Transcript Top ten data center trends and challenges for 2009

Top Ten Data Center Trends
and Challenges for 2009
Matt Stansberry
Senior Site Editor
SearchDataCenter.com
[email protected]
541-505-7793
Abstract
Data center operators are facing more change
today than any time in the past 10 years. The
increased demand for computing capacity,
uptime and lower costs is forcing data center
pros to push the boundaries of traditional
data center designs and technologies. This
presentation will offer an overview of the top
ten trends shaping the industry in 2009.
What We Learned From Our Survey
• Server trends are holding steady -- x86 rack based
computers are driving data center purchasing and
design.
• Data center managers are paying more for power and
becoming increasingly aware of new “green”
technologies. But nearly 40% of respondents don’t
know if their power bill changed from 2007-2008 –
they are not measuring costs or consumption.
• Virtualization is mainstream and growing, with VM
deployments and density on the rise. Backup and DR
tools lead the current third party tool usage scenarios.
• Systems management spending is still weak, but the
majority of companies are investing or have invested in
CMDB software, which analysts say is the first step
toward building a mature systems management
foundation.
About The Audience
• 12% of respondents identify themselves as IT
execs (VP, CTO, CIO), 27% as IT managers.
• Nearly 30% work for companies with over $1
billion in revenue and over 10,000 employees.
• 73% of respondents work in a central data
center.
• 13% manage over 1,000 servers.
Budget Growth Averages 5.12% -- An
Increase From 2007 Growth Estimates
30.00%
28.42%
25.79%
25.00%
21.23%
20.00%
15.00%
10.88%
10.00%
4.74%
5.00%
4.56%
4.39%
0.00%
Increase of 510%
Increase
greater than
10%
No change in
spending
Increase less
than 5%
Decrease of 5- Decrease of Decrease less
10%
more than 10%
than 5%
1. Container Data Centers
So What Is A Container Data Center?
• Portable data centers are built into a standard 20'
shipping container.
• External cooling and power infrastructure are
required.
• Some systems use closed loop water cooling,
some specialized high density air cooling.
• Different designs have variable compute densities,
ranging from 8 to 28 racks, depending on server
form factor and cooling strategies.
Why Data Center Trailers?
Unsustainable Data Center Growth
• Companies are building new data centers to provide
additional power for an increasing number of servers.
• The primary drivers are application growth and disaster
recovery.
• In our 2007 survey on data center construction, more
than 80% of respondents said they planned to build
new facilities or expand in the coming 18 months.
• According to AFCOM, over 60% of pre-2005 data
centers will be incapable of supporting business
requirements because of capacity constraints by 2009.
• This construction boom is not a onetime catch-up.
Uptime says server growth will drive additional data
center construction every three to five years.
Everybody Is Building Containers…
• Sun Modular Data Center
• Verari FOREST Container
• HP Performance Optimized Data Center (POD)
• IBM iDataPlex container
• APC mobile data center
• Dell (coming soon)
Sun’s Modular Data Center
Modular Data Center External Infrastructure
Rackable ICE Cube
Top Selling Points For Containers
• Ten times faster to deploy than a traditional
data center.
• Reduced capital expenses with incremental
growth.
• Flexibility to relocate and reuse data center
assets.
• High density, high efficiency design.
Top Container Drawbacks
• Cost premium on one-off designs
• Specialized engineering requirements
• Homogenous IT architecture isn’t a fit for
most companies
• Difficult to work inside containers
• Scale is too large for most companies
2. CMDB Implementations
• 80% of IT failures are due
to changes in the system.
• IT admins' daily to-do lists
are getting longer, and the
information they need to
complete these tasks is
changing faster.
What Is A CMDB?
• A configuration management database (CMDB) is
a database that contains all relevant information
about the components in a data center, and
relationships between those components.
• CMDB components are referred to as configuration
items (CI). CIs can include software, hardware,
documentation, and personnel.
• The processes of configuration management seeks
to specify, control, and track configuration items
and any changes made to them in a
comprehensive and systematic fashion.
