IT infrastructure: building for the future

a whitepaper from ComputerWeeklyCW +

With IT spending recovering, the datacentre has never been more important to business strategy. IT departments are grappling with the challenges of virtualisation, driving business growth, new datacentre

designs, and the impact of environmental regulations. This nine page guide gives essential advice to CIOs and senior IT professionals looking to maximise the potential of their datacentres.

Contents

Choosing the right virtualised infrastructure for your datacentre page 2

Virtualisation is fast becoming best practice in datacentre design, giving you the agility to flex IT resources to meet the changing demands of the business. Once you have accepted that virtualisation is inevitable, how do you organise it? Cliff Saran investigates.

Updating your IT infrastructure to bring efficiencies to the business page 4

With infrastructure budgets returning it is time to prioritise your spending to benefit the organisation. Cost-cutting and efficiency are critical, but if you want to align with the business you need to refocus your effort on growth.

The new future of datacentres page 6

Microsoft is talking about a revolution in datacentre delivery that questions every aspect of past and current methods, writes Ambrose McNevin

How to measure the value of a green IT infrastructure page 8

Clive Longbottom explains how basic green IT initiatives can have a direct impact on the business.

These articles were originally published in Computer Weekly magazine.

To print this document, select “Shrink to printable area” or similar in your print menu.

buyer’s guide

CW Buyer’s guideiT infrasTruCTure

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buyer’s guide

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Choosing the right virtualised infrastructure for your datacentreOnce you have acepted that virtualisation is inevitable, how do you organise it? Cliff Saran investigates

Best practice in datacentre design dictates that as much IT infrastructure as possible should be virtu-

alised. Doing so improves agility, allowing the IT department to flex resources up and down to meet the demands of the business.

Given that virtualisation is hap-pening, IT departments have a choice: roll out a scale-out architec-ture using a large volume of x86 serv-ers to run virtual machines, or deploy a scale-up architecture, comprising fewer much larger, and often more expensive, Unix and Linux server boxes rather than commodity Win-dows hardware.

The choice of deployment archi-tecture will be based on calculating the cost of running a workload on one of these architectures. Modern applications that conform to a three-tier architecture can be organised such that the database runs on serv-ers with high levels of availability and high throughput, while the pres-entation tier of the application, or web servers, may run on commodi-tised x86 hardware. Where the busi-ness logic, or middle tier, runs will depend on the nature of the applica-tion.

Paul Kember, HP country director UK and Ireland for industry standard servers, says, “We are seeing consist-ent deployment of scale-out servers as products are increasing in per-formance. For instance, HP launched a terabyte blade in June 2010.”

However, he notes that there are still critical applications that demand HP’s scale-up architecture, namely its Integrity and Non-stop servers.

Beyond the hardware choices, it is

possible to optimise workload from a purely software licensing perspec-tive, says Kember.

“In a classic three-tier architecture I would put Oracle on Integrity be-cause of the way that software archi-tecture works, but if I was running Microsoft Dynamics I would look at using industry standard servers, and perhaps put the database on Integri-ty,” he says.

In other words, by assessing licens-ing of the database, middle tier and presentation tier, a datacentre manag-er can run the different components of an application on the most cost-ef-fective platform.

Server sideThere is a wave of innovation being driven by suppliers in the server technology market to enable users to get more flexibility in their IT infra-structure. Businesses are looking at

how to virtualise their servers, stor-age and networks on x86 hardware across Windows, Linux and Unix systems.

Virtualisation promises to improve datacentre manageability. Deploying new applications across a virtual in-frastructure should be far easier than across physical servers, storage and network hardware.

The industry is beginning to sell virtualisation management tools to improve flexibility in the datacentre and enable IT departments to change and adapt IT infrastructure built on a virtual infrastructure with just a few mouse clicks.

Whereas HP offers both scale-up and scale-out datacentre architec-tures, depending on how businesses want to deploy applications, IBM has recently taken a different approach to datacentre computing.

