Track D: Modernizing The 21st Century Data Center: Getting Agile or Getting Run Over
Aging data center infrastructures, increasing energy costs, and the need to improve responsiveness to business demands are forcing many organizations to rethink traditional approaches to supporting the business. Decisions on how many data centers an organization should have, where they should be located, and the workload placement within those data centers will be driven by issues such as business requirements, business continuity plans, skills availability and regulatory compliance. What’s more, many users report having older facilities that are less than optimal for today's compute environment. IT equipment costs may be outweighed by on-going energy costs, driving the need for new data center strategies. Options, such as collocation or outsourcing, need to be considered in addition to the traditional approaches of build, lease or refurbishment. Any modernization effort must begin with the overall facility. However, all too often this hasn't been a priority for IT practitioners. Enterprises need to control costs while staying competitive. Data center modernization and consolidation projects offer the opportunity to achieve both of these goals. This track delivers targeted advice on how to plan and implement a data center modernization strategy -- whether it involves building and populating a new data center, modernizing an existing one, or sourcing externally.
Sessions
Best Practices for a World-Class Data Center Operations Command Center
Designing and staffing a data center command center continues to be a challenge for IT organizations looking to align IT operations capabilities, goals and deliverables with the demands and needs of the business. To achieve success, IT operations organization, staffing and skills decisions must be aligned with the way IT management tools are chosen, implemented, integrated and used. Understanding how personnel and tools relate allows IT operations to achieve a greater level of cost control, IT control, business accountability and operational efficiency.
Achieving the Vision of Data Center Automation
Few have achieved the promise of data center automation, or automating processes across server, storage and network. We explore the future of data center automation, including best practices in server provisioning and configuration management, as well as the areas of compliance, private cloud and real-time infrastructure.
Extreme Data Centers – Attaining Massive Scalability – In the Minimum Space, At the Lowest Cost
The traditional method of data center design and equipment placement has started to shift, and leading-edge companies are realizing that new designs, or retrofits, can accommodate 300% to 1,000% more compute capacity per square foot. This presentation will discuss the trend and show models that validate the concepts.
Data Center & IT Operations Cost Optimization: The Journey Never Ends
A seemingly constant focus on cost containment means data center and IT operations staff must determine opportunities to optimize costs on an ongoing basis. At the same time, they must ensure that service levels meet business requirements and must continue to make investments in people, process and technology. This presentation looks at the tactical and strategic factors influencing cost optimization efforts
Best Practices for the Design and Implementation of Critical Data Center Facility Systems
When looking to upgrade or build a new data center, there are five critical areas that should be considered in your design. Principal among them should be the concepts of efficiency, flexibility, and scalability. We will look at some best practices in the five critical areas of power, HVAC, raised floor, fire protection and security
Best Practices in Data Center and Server Consolidation
The economy has put added pressure on many organizations to utilize the capacity they have in place more efficiently, whether it is the physical data centers they have or the servers that reside within them. As such, even though many organizations have past experience with consolidation projects, they are finding they are under increased pressure to optimize their costs and possibly further consolidate. The good news is that advances in technology have made second- and third-wave consolidation projects now viable. We will look at some key trigger points in deciding when to consolidate, best practices in how to get started and recommendations for each phase of a consolidation project, including best practices in relocation or closure of an existing data center.
Understanding Data Center Transformation and “The Big Five” Providers
Data center transformation represents the changes in the processes to procure, deploy and manage information technology as it moves from hardware and software silos to more converged infrastructure and appliances. Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM and Oracle have all been making moves to exert more influence over and return from data center investments during this transformation. These providers have been evolving into the five potentially most influential providers in the data center today and they will continue to maneuver competitively over the next five years. This presentation will examine those changes and the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of the “big five” in relationship to data center transformation.
DCIM: New Tools to Monitor, Manage & Control Power
Data center managers rank power (and cooling) as their No. 1 concern. In response, a new market has rapidly emerged for data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools. In this session, we explore what's available and how you can use DCIM to address your biggest issue.
Choosing Colocation Services: Strategic, Tactical or Practical?
Despite the overwhelming hype around cloud services, colocation continues to be a more mature and tactical option for those that have near to midterm requirements for additional space and compute. The key in making your decision will be to align your space, power and management requirement with the models available including datacenter leasing, and whole or retail colocation. Each have their own use cases as well as risks. In this session we help you create decision frameworks to evaluate the varying models and pricing metrics, and for managing the associated migration issues.
Data Center Evolution: From Networks to Fabrics
As enterprises push to implement virtualization, real-time infrastructure, fabric-based computers and private cloud computing, the data center network must evolve rapidly to keep pace. This session examines I&O virtualization and consolidation, network convergence, collapsing layers into a two-tier design and service virtualization. It provides practical advice for the next 18 months with a look at trends likely to emerge over the next three years.
Agenda Builder Tool
With a wealth of sessions, it is helpful to have a tool to build your own agenda focusing on your own needs. The online Agenda Builder helps you select and add them to your calendar, and to build in networking and reflection time into your schedule. You can follow one of the specific tracks, or sessions based on maturity of your projects, business or technology focused sessions or just simply mix and match!
Click here for the Agenda Builder tool.
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