Rapid Adoption Of CMDBs
• In SearchDataCenter.com’s 2007 purchasing
intentions survey, 24% of respondents had
invested in a CMDB, and another 24% were
evaluating them.
• 2008: 55% have invested in a CMDB, 5% will
purchase, and another 19% plan to evaluate
this year.
• HP, BMC lead in market share, with CA and
IBM trailing.
Adoption Vs. Implementation
• Gartner’s CMDB adoption numbers match ours, but say
only 3-5% of global 2000 companies have completed
the implementation of a CMDB.
• One wonders how many people “doing” CMDB are in
fact putting in an asset database, or some other userdefined version of CMDB. Or how many are there
where “doing” means Fred has been told to come up
with something in his spare time with no budget. Or
where “doing” means we bought a tool that says
CMDB on the brochure but we haven’t got past
implementing network alerting or incident tickets yet.
–IT Skeptic
CMDB Implementation Pitfalls
• Manually populating a CMDB is time consuming
project. Automated data management products
can federate systems quickly, but homegrown
applications and heterogeneous data centers
make automation difficult.
• IT systems change faster than staff can manually
update the CMDB. Without automated federation,
latency develops in the system.
3. Put Servers To Sleep
• A server running at 20%
utilization may draw up
to 80% of its maximum
power.
• The vast majority of
companies could throttle
or power-down idle
servers with no impact
on application
performance.
Power-Down Features Gain Ground
In 2008 Survey
90.00%
80.00%
28.31%
70.00%
24.79%
60.00%
50.00%
22.20%
40.00%
30.00%
6.22%
49.58%
57.83%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
10.00%
24.50%
3.40%
2.55%
30.78%
10.20%
Direct current Hydrogen fuel Liquid cooling Power-down
(DC) power
cells
features on
servers
Have implemented percentage
Improving air
conditioning
efficiency
Server
virtualization
Will implement percentage
7.96%
8.15%
11.84%
10.97%
Air-side or
water-side
economizers
None
How Do You Power-Down Servers?
• Chip Level: AMD and Intel Corp. use features that allow
server firmware to throttle down CPU cycles during
low-demand periods. Intel calls the technology
Demand-Based Switching, which minimizes the applied
voltage and clock speed on a microprocessor until more
processing power is actually required. AMD calls the
technology PowerNow and claims that it can reduce
CPU power at idle by 75%.
• OS Level: Microsoft built processor power management
into its operating system in Windows Server 2003, but
the majority of users never enabled the feature. In
Windows Server 2008 power management is enabled
out of the box. The new power management feature
provides finer-grain controls that allow the OS to scale
back the voltage going to the processor, rather than
putting CPUs to sleep when servers are idle, which can
result in latency issues.
Power-Down Process Continued
• Element manager level: These software tools ship free
with servers. Major players are entering this field, but
the capabilities are often single-vendor solutions. HP’s
Insight Power Manager (ProLiant and Itanium) and
IBM’s PowerExecutive (BladeCenter and System x) are
two examples. While specific to hardware vendors,
these tools allow for real-time monitoring, power
capping and CPU throttling.
• Third-party tools: New companies are touting vendor
neutral products that can manage across virtual and
physical servers, providing policy-based throttle down
features. The most prominent company in this space is
Cassatt. Virtualization vendors such as Virtual Iron,
VMware and Citrix are all getting involved in
capabilities to shut down physical machines when there
are no virtual machines running on the hardware, but
these are brand new features.
Active Power Myths Debunked
• MYTH 1: Some believe that turning servers on and off
compromises hardware reliability. But computers are
designed to handle 40,000 on-off cycles before failure,
and you’re not likely to approach that number during
the average computer’s five- to seven-year life span. In
fact, IBM and Hewlett- Packard encourage their
employees to turn off idle computers, and some studies
indicate it would require on-off cycling every five
minutes to harm a hard drive.
• MYTH 2: It takes more energy to turn off a server for a
few hours and then back on rather than to just leave it
running. The small surge of power created when
devices such as computers are turned on is vastly
smaller than the energy used by running a device when
it is not needed.
