

NOC Network Operations Center

NOCs normally solve issues in increasing order, if any case if the issue is not solved in a given span of time, next level is informed to accelerate and work faster. In order to rank the staff working in NOCs they commonly have multiple “tiers”. These tiers often describe how skilled a technicians is. “Tier 1” includes newly hired technicians and technicians working for a long time of period are placed in “tier 3” or “tire 4”. Like this many problems are solved without any help from the site technicians. Often it is seen that most of the servers of few of the servers are placed within the NOC which are necessary in order to running network. However it is impossible for a single NOC to control and monitor a number of geographically dispersed sites. So just like the other important parts of a data center like cooling devices, power sector, server room e.t.c. Network Operation Center is also important to the Data Center. In simple words Data Center is managed from Network Operation Center.

NOC 2

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Data Centers and Colocation

Nov 18

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Since a Data Center works as a heart of network service delivery it requires best of best technologies available in the market. All the hardware and software technologies used in the Data Center should ensure the customers 100% availability and scalability at the best possible lowest cost. As we all know in colocation all the servers are placed off-site mostly in the premises of service provider. One benefit your company can take pleasure is that colocation permits your network to stay up and running without disruption. Mostly colocation providers are judged by the availability of the services at their Data Center. A good colocation provider is the one who offers multiple active power and cooling delivery options, constant maintainability, system redundancies, enhanced physical security and fault leniency.

Different types of charges included by colocation providers are:

  • Bandwidth required for network connectivity
  • Physical space required to house all the servers
  • Category and quantity of power required
  • Quantity of cooling required
  • Amount if UPS required
  • Level of  physical security

Other than the above given services many colocation providers also offer managed services with benefits of patch management services, monitoring, configuration and data backup services, for each of these services however they charge extra bucks. Hosting providers is the most related business to colocation. Hosting providers use all the above given services as well as the servers on which they are hosted on. However this different from colocation where you have full control over the server, since you own the server. Hosting is less expensive, but colocation is more flexible because you can expand what is provided. Colocation plays an important part in today’s modern IT infrastructure. Colocation is a good option in terms of cost, but if your company needs larger pace requirements then its not a wise option.

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