IBM’s new z/196 mainframe aims to tackle datacentre complexity by pulling together different applica-tions or workloads in a single system. The system comprises a mainframe and Power and x86 blades, which en-ables the datacentre to run main-frame, AIX and Linux applications in the same floor space.

“Many businesses run DB/2 on

the mainframe as the data store for the Linux or AIX-based SAP system, says IBM distinguished engineer Jim Porell. This requires two groups of IT administrators. But with the z/196, the management of the Linux, AIX and mainframe systems can be combined.

“By tying in both the traditional mainframe of System z, along with the new zEnterprise Bladecenter Ex-tension, we can help improve work-load deployments and in doing so, avoid some of the pitfalls inherent in a Windows-only environment. We are attempting to enable a fit-for-pur-pose deployment mode,” says Porell.

He concedes the mainframe does not run Windows, but says, “Many of the applications that run on Win-dows are available on AIX and Linux on either System z [the mainframe] or System x [IBM’s x86 servers]. Our goal is to adopt end-to-end deploy-ment solutions rather than single-server focused processing.”

Meanwhile, Cisco has entered the datacentre market with its Data Cent-er 3.0 strategy. The networking com-pany is tackling the other buzz phrase in IT: cloud computing, which effectively turns IT into a set of serv-ices available over an internal or ex-

A datacentre manager can run the different components of an application on the most cost-effective platform

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Whitepaper: Creating a dynamic infrastructure

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Whitepaper: Ramp up your virtualisation benefits

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ternal internet connection. By de-ploying a virtual IT infrastructure IT departments can begin to choose how the servers are deployed, internally or externally, through cloud-based computing.

“We are not trying to be another server provider,” says Jim DeHaven Cisco’s datacentre solutions manager for UK and Ireland. Instead, Cisco aims to deliver an IT architecture to enable user businesses and service providers to deliver IT as cloud serv-ices. Cisco is winning business by showing companies how its ap-proach to datacentre IT architecture can halve their costs, says DeHaven.

Green driversDatacentres run 24/7, so electricity costs mount up quickly. Inefficient servers use more power and as a result require extra cooling, which adds to the power burden.

People are taking a wider perspec-tive on flexible IT infrastructure in the light of power and cooling chal-lenges. Replacing an inefficient lega-cy server with a modern green server can pay for itself in a matter of months.

“For power and cooling cost alone you can get a payback in two months on a five-year-old legacy server,” says David Chalmers, HP’s chief technolo-gy officer for the UK and Ireland.

He says businesses are able to con-solidate 40 or 50 servers down to one or two and get dramatic savings. These days server metrics are no longer purely about price/perform-ance, as with the TPC benchmark, which measures the cost per transac-tion. TPC-e measures the workload per kilowatt.

People and processesChalmers says the recession is driv-ing CIOs to free up resources to push forward innovation. “They are look-ing to take a different view of the IT organisation. Is it still optimal to or-ganise around a server team, storage team and networks team?” he says.

Orchestration tools help business-es manage the workload of systems such as SAP. Such tools cut across the server, storage and network infra-structure, allowing an IT administra-tor to reconfigure applications on the fly. “If you want an extra 150 users, the tools provide the network, storage and server configuration require-ments,” says Chalmers.

In theory, this means IT could be organised around virtual teams that manage line-of-business applica-tions. Each virtual team would be re-sponsible for its virtual server, storage and network configurations.

EG Nadhan, co-chair of The Open Group’s Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure project, says, “We are no longer constrained by the physical location of datacen-tres. They are logical hubs, geograph-ically dispersed, operated as a virtual pool of resources. We project a signif-icant reduction in the number of peo-ple required to run a datacentre.”

He says virtual teams could be de-ployed around the world to provide follow-the-sun datacentre manage-ment, driven by business needs.

The concept of virtual IT teams is already starting to take shape. “We are seeing a shift in focus for IT de-partments to functional teams such as the website team, a portal team and teams focused on the business impact,” says Rami Rihani, senior manager, datacentre technology and operations at Accenture.