Problems With Power-Down
• Performance latency potential.
• Servers support fragile, multi-tiered data
center interdependencies.
• Huge consequences for system failures.
• A lack of major case studies.
• Hardware stability FUD.
• Case for ROI is still developing.
4. Cloud Computing Goes Mainstream
What Is Cloud Computing?
• The basic concept is on-demand access to
computing power and storage space via the
Internet.
• Companies are providing CPUs and storage,
but the next step is providers bundling
applications and platforms into the mix.
Resistance Is Futile
• Google, Yahoo, MSFT host applications I use in the
cloud every day (like Gmail).
• At a recent industry conference, data center
managers from very conservative companies
(Ford, Boeing) said they’d have no problem
putting non-critical apps into the cloud.
• Data center hosting companies are talking about
building out high density infrastructure to either
rent to cloud providers -- or to become cloud
providers themselves.
Benefits Of Cloud Computing
• Lower capital costs: Cloud costs less than data
center expansion.
• Increase efficiency by reducing overprovisioning of data center resources.
• More business agility: On-demand computing
is faster than data center infrastructure build
out.
• Disaster recovery: Backup can be abstracted
from physical layer
Cloud Risks And Pitfalls
• The main consumers of cloud computing are SMBs,
startups and end users that don't have legacy
constraints of large companies.
• Cloud companies could go under, get acquired or
just disappear in an outage. Users need to have
documented recovery processes.
• Compliance and security issues with sensitive
data, shared IT resources and unknown thirdparty IT staff.
• Lack of ISV application support as each cloud
architecture is different.
Cloud Computing Providers
5. Hot And Cold Aisle Containment
Gaining Credence
• Up to 40% of cooling in traditional hotailse/cold-aisle doesn't do any work. Air
mixes over the tops of racks and around the
rows.
• Hot-aisle/cold-aisle containment uses a
physical barrier to separate airflow through
makeshift design solutions, ducted plenum
systems and other commercial offerings.
Benefits Of Containment
• The separation of hot and cold air can provide
much better uniformity of air temperature
from the top to the bottom of the rack.
• That uniformity of temperature enables data
center pros to raise the set point temperature
more safely.
• William Tschudi from LBNL said that, together
with VFDs, containment can reduce fan energy
use by 75%.
Hot Aisle/Cold Aisle Containment Problems
• APC promotes hot-aisle containment, while
Emerson Liebert's product line supports cold aisle.
No standards at this time.
• Hot aisle containment can pose a problem for staff
that need to access the 110-degree hot aisle.
• Fire suppression issues abound. Are you putting a
sprinkler inside every containment unit? Are you
using plastic sheeting that will melt and drop to
the floor?
• Executives may not support that your data center
looks like the back of a butcher shop.
Who Is Doing Containment?
• Yahoo reduced data center cooling energy use
21%, reduced PUE ratio from 1.52 to 1.44, saving
$563,000 annually in a 8,000 sq. ft. room within
Yahoo’s 40,000 sq. ft. data center in Santa Clara,
Calif.
• Advanced Data Centers is building a facility in
Sacramento, Calif. The hot aisle will be contained
by attaching a ducted plenum and chimney to
exhaust the hot air outside, allowing ADC to
pressurize the entire room with cool air.
• Storage vendor NetApp has employed vinyl meat
locker curtains to contain air in the hot aisles in its
Silicon Valley data center. These curtains alone
save NetApp 1 million kWh of energy per year.
6. Global Warming Policies Impacting The
Data Center
Computers Run On Coal
• Half of all the electricity generated in the U.S.
comes from coal-burning power plants.
• By reducing energy consumption, we lessen the
demand to build more of these polluters.
• The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that
a 500-megawatt coal-burning power plant
generates: 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide, the
primary cause of human-related global warming;
10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid
rain; and 500 tons of airborne particles,
responsible for respiratory health problems.
Regulation On The Horizon?
• There are massive efforts afoot in government
agencies to start reporting carbon emissions
and energy usage. That responsibility is going
to be shifted to IT departments that maintain
the data centers. We've attended the EPA
forums, and it's not a question of if, but when,
it is coming and what metrics will be required.
