IT Solutions Blog

2010 Enterprise IT Storage Trends

If the early signs are any indication, 2010 is turning out to be a time when enterprise IT, in general, starts to normalize after a long stretch involving financial instability. For many organizations, at least, enterprise storage upgrades and optimization are back on the table after a time away. Without the looming threat of a financial disaster, people in IT departments are willing to take some more risks with enterprise storage and other technologies.

Here are some of the trends that are beginning to emerge in that area:

•    Virtualization continues to increase, creating more significant I/O requirements. Everything from VMware to vSphere to Microsoft’s Hyper-V is putting through the large amounts of data needed by database and by other applications. This means storage I/O has to keep up. How it will do so isn’t certain, but you can expect to see higher uses of SAN arrays, even for more low-end implementations.

•    An increase of SANs among small and medium businesses. Even smaller businesses are turning more and more to virtualization. As they do, they need more robust, more intelligent SAN storage. Accordingly, the lower end of the enterprise storage market should continue to boom.

•    More archiving. Data management and compliance are no longer the sole purview of big business. Archiving services, as well as in-house solutions, will continue to grow. Managed archiving services are likely to especially increase, as archiving hasn’t really ever been one of the core foci of the IT department.

•    Special-purpose storage solutions integrating with applications. We’re seeing more and more storage solutions that integrate essential applications – SAP, SharePoint and Exchange being just a few.

•    FC disks are coming to an end. Between flash disks and automated tiering technologies, SAS is set to put the nail in the coffin of more traditional high-performance disk drives. We’ll see larger capacity drives, more SAS, and higher amounts of cache RAM as well as flash.

•    Tiered storage systems continue to grow. As virtualization merges more and more with cloud technology, more and more solutions will work to cash, manage performance and manage capacity. These super storage systems will combine cloud storage, flash and SAS as well.

•    Convergence is still delayed. Yes, some of the big vendors (most notably Cisco and EMC) are continuing to push for converged networks and technologies like FCoE and 10 GigE, there are not yet significant business reasons to make the move for most folks. Those high-end I/O environments may see some 10 GigE implementations.

As has always been the case, the times are changing. Successful businesses and organizations continue to rely on the industry to provide cutting-edge solutions to their ever-growing needs.

 

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IBM Power Systems Availability and Security

The two most defining characteristics of IBM Power Systems have to be their availability and security. While many organizations initially choose Power Systems for a reason like increased utilization or cutting-edge virtualization technologies, it is the way in which Power Systems are reliable and reduce risk that often keeps them coming back.

Power Systems Availability

What is it about IBM Power Systems that gives them their reputation for high availability? It starts with industry surveys and user experiences. Time and again, Power Systems rank higher than other platforms in terms of availability.

In addition, Power Systems can run on a 24 by 7 basis with very little intervention on the part of systems personnel. Depending on the particular Power Systems implementation, unplanned outages can be minimized or even eliminated. Virtualization technology like PowerVM means that even planned outages can be a thing of the past.

Some of the availability comes from the kernel. The IBM i series kernel has fewer potential points of failure. In addition, it is less prone to error due to users or due to IT staff. Even in Windows and Linus implementations, Power Systems offers a number of availability features.

Availability really comes to the fore with IBM implementations, however. The microelectronics technology used in the kernel is matched directly with the hardware, making for a tight and secure fit. Specifically, RAS (reliability, availability and serviceability) technologies in i are supported in the physical configuration of Power Systems.

Power Systems Security

IBM Power Systems security also shines when used in conjunction with IBM i. IBM i is known to be one of the most secure OS ever created. Malware incidents are unheard of when it comes to IBM i, and security violations into the OS are nearly as rare.

The statistics back the security of Power Systems up. The U.S. National Vulnerability Database is a repository of known security vulnerabilities, and is operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Since they began collecting vulnerability statistics in 1992, they have not recorded any vulnerabilities for IBM i. In addition, there are no known viruses native to i.

This is due, at least in part, to the distinctive object-based structure of IBM i. The way that i encapsulates objects creates a strict data and system code control, which means it’s nearly impossible for unauthorized instructions to run.
Add in IP security and detection systems, and the IBM i series is one of the most secure computing environments you can find.

If your organization values availability and security, IBM Power Systems running i Series is the right fit for your needs.

