This Old Data Center

Posted by Curtis Franklin Jr. on May 20, 2005

Top 5 Clues Your Data Center Needs Upgrading Click to Enlarge

Laying the Foundation

Although much data-center planning and implementation is specific to each enterprise, a few universal truths hold. First, the small stuff matters. Even the simplest technology, like cabling, deserves your full attention. Second, any upgrade request will likely generate the question: Should we do this ourselves or outsource? To answer, examine your core competencies and weigh total costs of data-center operation against services provided by the likes of Equinix, Rackspace Managed Hosting and Savvis Communications.

Off-loading IT functions may be a hot trend--the worldwide IT outsourcing market is predicted to grow 7.9 percent yearly to reach $429.2 billion by 2008, according to Gartner--but it's not always the best choice (for insight, see "Why Outsource?" ). If you do outsource your data center, a comprehensive SLA (service-level agreement) is a must; "Craft a Data-Center SLA So It Meets Business Needs", provides tips.

If you maintain your data-center services in-house, periodic upgrades are constants, as is dealing with the heat--and we don't mean the local building inspector. Rather, the laws of physics say expansion and contraction cannot co-exist at the same time, in the same place, on the same object. But that's what we're asking our data centers to do: Expand to include more CPU and processing power to drive business applications, yet take up less space and reduce overhead.