It'd be far better for the people who run and
operate data centers to come up with metrics
that mean something.
-Mike Manos, Microsoft
Climate Change Legislation Imminent
• A carbon cap and trade scheme will drive
energy costs up an estimated 20%. Data
center operators already constricted by huge
power bills are in for even more sticker
shock at the meter in the future.
• The Warner-Lieberman Climate Security Act
did not pass Senate committee, but both
presidential candidates will make this a
priority in the upcoming term.
7. IT Certifications Become Less Relevant
Has Certification Been A Factor In Your
Hiring Or Promotions?
Yes-not hired
2%
Yes-not promoted
1%
Yes-promoted
8%
Yes-hired because of
certification
12%
No
77%
Has Certification Been A Factor In
Bonus Or Raises?
90.00%
81.70%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
9.94%
10.00%
3.47%
2.37%
Yes-bonus
and salary
increase
Yes-bonus
1.10%
0.95%
0.47%
0.00%
No
Yes-salary
increase
Yes-no salary Yes-no salary Yes-no bonus
increase or
increase
bonus
Certifications Not Worth Much
• Regard for IT certifications has taken a nosedive - 80% of respondents said IT certifications had no
impact on their hiring, promotion or salary in the
past year.
• According to research from Foote Partners LLC, an
IT job research firm, the pay for noncertified IT
skills now averages more than pay for certified
pros.
• IT has become less technical and has gotten closer
to the customers and lines of business. Companies
want more industry experience and understanding
of the business process.
Exceptions To The Rule
• VMware Certified professionals: Companies want
employees with three to four years of virtualization
experience.
• Marist’s CDCP certification is made up of six associate
certifications. It takes two years to go through the
coursework.
• Data center engineering in demand. From the NY
Times: “People with the skills to design, build and run a
data center that does not endanger the power grid are
suddenly in demand. Their status is growing, as are
their salaries -- climbing more than 20% in the last two
years into six figures for experienced engineers.”
8. Virtualization Production Issues,
Third-Party Tools At A Turning Point
• According to a SearchDataCenter.com 2008 survey -61% of our readers use some form of virtualization and
another 29% will deploy it this year. Only 10% of
respondents had no plans for virtualization.
• But virtualization isn't without its difficulties. Asked
which systems management tasks gave them trouble in
VMware environments, respondents replied with a
laundry list of complaints.
• Customers are waiting to see third-party virtualization
management tools mature before investing in them.
Top Virtualization Systems
Management Challenges
• Performance management, noted by 47% of
respondents
• Capacity planning (45%)
• Backup and restore, change management,
disaster recovery, troubleshooting and
migration were all listed as challenges by
20% to 30 % of respondents.
Which Third-Party VM Security Vendors
Do You Use?
45.00%
38.28%
40.00%
35.00%
30.00%
26.56%
22.66%
25.00%
20.00%
16.93%
15.00%
10.94%
8.85%
10.00%
8.85%
2.60%
5.00%
2.60%
2.60%
1.56%
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Which Third-Party Migration Tools
Do You Use?
70.00%
65.14%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
13.51%
11.89%
10.00%
6.49%
4.86%
4.86%
Invirtus
Enterprise VM
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Other
0.00%
None
PlateSpin
PowerConvert
Vizioncore
vRanger Pro
In A VMware Environment, Which Systems
Management Function Do You Find Most
Challenging?
47.44%
50.00%
45.38%
45.00%
40.00%
35.00%
29.49%
30.00%
26.92%
25.90%
23.33%
25.00%
20.26%
20.00%
16.67%
15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
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0.00%
What Is The Main Reason For Not Investing
In Systems Management Software?
40.00%
36.76%
35.00%
30.00%
23.90%
25.00%
22.43%
20.00%
15.00%
10.29%
10.00%
6.62%
5.00%
0.00%
No budget
Have all we need
No staff to
implement
Don't see the value
in it
Other
9. Server Trends For 2009
Nothing Too Shocking
• HP is still the favorite x86 server vendor.