Energy Efficient Servers

Refreshing servers on an ongoing basis can reduce costs to the datacenter. Rather than put off capital expenditures and extend server life cycles (buy and hold strategy), organizations faced with sharp budget challenges should consider aggressively seeking financial deals that allow them to upgrade their servers with today's technology. Click here to download the whitepaper.

 

7 Ways to Think Differently about IT Infrastructure

IT departments today are faced with increasing service level expectations all while being held to higher cost saving objectives. What this means for the IT department is that it’s time for a new way of thinking about infrastructure. It’s time to move away from addressing your organization’s daily operational challenges, and move toward a strategy that enables you to deliver more services at a lower cost and with better-managed risk.

Here are some general principles you need to start considering if you want to meet tomorrow’s IT infrastructure needs:

1.    A dynamic infrastructure improves service, reduces your costs and keeps risk to a minimum. Accordingly, you want to use a high-availability solution to your infrastructure needs. IBM Power Systems can be at the core of providing the kind of dynamic infrastructure you need.

2.    Visibility, control and automation are essential to infrastructure utilization. This means that you need to have technology solutions that can measure performance and then be adjusted accordingly. Ideally, you will use a solution like PowerVM that can let you make changes to allocation on an automated basis.

3.    Virtualization and energy efficiency provide significant cost savings. Whether you’re talking about implementing an internal cloud environment or whether you’re simply talking about server consolidation, your organization can save significantly on its ongoing expenses just by dumping old or unnecessary hardware. The savings in power, cooling technology and even staff help you meet increased demand at a lower cost.

4.    Data growth makes management a challenge. These challenges are best met with infrastructure initiatives. An optimized infrastructure is scalable, secure and protected, keeping each type of data where it needs to be and in a container big enough to fit it.

5.    Infrastructure choices should match your business needs. Here is where you often need the expertise of an IBM support provider. They can work with you to look at different delivery options, such as cloud computing, and address issues like scalability or rapid provisioning.

6.    Infrastructure management is risk management. Accordingly, your risk management solutions need to be designed to meet the needs of your organization, its various business units and even individual workloads. Technologies like ZIBM Clientscan can help to proactively manage security concerns throughout the enterprise and maintain resilience in spite of multiple threats.

7.    Infrastructure decisions are business decisions. Your infrastructure enables the communication and commerce of your organization. It connects your internal resources, as well as vendors, clients and even competitors. Being able to leverage infrastructure to meet business goals is key to not only providing necessary service levels, but to being able to justify necessary infrastructure costs.

Project Administration Tips

If you’ve been in project administration for any amount of time, you know that the sheer administrative tasks surrounding your job can, at times, be overwhelming. If you’re not on top of your game, your projects can fail, and fail miserably. If they do, your company is going to lose valuable resources, both in time and money, and you’re likely to be out of a job.

Fortunately, you’ve got what it takes to be a successful project administrator. You just need a little bit of encouragement and advice along the way. Here are 5 project administration tips that will help you keep your laser focus and make sure your projects come out on top.

1.    A project’s implementation methods can’t be separated from the project’s nature. In other words, the type of project you’re administering will strongly influence how exactly you manage it. Take, for example, a project that utilizes commercial licensing. The way you govern your project will be heavily influenced by external factors, including things like corporate strategy, the structure of the organization, the organization’s financial priorities and even existing, established procedures.

2.    Finances are key. Money makes the world go ‘round, and it's also what makes your projects get approved in the first place. Know from the start what costs are allowable and which aren't, know what to do if there's an overexpenditure, understand any cost sharing requirements and keep on top of fiscal management.

3.    Stay in compliance. Yes, compliance is more important in some industries than others. However, issues like conflicts of interest or auditing requirements are just as important as, for example, things like OSHA. Follow your organizations policies and the laws governing your industry to an exacting specification. Compliance isn't just about covering your hid or protecting the company, in many cases it's about safety, saving money and serious liability.

4.    Remember the human factor. Ultimately, whether a project fails or succeeds has a lot to do with the people involved. Keep on top of the HR area. If there are personality conflicts on a project team, do what you can to minimize them or to at least manage the fallout. While vendors can become territorial, even personnel from different departments within your organization may decide that they need to jockey for position or credit. Keeping people in line is at least as important as keeping to a schedule and a budget.

5.    Vendor management. One of the most important aspects of your job, and the reason you're doing the job instead of someone else, is because you have skills at managing vendors. You need to be able to work with vendors to contain costs, to keep schedules and to keep in compliance with your project requirements. Vendor management is easy when you've got a good vendor, but can be a nightmare when a vendor falls through or lets you down. Knowing when to drop a vendor is nearly as important as being able to select the vendor in the first place.