From an organisational perspec-tive, such teams are better aligned with the business. “For instance, you have a talent pool dedicated to the marketing function,” says Rihani.

But who manages the team? “The

team moves from reporting to the CIO to reporting to the marketing or finance chiefs or a department head. Taken to an extreme, the CIO func-tion could disappear,” he says.

While IT infrastructure manage-ment looks like it is heading in this direction, Daniel Singer, director of KPMG’s performance and IT-enabled transformation division, believes that, in practice, organisations cannot get to this level of granularity.

“As you proceduralise a business process, you can reduce the expertise needed to operate it, so it becomes easier to extract the human part and move it around based on cost. But I don’t think IT administration and or-chestration in a datacentre is any-where near mature enough to do this,” he says.

Singer warns that in many respects a virtual environment is far harder to manage than physical IT infrastruc-ture, because administrators can see the physical servers.

Cloud burstThe crux of the problem facing busi-nesses that buy the idea of virtualisa-tion is that companies such as Ama-zon operate public clouds extremely efficiently thanks to the scalability and size of their operations. But can a company, even a large enterprise, truly run an optimised private cloud service?

Singer does not believe it is cost-ef-fective. “A public cloud service pro-vider has many routes to market, but internally a business only has a cap-tive market. This breaks the econom-ic model for running cloud. It be-comes a costly investment,” he says.

Singer sees a distinction between providing IT as a public service and having the environment internally. “Companies aspire to be as standard-ised as possible – where nobody sees the servers and the operators – which makes it easier to run a stable and eco-nomic model. But to build this kind of model internally, with aggressive lev-els of standardisation, is just not possi-ble inside a business,” he says.

Singer says many enterprises lack the skills to drive the massive levels of standardisation needed to reap the benefits of cloud computing. Further, the enterprise applications that run within businesses are often unsuita-ble for cloud deployments, since they are not standardised.

“I have seen examples where cli-ents have built very flexible IT envi-ronments, but at a cost. They now have IT resources they are not using,” Singer warns. ■

Taken to an extreme, the concept of virtual IT teams means the CIO function could disappear

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Updating your IT infrastructure to bring efficiencies to the businessWith infrastructure budgets returning, Robert Whitely suggests how to prioritise spending to benefit the organisation

Focus on migrating from your legacy infrastructure to the public cloud with a methodical approach

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A fter a year of seeing deep cuts to infrastructure and operations (I&O) budgets, businesses are returning to

a growth agenda. Most I&O execu-tives say this is routine. As the vice-president of infrastructure at a large manufacturer summed it up: “I&O is always in a recession. We always have to do more with less. Did the global recession hurt us? I’m sure it did, but we didn’t notice any unusual cuts in spending.”

That is all about to change. As overall budgets emerge from 2009’s deep freeze, I&O is expected to re-ceive a noticeable bump in IT spend. But what does this mean for you? It is time to reprioritise your initiatives. Cost-cutting and efficiency are criti-cal, but if you want to align with the business, you need to refocus your efforts on growth.

To do so, take a look at where your money is coming from, tap into funds set aside for innovation and growth and deliver on critical I&O initiatives.

I&O has always been one of the largest IT functions. So it is no sur-prise that it often consumes 50% of the overall IT operating and capital budget. This is because most compa-nies have roughly 50% of their over-all staff in the I&O department, so it is safe to assume it consumes half of the 32% of the overall IT budget dedicat-ed to people.

The “I” in infrastructure and oper-ations – your servers, storage, and desktop assets – consume another 19% of the IT operating and capital budget. And maintaining your local area and wide area networks con-sumes another 14% of enterprise IT budgets, while small and medium-

sized enterprises spend just a shade under, at 13%.

How is the money spent?If we peel back the onion and exam-ine the specifics of just the I&O capi-tal budget, we see that half the budget is spent on the datacentre, while the other half goes to desktop and device infrastructure.

