Optimizing Data Centers through Real Time Data

Data Centers must keep up with technology trends to be ready for tomorrow

(From Left) Madhusudan Shekar - ‎Principal Evangelist - ‎Amazon Internet Services Pvt. Ltd, Sangram Aglave – Contributing Editor – BW Businessworld, Satish Viswanathan – Vice President – Pre Sales & Products – Nextgen Datacenter & Cloud Technologies Pvt Ltd, Goutam Kurumella - Director - Big Data & Analytics Sales Consulting - ‎Oracle (Panelists for Bangalore)

The Digital Economy will contribute about 1 trillion $ to Indian GDP by 2025, i.e. about 25% contribution to India’s GDP by 2025. The net new data created in the world is expected to grow from 44 Billion GB/day in 2016 to 463 billion GB/day by 2025. Power is already a more significant cost than the IT equipment in a Data Center. And that reflects in the fact that Power has become a widely accepted metric to measure Data Center growth. Global Data Centers now consumer 4% of all the electricity generated in the world. Would this phenomenal demand for data and power put things out of control for the Data Center operators? Data Centers operators need to adopt a “do more with less” mindset and all Optimization projects start with data and end with data. Interestingly, there are two facts that place “data” at the Center of all business models. First, increased competition led by globalization and second, the practical reality of having access to limited resources. Data Centers at a composite level are like any other “thing” and thus, most of the analytics we see and hear around us today can be also applied to a Data Center to understand its workings and to find opportunities to improve the performance and as a result, bring down the cost of operations.

The global shift in outlook towards data is evident and has made data an enterprise asset. Data is set to drive the growth of the economies and human condition as we progress into the 21st Century. These tectonic shifts in the industry inspired Raritan and BW CIOWorld to organize events focused on the imminent future of a “Data Driven World” in Mumbai and Bengaluru recently. Raritan is a brand of Legrand, a leading provider in intelligent rack PDUs, KVM switches and other Data Center infrastructure monitoring and management solutions. Raritan’s innovations improve the reliability, efficiency and intelligence of Data Centers and server rooms around the globe.

Industry veterans and industry peers rubbed shoulders at the events and pow-wowed on the challenges of optimizing Data Center performance and the role data plays in modern Data Center operations. At the Bengaluru event, Goutam Kurumella, Senior Director, Oracle India, delivered the keynote address. He pointed out that “data brings the physics of facilities and the physical  IT infrastructure together.”

Mohit Pande, Country Manager, India, Google Cloud, who delivered the keynote address at the Mumbai event, focused on the value proposition of the cloud. He explained “how data will be the most disruptive phenomenon moving forward.” Pande said, “Machine learning and AI allow us to solve the problem we never thought possible to solve.” Pande announced that Google would open its Data Center in Mumbai this year.

In his address, Sanjay Motwani, Regional Director, Asia Pacific, Raritan, set the tone for the event and said, “IT today is no longer an enabler but a driver of business strategy and needs to be prepared for future changes by observing how end-consumer behavior in their category is changing or will change.”

A panel discussion on “Data Center Optimization through real time data” followed. Many points worth pondering on emerged from the panel discussions in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Some nuggets:

Power

Satish Viswanathan, Vice President, Pre-sales & Products at NxtGen Infinite Data Center pointed out that “Power is the single largest contributor to Data Center spend, and thus, any optimization exercise is eventually targeted at reducing the power consumption.” He then went on to explain how “Data can enable us to measure PUE in real time versus depending on an average,” before getting into the minutiae of the Data Center use cases and the related physics.

“The time to market would be significantly lower with the best of breed DCIM (not DCIM but DC) versus building a DCIM(not DCIM but DC)in house,” said Goutam Kurumella of Oracle India. He observed that “Mashing the granular, real time and accurate power consumption data with IT data like server utilization, IOPs, types of workload could help in better demand planning and physical organization of the Data Centers.” Real time data can also “augment the failure root cause analysis, improve the outcomes from preventive maintenance programs, enable predictive maintenance programs,” he went on to add.

“Power is the lifeline of a Data Center and is the real time cost for a Data Center,” said Nitin Mishra, Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Netmagic. “Power saving will optimize the operations of a Data Center and the design and operation parameters are very important for a Data Center,” said he.

Cloud

“Cloud in a way enables digital technologies like IoT, Big data, Analytics, Blockchains and only cloud has the necessary scale and elasticity to sustain the digital world through undifferentiated heavy lifting,” said Madhusudan Shekar, Principal Evangelist, Amazon Internet Service. “Cloud unit costs come down with time while return on value goes up with time,” he observed. “Its cobblers’ kids without shoes if Data Centers don’t become a Thing, given the fact that they enable Internet of Things. This is regardless of whether in-house or public or private, should become a Thing,” he said.

“Data Centers serve the needs of the digital technology requirements from end customers,” said Kunal Pande, Partner, KPMG. “Technology is so advanced today and plays a significant role in consolidating the efficiency in Data Center’s power usage,” he observed. Pande opined that in the long run, the world would move to cloud and that the cloud environment would be much more effective and sophisticated.  

Data Centers themselves generate a lot of data and the advent of technologies like Big Data, Industrial IoT etc. have made it possible to record the data and make it available in real time for enabling speed of thought governance, risk and compliance business processes.

Suresh Shan, Head Innovation and Future Technologies at Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services, pointed out that a Data Center connects various agencies and locations and helps the organization take the right decisions on time. “In today’s world, organizations run on AI and IoT and the business dictates the norms in a Data Center,” said Shan.

In summary, Data Centers, regardless of their type, co-location, in-house or cloud, have to be ready for a hybrid cloud future. As Sanjay Motwani observed in his address, it is very important for end users, the team responsible for the High Availability and economical operations of Data Centers to form a community to exchange ideas and learn from each other to remain on top of the incoming innovations and assure long-term value to their customers. “Raritan’s world class award winning KVM and Power solution portfolio provides Data Center managers with the relevant tools and data for realizing a reliable, scalable and operationally efficient Data Center,” he said.




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