 

 

 

 

 

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Business Storage Server Options

A business rises and falls on its data storage. Ready access to business critical information is the backbone of a business in today’s information dependent world. Having the right storage server for your business is essential if you’re going to increase productivity, have reliable performance and do it all without breaking your IT budget.

The good news is that there are several options for business storage servers. From hosted services to locally attached storage, a business can pick and choose the types of solutions that best fit its business, its processes and its needs.

Hosted Storage Server Options
One of the most common models used by businesses today is a hosted storage server option. When you use this kind of solution, the service provider hosts the relevant hardware and software on their premises. They manage data backup, and they handle everything from operating system upgrades to redundancy to throughput.

The obvious advantage to a hosted solution is that you don’t have to put much up front in the way of capital expenditures. You don’t need to pay for storage servers or for network infrastructure. You don’t need to hire a storage manager or pay for training for one of your existing server admins or engineers. In addition, with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) you can often wind up with increased uptime and reliability over an in-house solution.

Network Attached Storage Server Options (NAS)

Another business storage server option is Network Attached Storage. With this model, your company purchases specific devices that plug into your network. These devices are, essentially, storage devices that can be accessed and utilized by many servers.

The advantage to a NAS model is that you can adjust your storage capacity and manage your storage resources much better than with traditional servers or hard drives. If your Exchange server runs out of space, you simply allocate more space on the NAS device, for example.

Storage Area Network Server Options (SAN)

A Storage Area Network is a network separate from your data network that’s devoted solely to storage. The SAN provides space to servers, and it also provides storage to users. A SAN is especially useful in that it has certain built-in redundancies that aren’t always present in some other types of business storage server options.

One downside to this model is that it requires a good bit of additional infrastructure to support. In addition to network equipment, you need a SAN administrator to monitor performance, make changes and adjustments and to optimize the overall use of the network resources.

Disk Attached Storage Server Options (DAS)

This is the oldest model of storage solutions. This model includes the use of dedicated storage servers, each of which has its own hard disks and is limited to its own hardware. This type of solution is not just out of vogue, it’s really obsolete for most businesses. The risks involved in such a configuration are significant, both in terms of performance and in terms of disaster recovery.

 

 

 

 

 

Top 5 CIO Priorities for the New Decade

While it isn't 1990 anymore, it's not 2000 either. The fact of the matter is that technology has moved at an alarming rate in the past decade, and 2010 is shaping up to have its own significant challenges for CIOs. As the technological landscape changes, an effective CIO needs to reevaluate her priorities and bring them in line with what's going on it the world around her.

Here are some of the most essential focus areas for the successful CIO in the 2010s:

1.    Cost reduction. If Y2K was the high point of technology spending, 2010 is quickly becoming the low point. CIOs are expected to provide greater functionality to their users on a fraction of the budget they had a decade ago. The recession hasn't helped this situation, and even though the economy may recover just fine many organizations will be hesitant to reopen the flood gates of IT spending. The effective and successful CIO will need to find ways to reduce IT costs all while providing improved levels of service. Your organization expects you to work miracles, so you need to find ways to do just that.

2.    Alignment. There was a time when IT was on its own. It may have been a small little hungry monster living under the Finance Department's desk, or it may have been tucked away in operations. Today, however, that's changed. The fact that IT deserves an officer-level executive is testament to this fact. Still, many IT departments find themselves at odds with the organization's business focus. Bringing your area into alignment with the overall organization's goals and processes is key to being successful. It will also make it much easier to provide business justifcations as you struggle for funding.

3.    Strategic planning. To be sure, in a down economy it's easy to become more tactical or even go into survivalist mode. However, you still need to have the big picture in mind. You need to be able to look forward five years and have a realistic picture of where your organization's IT needs are going to be, and then make decisions today that contribute to the organization's long-term health and goals. Even when you're forced to use stopgap measures, you can't lose sight of how things ought to work out in the end.

4.    Process re-engineering. Even though tech changes at a breakneck pace, people don't. They like to do things the same way over and over again. Even your true cutting-edge engineers fall into old habits when it comes to business processes. Regularly reevaluating and improving your business process lets you run a tight ship and keep thing effecient.