There are three basic categories of datacentre infrastructure spend: serv-

ers, storage and networking. The first two are straightforward and we see that 27% and 16% are spent on serv-ers and storage, respectively.

The third category, networking, is a bit trickier. The core of the network consumes roughly half of total net-work spend, while the other half is spent on wiring closets and campus connectivity. Thus it is safe to as-sume that 7% (half of the overall net-work spend) goes to plumbing the servers and storage in the datacentre. When all is said and done, the data-centre spend comprises 50% of the infrastructure budget.

The remaining infrastructure budg-et – made up of PCs and peripherals at 31%, individual mobile devices at 8%, industry-specific devices at 5%, and the remainder of networking

spend at 7% – is invested in user-fac-ing infrastructure. This broader desk-top and device environment is the re-maining 50% of your infrastructure budget.

The problemThis tradition of spending half the budget inside the datacentre and half on user infrastructure is standard. But 2010 is not about standard op-erating procedure. In fact, when we asked IT decision-makers to catego-rise the breakdown of the IT spend above, we found only half is going to ongoing operations and maintenance. “Keeping the lights on” is taking a backseat.

The usual 30% of the budget will be set aside for new IT projects, but a surprising 22% of enterprise IT budg-

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Buyer’s guide: Infrastructure as a cloud best practices

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Whitepaper: Evaluating ROI for public key infrastructure

computerweekly.com/239408.htmEfficiency is critical, but if you want to align with the business, you need to refocus your efforts on growth

<< et (18% for SMEs) is earmarked for expanding capacity to support busi-ness growth. This is the largest indi-cator that 2010 is anything but busi-ness as usual.

As a result, we know I&O will be asked to spend nearly half of the money on new initiatives and sup-porting business expansion.

If you fall into this 50/50 category, you need to break the cycle and focus on three key efforts. Each of these ef-forts have components that meet the new IT initiative and support busi-ness expansion objectives your board demands.

Transforming your desktopThe first area to focus in on is the desktop. The desktop is the largest area of increased growth. Specifi-cally, 37% of our respondents indi-cated they would be increasing their PC and workstation spend by 5% or more – the highest of the six catego-ries we tracked.

Most companies skipped Windows Vista and are now facing a Windows 7 deployment. So capitalise on the budget you are setting aside for new PCs and workstations and phase in Windows 7.

New desktop and application vir-tualisation technologies support business expansion through bring-your-own-computer programmes, which help attract and retain new tal-ent, as well as hosted virtual desktop infrastructure to connect contractors, partners and other third-party users.

But transforming your desktop ar-chitecture is not easy. The two-sizes-fits-all days of providing either a desktop or laptop are long gone. To drive the architecture today, you need to look at mobility and produc-tivity requirements.

And to truly transform the end-point you need to work with the lat-est from Citrix, VMware and Micro-soft to support access from any device to any application.

Prime datacentre for cloudCloud computing is redefining how IT builds, runs and even owns IT infrastructure. And although it is tempting to start your I&O overhaul here, it is too complicated to reboot 20 years of datacentre architecture. Instead, you will want to focus on migrating from legacy infrastructure to the public cloud with a methodical

approach. The goal is to build your own internal cloud infrastructure, but even that will be complicated.

I&O executives will spend a lot of money on servers, storage and net-works. The key is not to spend this money in the traditional siloed ap-proach. New converged infrastruc-ture combines server, storage and net-work in a single chassis.

This unified approach helps trans-form the economics of running your datacentre. It accelerates the transi-tion to IP storage and helps build cloud-ready infrastructure.

Converged infrastructure is a per-fect platform for building a hybrid in-ternal/public cloud environment. Many leading I&O teams are using public IaaS (infrastructure as a serv-ice) clouds for more innovative ways to reduce costs and increase opera-tional flexibility.

Their elasticity, low entry costs

and ease of use are well-suited to supporting applications that follow web- or service-oriented architecture design, or that fit well into virtual server environments. Their security, availability and operational transpar-ency are also rapidly maturing, which can make them more suitable for a widening array of applications.