• A good portion of data centers still favor rack
servers over blades.
• The vast majority use Microsoft Windows as
the primary operating system.
• Increase in large symmetric multiprocessing
(SMP) servers, probably driven by the
expanding use of virtualization.
Which Operating Systems Are You Using For
Mission Critical Apps?
(Check All That Apply)
90.00%
79.94%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
32.93%
32.19%
30.00%
23.50%
21.41%
20.00%
17.22%
12.57%
11.98%
10.00%
7.19%
3.74%
0.00%
Windows
Server
2003
Red Hat
Linux
Solaris
AIX
HP-UX
z/OS or
other
mainframe
SUSE
Linux
Windows
Server
2008
i OS
(i5/OS)
Ubuntu
Linux
Manufacturing
29.34%
Supply
chain/logistics
E-commerce
40.42%
Enterprise
resource planning
47.31%
Customer
relationship
management/Sales
force automation
Citrix or other
applicationprojection
software
56.74%
Online transaction
processing
60.78%
Human resources
64.67%
Business
intelligence/data
warehouse
Accounting
Email
90.00%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
Web servers
Web Servers The Most Common App
82.49%
73.35%
55.54%
38.47%
27.10%
17.07%
Performance Is Still The Most Important
Factor For Purchasing Blade Servers
45.00%
41.65%
40.00%
35.00%
30.00%
25.00%
18.77%
20.00%
17.48%
15.00%
11.83%
10.00%
7.20%
3.08%
5.00%
0.00%
Performance
Purchase price
Management
features
Power
consumption
Density
Thermal load
Intel Continues To Dominate Processor Selection On x86…
What Processor Will You Specify For Servers In 2008?
70.00%
62.69%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
19.88%
20.00%
15.29%
14.68%
13.76%
Don't know
Don't specify
specific processors
Intel Itanium
10.00%
0.00%
Intel x86/x64
Advanced Micro
Devices Inc. (AMD)
10. Standardizing Data Center
Energy Metrics
Energy Issues Increasingly Important…
How Important Is Energy Efficiency In
Your Organization?
Not a priority
16%
Very important
48%
Somewhat important
36%
36% Of Respondents Don’t Know What Their
Power Bill Is…This is dysfunctional!
Why Metrics Matter
• Metrics like PUE will help data center
managers make better decisions. “You can’t
manage what you can’t measure.” This will
give us empirical evidence on which energy
efficient “best practices” are really working
and allow users to determine ROI on projects.
PUE = Total facility power
÷ IT equipment power
Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency
Or PUE
• Power “in” to the data center (measured at the
utility electric meter), divided by power “out”
used to run the IT equipment for computing.
• The Uptime Institute: 85 corporate members (the
largest financial data centers in the world) have
an average PUE of 2.5. This means that for every
2.5 watts “in” at the utility meter, only one watt
is delivered out to the IT load.
• Uptime estimates a best case scenario of 1.6 PUE
for companies with the most efficient equipment
and no over provisioning capacity.
Measuring PUE
• Take a measurement at the facility’s utility meter. If
your data center is in a mixed-use facility, measure
only at the meter that powers your data center facility.
If power to your data center is not on a separate utility
meter, estimate the amount of power being consumed
by the non–data center portion of the building and
remove it from your calculation.
• The next step is to measure the IT equipment load,
which should be measured after power conversion,
switching and conditioning is completed. According to
the Green Grid, the most likely measurement point
would be at the output of the computer room power
distribution units (PDUs). This measurement should
represent the total power delivered to the compute
equipment racks in the data center.
Measuring PUE (Continued)
• While PDU is an accurate measurement, experts
say the uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
output may be a better option. If you measure at
the UPS output, there’s only one place to
measure. If you do it at the pure location, which
is the PDU output, you would likely have to
measure 600 to 700 locations to get the same
information. One is more pure, but much more
difficult. Whichever means users select, it’s
important to measure the same way consistently.
Questions???
Matt Stansberry, Senior Site Editor
www.SearchDataCenter.com
[email protected]