5.    Security. While it may not be 2002 anymore, security is still a top priority for successful CIOs. New threats, particularly in the realm of cyberterrorism, pose problems for your organization. Evaluating your organization's overall security strategy and integrating physical along with informational strategy are essential to keeping your organization safe from the kinds of threats.

 

Reduce Costs with Strategic Rightsourcing

The Forrester Whitepaper, Reducing Cost with Strategic Rightsourcing, discusses these new models and offers guidance for:

• Which services to outsource and which to own
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Pillar Data Systems Blog: Pass the Morton's Salt

This post is taken from Mike Workman's recent blog post, Pass the Morton's Salt.

When I was quite a bit younger some really great folks at IBM gave me the opportunity to help start a Hard Disk Drive OEM business.  I was part of the Storage division in San Jose California. At the time we built proprietary, non-standard products with all custom mechanical and electrical parts.

The writing was on the wall, the future lay in using high volume, and hence lower cost parts. Not only did this amortize engineering costs (NRE), but tooling and test process costs could be amortized over a much larger volume as well. The idea was – use custom parts only where they provided a distinct competitive advantage. Then, build designs that could be sold into many products, not just one.

IBM wasn’t alone in this, the rest of the world was trying to gain leverage by producing standardized components as well. Seagate was building an empire out of providing 5.25” standard form factor drives to everyone, including the IBM PC (AT back then).  But IBM had invented the disk drive, and its leadership was furious about ceding the high volume low cost drives to the likes of Seagate, and Conner Peripherals. Besides, it was clear that before long, the mechanical advantages of smaller form factors and advancing technologies would obsolete the “big drives” that were sold two or four spindles to the refrigerator sized box.

The IBM AS400 group had the same idea: Build smaller drives with advanced IBM technology to sell to internal customers like the AS400 and IBM PC groups. While the AS400 came from the “custom” world, the IBM PC guys new that they needed best of breed cost in all their components, and the thought of being locked in to some over-transfer-priced HDD from another division was repugnant. The Rochester team made an “almost standard” product: Little things like non-standard mounting holes were rendering their drives incompatible for PCs inside or outside of IBM.

I was asked by “The Chairman” and a few San Jose execs to build an entrepreneurial program inside IBM – the goal of which was a) To build a standard form-factor and interface HDD, and b) Build one packed with enough technology like MR heads to allow even the high-end storage guys to incorporate it into a modular version of the product.  Unfortunately the IBM Rochester team was heading in a similar direction, so a political battle ensued in which after a squabble, I landed in Rochester, Minnesota. As my California friends said at the time “He really must have pissed someone off to be sent to Minnesota”. From Rochester (home of the Mayo clinic) I managed what I named Allicat – an enterprise class drive in reliability and performance that fit Industry standard electrical and mechanical specifications.  The “Alli” in Allicat came from the Alliance of San Jose and Rochester. At 2GB, 5400 RPM, SCSI and IPI-2 interfaces, the drive was the beginning of the OEM HDD storage team within IBM. We went from about $0 top-line revenue to about $4.6B in the next 11 years. 

Disk drives today are indeed labeled as a commodity. Lots of definitions of a commodity exist including simply something that is bought or sold. I maintain that when most of us think commodity, we think about a product that has minor differentiation against others that are adequate substitutes. Table salt for example: Nobody says “Please pass the Morton’s Table Salt”.  Instead, salt is salt, and rarely is anything but “Please pass the salt” heard at any table. Likewise, gold is gold, wheat is wheat, etc.  Differentiation of one commodity over another is usually at the fringes -- fringes which are desperately held on to by manufactures (But when it rains, this salt still pours!).

Moving up the food chain buyers of PCs and Servers that incorporate HDDs always make sure that their commodities include two or more sources. Same for muffin fans, chassis, cables and connectors.

What about storage arrays? Well the more complicated the system, and the smaller the volume requirements are for a system, the less easily it is commoditized. After all, the how many Golden Gate bridges are needed in the world and how standard is the interface between the bridge and the terra firma it sits on? So the truth is, while buyers try and push arrays toward the commodity spectrum, it is difficult to substitute one array for another at some level. Training, management, interoperability, application APIs are all different enough that one vendor is much easier than three, and disparate types of arrays at some level cost the buyer money by shear reason of their differences.