Industrialising IT operationsFinally, with your desktops and da-tacentres under way, it is time to turn back to your operations by industri-alising your IT processes. Like many movements before it, IT is rapidly evolving to an industrial model.

A process or profession becomes industrialised when it matures from an art form to a widespread, repeata-ble function with predictable results and is accelerated by technology to achieve far higher levels of produc-tivity. Industrialisation is fuelled by the maturation of IT operations frameworks such as ITIL and Six Sigma, combined with the use of more sophisticated IT process auto-mation tools plus an appetite for or-ganisational change.

In this post-recession era you will find it is easier to take advantage of the crisis we are coming out of and

realign your team’s attitude, behav-iour and culture. The recession un-corked a lot of process inertia and you can stop rewarding your team as heroes that put out fires in IT and start motivating them to improve efficiency. ■

This is an excerpt from a report by Robert Whiteley, vice-president and research director at Forrester Research. Read more on his blog: http://blogs.forrester.com/robert.whiteley

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CW Buyer’s guideIT InfrasTrucTure

The new future of datacentresMicrosoft is talking about a revolution in datacentre delivery that questions every aspect of past and current methods, writes Ambrose McNevin

When Kevin Timmons, general manager of Mi-crosoft’s Data Center Services, arrived in New

York on the night before his keynote address to the DatacenterDynamics New York conference, he stepped out for a bite to eat. In a typical New York deli, he decided on a pastrami sand-wich.

Having checked the options and, as it was late, he was advised that perhaps a single – as opposed to a double or a triple – was the sensible order. He went for the single. When it arrived it was three inches thick.

Telling that story and showing a picture of said supper to the confer-ence, he said: “I slept on that.” Whether he was using his late-night snack as a metaphor for what he was about to say, only he knows.

What he proposed was that new datacentres, regardless of their scale, would be built on pre-manufactured,

pre-assembled components, and that the old way of doing things is now defunct.

He said that all datacentres would be delivered through a manufactur-ing supply chain in future, and that unlike any other kind of commercial construction, the mechanical electri-cal is where the money goes, and that current practices are unsustainable.

RevolutionWhat Timmons and Microsoft then proposed was nothing short of a revolution in datacentre delivery that questions every aspect of past and current methods.

The answer lies in IT pre-assem-bled components (ITpacs). These are not containers in the traditional sense, but are pre-configured, manu-factured components pre-assembled and delivered to any site around the world.

The idea behind ITpacs is not standardised configurations that are replicated, but applying different components to suit everything from the physical environment to the ro-bustness and required fault tolerance of the application. “When we talk

about our latest generation of data-centre, it is pre-assembled compo-nents, manufactured off-site, brought in and plugged into our datacentre infrastructure.

“So this is the holy grail for us – a paradigm shift to ultra-modularity – which there is lots of chat about in the industry. What does it really mean? It allows us to modularise and pre-manufacture parts for the data-centre, where it makes sense in the world, which in turn lowers our total cost of ownership.

“I can’t stress this enough – this [total cost of ownership] is the single most important metric, and is what drives all my decisions.

“We’ve got quite a sophisticated model, which takes between 50 and 70 different factors into account. It spits out a number at the end called ‘dollar per kilowatt month’. And we modelled all our decisions in that way. What I’m proposing is to view your datacentres as more of a tradi-tional manufacturing supply chain instead of a monolithic build.”

The advantage for the user, he be-lieves, is that this will allow you to go to your chief financial officer with a

much easier decision timing model, which allows you to say you’re going to spend a little now on land, connect fibre, put up a substation to get con-ditioned power on site and then to be able to scale the centre as demand dictates. This, Timmons says, avoids having to try to model demand over many years and make an initial $400m or $600m in capital expendi-ture, in the hope that the business de-mand will show up.

“There are a number of centres around the world that are testaments to that kind of slip-up, where they have two of four floors open because they did the entire development and the demand didn’t show up.

