Your next data center

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• Data center overhauls
• How to build your next data center
• What's in your dream data center?
• Opinion: Your abstract data center

Some vendors, as well as customers, argue that data center managers shouldn't just look for cost savings as they reconfigure their centers; they should aim to fundamentally transform how they deliver IT services.

The Pennsylvania attorney general's office has virtualized servers with VMware software, moved from direct-attached storage to network-attached storage from NetApp Inc. and upgraded its network to 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Power capacity and cooling weren't issues, since the data center was built to handle mainframe needs and is, if anything, too cold rather than too warm. Nester says he is using two-thirds less space than he did before the upgrade.

His staff can remotely and proactively deal with servers and network problems, and deliver new IT services more quickly (see story above). One example is an application that supports Pennsylvania's revised "Do Not Call" law, which allows consumers to register their cellular and land-line numbers. Staffers delivered the application within 45 days, on time and within budget, Nester says.

"A few years ago, that would have been an eight-month project," says Assistant CIO Jim Ingalzo.

Built to Last?

In some cases, building and design issues drive decision-making. Hawaii Pacific Health found that it couldn't bring more power into its main data center because the floor was too weak to support any more uninterruptible power supplies.

Rather than spending $500,000 to reinforce the floor, Hawaii Pacific has kept its electricity usage level by virtualizing more and more of its 300 servers, and it has moved to new blade servers whose power can be raised or lowered as processing loads change.

IT Director Colbert Seto will also upgrade the health care provider's Hewlett-Packard SANs to support the rollout of a new electronic medical record system for 3,000 concurrent users. The growth in storage demand, he says, threatens to overwhelm any cost savings he might achieve through server virtualization. Seto is counting on the eventual use of de-duplication technologies (which store only changes in previously backed-up data) to reduce future storage growth, along with new policies that reduce how much data users keep in the first place.

Some data center managers find that budgets are so tight that all they can do is play for time. That's the case for Randi Levin, chief technology officer and general manager of IT for the city of Los Angeles. Like many other IT managers, she's about to run out of power and cooling at the city's main downtown data center. But with the city facing a deficit of more than $400 million, it's unlikely she'll get the $28 million to $30 million needed to upgrade the facility — even if that was a worthwhile investment for a data center at the bottom of a high-rise building in an earthquake-prone city.