What are some of the consequences of commoditization in the storage business? Here are a few, I am sure that many of you can add to this list:

1. Disk will continue as a commodity.
2. SSD will become a commodity. Manufacturers will struggle valiantly but much like the HDD business, that large OEMs will drive toward standardization and multiple sources as volumes increase. One might argue that we are nearly there already, but firmware maturity is still disparate amongst manufacturers. 
3. The number of manufacturers of SSDs will grow for awhile, and eventually decline as margins force consolidation.
4. Flash memory used in SSDs will become a commodity. Today there are still some differences but there will be a convergence.
5. Plug-in Cache modules (PCIe based Flash Memory) will converge into a commodity. Right now many players are striving to differentiate themselves, but the pace will be fast and furious and largely decided by large volume OEM’s wins.
6. As SSDs reduce in price and increase in capacity, there will be larger and larger a substitution of SSDs for HDDs. 
7. A trend toward SSDs over HDDs will cause all storage arrays to be re-architected. Today’s arrays are not built properly for maximum utilization of the performance benefits of SSD. This will affect everybody in the business. Pillar’s advanced Axiom architecture is already under development. This will be fun.

Oh, and I like Minnesota, really. Sure it is cold, but that wasn’t the real problem. Rather, it was how long it was cold. And thank goodness for the commoditization of salt, because they use a heck of a lot of it.

- Mike Workman, Chairman & CEO, Pillar Data Systems

 

3 Ways to Decrease IT Energy Spend

Companies aren’t just going green for the sake of the planet, the fact of the matter is that many green initiatives actually save companies money. Conserving energy in a data center or IT server room, for example, will not only help the environment, it will also help with operating costs.

Still, many IT directors, managers and CIOs are at a loss of how exactly they can go about decreasing IT energy spending. Fortunately, there are some easy steps you can take to get started cutting the energy costs of your IT department.

#1: Consolidation
Data center consolidation or server consolidation will save you serious amounts of capital in terms of equipment costs. In addition, fewer pieces of hardware will require less electricity. Consolidation makes good business sense.

The trick is, however, to make sure that consolidation makes good organizational sense. If consolidation reduces service levels to the point where they impact production, the money you’re saving on energy spending is going to be immediately lost several times over. A thorough consolidation study should be able to identify areas where consolidation is possible and where it will have minimal performace and production impact.

#2: Service Providers
Most IT departments would benefit from offloading one or more IT tasks to a service provider. Whether it’s a specialized application that can be run in a SaaS mode, or whether it’s another scenario, outsourcing part of the IT function sometimes makes good business sense.

Using a service provider has the advantage over an in-house solution in that you don’t have to lay out capital expenditures for equipment, and you don’t have to provide support or maintenance. Additionally, using a service provider insures that you’ve got a true expert in the field supporting your IT function, and you don’t have to worry about training in-house personnel that are already probably spread too thin.

Service provider utilization also reduces your energy spending. If the servers and/or other infrastructure are off site, you don’t have to power them. The costs for their power are wrapped up in your service agreement.

#3: Efficient Cooling Systems
One of the most expensive components, in terms of energy spending in IT, is the cost of cooling your technology. A data center can have significant cooling requirements, and therefore create a serious power draw.

There have been amazing advances in the area of cooling systems in recent years. For example, one data center for a Fortune 500 company uses a fan intake system that draws air in from the outside, through the data center and back out. As temps rise in the data center, the fans kick in and provide the kind of cooling the systems need. In that particular case study, the new cooling system has decreased overall cooling energy costs by six percent, which is a significant savings in terms of dollars.

Ultimately, decreasing your IT energy spending requires some solid research and examination of your current situation, creative thinking and thoughtful implementations.

White Paper: The Modern Virtualized Data Center

Data center resources have traditionally been underutilized while drawing enormous amounts of power and taking up valuable floorspace. Find out how the Pillar Axiom, with the highest utilization rate in the industry - up to 80%, and with the lowest power and space consumption per GB of storage, is becoming the storage system of choice in virtualization data centers.

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6 Ways a Solutions Provider Can Boost your Business

One of the best ways to reduce capital IT expenditures, increase your service levels and increase the efficiency of your IT department and your company as a whole is by using an IT solutions provider. A solutions provider gives you all of the benefits of having your own dedicated IT infrastructure management team without all of the costs. Solutions providers get rid of the day-to-day burden of IT systems management in that they assume responsibility for everything from application deployment through updates and daily support. This frees you up to meet your core business needs and to do what your company does best.