“The key to ITpacs is that you can deploy one to 10,000 servers at a time. I can’t overstate this enough. With the variability in our demand projections, it is incredibly important for me to send out one new server – and it is as important for me to order 40-50,000 servers and plug them in at one time.

“You can call them containers, but they are not really containers in the traditional sense – they are really in-tegrated air handling and IT – those

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Focus Magazinewww.datacenterdynamics.com

“In Microsoft we are making headway – we can demonstrate what is the proper choice and what is not – from an IT perspective”

The message from Timmons is that whether it is datacentres or sandwiches, the super-size option is no longer tenable.

The ITpac-based next generation datacentre

Rex

Fea

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es

are prepackaged off-site and plugged into the spine with power and net-work resources.

“Our overall goal is to reduce the time to market by 50% and signifi-cantly reduce the cost. I have a goal to reduce the cost in next-generation builds by 50%, and we’re on track to actually better that. I can’t be any happier about that.

“I aim to deliver outstanding power usage effectiveness (PUE) and outstanding efficiency, all while using more renewable materials – heavy emphasis on using steel, alu-minium – minimising uses of con-crete and minimising disturbance to land. It is shaping up to be somewhat of a pole barn.”

The ITpac that was shown is still only at proof of concept and is not anywhere like the final version, but what Timmons was proposing was not a unit that would act as an over-spill capacity, or that would be suita-ble for military or rugged environ-ments as an addition to the traditional concrete and steel struc-tures we call datacentres. Instead, what was being proposed is a system of manufactured datacentres that can be shipped around the world and de-ployed twice as fast, and at 50% of the cost of traditional methods. It just means finding the right places to put them. Timmons has a team of globe-trotters seeking the best location for its first next-generation datacentre.

He said he was showing a proof of concept that was already developing rapidly, and that the final first-gener-ation ITpac would look considerably different. He said that, in the coming months, Microsoft would announce a new datacentre where they will be deployed. While Timmons didn’t say as much, don’t be surprised if it turns out to be in South-East Asia.

Questions from the floorNaturally, the audience had some questions, one of which was: “Is there a limit to the server density that ITpacs can handle, especially as there is only so much that can be cooled by air?”

Timmons explained that the an-swer is partly not to get hung up on space. Finding the right land (acreage can be quite cheap) means not having to pack the racks and start pushing

kilowatts of power to it. Timmons conceded that on the IT side there are still plenty of people who “see a bright shiny object such as blade servers that need 600W per sq ft and

promise return on investment in three months, but with no idea what it is going to do to the actual datacen-tre”, he said.

“In Microsoft we are making head-way – we can demonstrate what is the proper choice and what is not – from an IT perspective.”

Design PUE ratings come in at around 1.16, with the worst getting up to peaks of around 1.35, depend-ing on location.

Late SupperThe message from Timmons, not lost on the New York audience, is

that whether it is datacentres or sandwiches, the super-size option is no longer tenable.

It will cost more, take longer to make, be more difficult to digest, and before you get halfway through it you’ll realise you don’t need the rest of it. No one asked about the sandwich. ■

This article was first published in Datacenter Dynamics’ Focus magazinecomputerweekly.com/242541.htm

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A lthough “green” has slid down the list of priorities during the recession, it has not disappeared com-

pletely. The advent of government-driven

green initiatives, such as the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), mean that several thousand UK organisa-tions are now having to monitor and measure their energy usage at a gran-ular level to plan to maximise the fi-nancial gains (or minimise the finan-cial losses) through their positions in the CRC league tables. Also, green in-itiatives can have a distinct value to the business through immediate sav-ings such as lower energy usage that

can be beneficial to the bottom line.From an IT perspective, Quocirca

breaks green initiatives down into three distinct areas:● Standard green – concentrating on quick wins, such as application rationalisation, leading to asset con-solidation onto a virtualised environ-ment, saving energy in the long term.● Advanced green – looking at changing the way IT is operated to give further savings, such as a move to internal cloud computing and/or blade computing.● Investment green – a longer-term

How to measure the value of a green IT infrastructureClive Longbottom explains how basic green IT initiatives can have a direct impact on the business

view, where there is less chance of a direct payback on the investment, but where the capabilities for push-ing green credentials as part of the business’ brand can resonate with the target customers.