Here are 6 key areas that a solutions provider boosts your business:

1. Cost. Using solutions providers reduces the cost of administering your IT functions. In many cases, outsourcing applications can reduce the cost of ownership for the application by as much as 50%. Applications costs become as reliable and simple as your monthly service provider bill.
2. Expertise. When you implement an in-house solution, you either need to hire an expert to administer the solution or train existing personnel to handle the solution. A solutions provider, on the other hand, has staff that do nothing but deal with your particular solution. They’re true experts, up to speed with what’s going on in the field. When you use a solution provider, you save significantly on personnel and training costs, as well.
3. Reduced capital expenditures. By using a solutions provider you eliminate the need for huge capital infrastructure investments. You also reduce the need for ongoing costs to upgrade  or maintain your solutions. You can have the latest and greatest best-in-class solutions, administered by an expert, without the expensive and extensive cost of application development or infrastructure equipment upgrade costs. This lets you take control of the total cost of owning the technology.
4. Rapid deployment. When you roll out a new implementation on your own, it can take months to finish. Your service provider, on the other hand, already has the implementations running. You simply need to plug in. Training end users on the solution becomes the most time intensive task in the implementation process.
5. Increased predictability and reliability. In most cases, a solutions provider can give you a higher level of performance than what you can get on your own. In addition, when you have Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in place, you can guarantee things like uptime and security.
6. Unlimited Scalability. Perhaps one of the most compelling reasons to utilize a solutions provider is scalability. If you hit the limit for what your current infrastructure can handle, you’re looking at a time-consuming and often costly upgrade process. When you utilize a solutions provider, you don’t have to worry about all of that. You simply contact the solutions provider, increase the provisioning of your solutions and you’re good to go.
   

In most instances, it just makes good sense to utilize a solutions provider for at least some of your business IT functions.

Data Center Optimization: Three Key Strategies

Advances in server and storage technology, along with a growing number of tools and methodologies, have dramatically improved the pathway to data center optimization. The challenge for IT managers is to carefully plan where to start, how to move forward and how to measure results.

 Click here to download the white paper. 

Why Data Center Consolidation Makes Sense

Now more than every there is pressure on IT to offer higher levels of service and a greater degree of availability all while cutting back on costs. As such, making sure your technology environment is efficient and effectively managed is absolutely essential. The data center, by its very nature, is the one place where IT resources are most concentrated, and the one place where potential strategic gains are most likely to occur. If you want to improve your computing environment and cut costs at the same time, you need to start with the data center.

The Benefits of Data Center Consolidation

One of the best ways to do just that is through consolidation. By simplifying your data center environment, you achieve several goals:
•    Increased manageability
•    Reduced costs in areas of human resources, facilities, complexity and capital expenditures
•    Improved service levels
•    Higher availability
•    Minimization of impact from outside factors

In short, if you get your data center humming along the way it should, your business will ultimately do the same.

Factors in Data Center Consolidation

Data center consolidation is about more than just combining servers. While that’s certainly part of the process, there are a number of areas that go into data center consolidation. Each of these factors is an opportunity for reduced cost and greater manageability.

One factor to start with is the issue of physical locations. A business that has multiple physical data centers has multiple cost redundancies, all of which are ripe for cutting. By combining physical locations, you greatly reduce overhead. While multiple data center locations can be one way to address disaster recovery and business continuity, there are much more effective (and cost-effective) ways to address those concerns.

Another important issue is server consolidation. This doesn’t just include combining like servers, however. It also includes looking at issues like application consolidation. If two departments are handling the same data from two different applications, you have another opportunity for improved efficiency. The obvious concern here, of course, is making sure that you can provide the same features to both departments that they had pre-consolidation.

Infrastructure is another area of data center consolidation. This includes creating more efficient networks, as well as more efficient storage management. It also includes utilizing shared services to whatever degree is possible.

The final area of data center consolidation is the most difficult, and it relates to people and processes. While you can switch out a server in a matter of hours or even minutes, bringing personnel up to speed on those changes can take much longer. Still, for your company to be at the top of its game, it’s sometimes necessary. The key to dealing with these kinds of issues is to have buy-in from someone in upper management, as well as department heads, who understand the business case for consolidation and can really get behind your consolidation efforts.

The Modern Virtualized Data Center: Download the whitepaper

Data center resources have traditionally been underutilized while drawing enormous amounts of power and taking up valuable floorspace. Storage virtualization has been a positive evolutionary step in the data center, driving consolidation of these resources to maximize utilization and power savings, as well as to simplify management and maintenance. Read more by downloading the white paper from Pillar Data Systems.