Here, such technologies as regener-ative power, heat recycling and alter-native power supplies come to the fore.

Each area has its own part to play – but taking a total value proposition approach to how green IT can help a business can make arguing for a given project far easier.

CW Buyer’s guideIT InfrasTrucTure

When we look at the impact green IT initiatives have on a business, it can be difficult to align the action di-rectly with the outcome. For exam-ple, cutting down on energy costs makes it possible that investments can be made elsewhere, but that is a purely monetary argument – not a technological one.

However, by using standard green initiatives, the reduction in IT assets will make for a far more flexible IT platform, based on fewer IT assets with a greater capability to share re-sources. Therefore, the business can

With greater awareness within the customer base that profligacy with energy is a bad thing, a move towards greener IT can be played strongly through the company brand

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benefit from being able to have an “elastic” IT platform – one where peaks and troughs in workloads can be more easily managed – making the business more responsive to the mar-kets.

With greater awareness within the customer base that profligacy with energy is a bad thing, a move towards greener IT is also something that can be played strongly through the com-pany brand. Being able to convert savings into amounts the customer can understand can have a big impact and can tip the scales in the favour of the greener organisation if communi-cated correctly.

For instance it is unlikely that a customer will be swayed by the state-ment: “We managed to reduce our datacentre cooling overhead by 120,000BTU and our direct energy usage by 3.2MWhs”, but “Our green initiatives have led to savings equiva-lent to the energy used by 20,000 UK homes, 100,000 heated Olympic-sized swimming pools or 3,500 re-turn transatlantic flights” might have the desired effect.

ResilienceFrom a risk point of view, a greener datacentre can be far more resilient – a virtual environment provides much greater capabilities for moving im-ages around if there is any failure in one particular part of the platform.

However, this will need specific tools – otherwise, the consolidation down to a much smaller number of physical devices can lead in the other direction – to where the fail-ure of a single item can lead to ex-tended downtime for a large part of

the infrastructure. This can be the case where, for ex-

ample, cooling is cut down to a single unit – if this fails, the datacentre will have to be shut down. Resilience still needs equipment redundancy – but the equipment may not need to be turned on at all times.

ConsolidationWithin the IT platform itself, hav-ing fewer physical assets means that fewer human resources will be need-ed to manage them, and problems will be easier to identify where the root cause is, and there will be less actual hardware failures – even if the percentage failure rate stays the same.

Therefore, less time will be spent in replacing failed components or as-semblages, but the caveat remains that if consolidation is taken too far, a failure can lead to a loss of overall platform resilience.

At a cost level, the capital costs of going green do have to be considered against the savings that will be made. However, the optimisation of energy usage is a major saving, particularly with the predicted upwards but not linear trend in prices. Also, less hard-ware will be required, leading to fewer software licences and to human resources being required – provided that everything is managed efficiently.

Finally, the massive cost of a new datacentre can be avoided – by going green, the reduced size of the consoli-dated hardware platform can extend the life of an existing facility by sev-eral years.

This short article has concentrated on demonstrating how basic green IT

initiatives can deliver messages into the business to show how they can have a direct impact on the business itself.

The same approach can be used for advanced and investment green initi-atives – for example, a move to a community combined heat and power (CCHP) generation system for an organisation with a very large da-tacentre can bring in revenues through selling excess heat and power to other businesses, local com-munities or through feed-in tariffs from the government.

By attending to basic green initia-tives first, savings can be made that can be shared with the business, with a proportion being ploughed back into advanced or investment green initiatives down the line. ■

Clive Longbottom is service director at analyst firm Quocirca

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