Businesses today are finding themselves on a predatory quest to cut costs now, and in some cases, think about the ramifications to efficiency later. Remarkably, strategies designed to lower data center costs are simultaneously designed to increase efficiency.
Evolving Solutions has gathered insight from top industry thought leaders designed to help our readers lower data center costs and improve efficiency. Thought leaders, including Microsoft Global Strategist Toby Velte and FOCUS Consulting President Barb Goldworm, have contributed their insight to the Data Center Leaders interview series. Below, are 5 data center cost avoidance tips from our thought leaders:
1. Completely Reevaluate The Management Of Your Data Center: Today’s advances in technology, particularly green IT initiatives, offer tremendous potential to minimize consumption of current resources. Per Microsoft Global Technology Strategist Toby Velte, by reevaluating data center needs, including how much storage and speed is truly necessary, companies will become armed with the knowledge necessary to achieve sustained data center cost reduction in future projections.
2. Server and Storage Virtualization: In the long run, virtualization is best for sustained cost reduction, states Omar Sultan, Senior Solution Manager for Data Center Switching at Cisco. Virtualization, replacing physical servers with a virtual environment, lowers the total cost of server infrastructure, thereby lowering the total energy costs of a business overall.
3. Move to Blade Systems: Blade systems, self-contained computer servers designed for high data density, can increase your efficiencies in power and cooling, per Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst at FOCUS Consulting. The amount of servers common in a data center have oftentimes led to power consumption concerns as these large servers must run in a temperature controlled environment. By minimizing the heating and cooling costs necessary for a data center, blade centers minimize the heating and cooling costs for a business as a whole.
4. Go Green: “Organizations are finding that there simply is no more power available to them unless they pay to build the generation plants necessary to support them,” shares Dan Kusnetzky, ZDNet contributor and founding partner of the Kusnetzky Group. It can be tempting to see the green movement as just another fad, but at the end of the day, it is about saving power costs by utilizing more energy efficient technology, such as virtualization, and little else.
5. Have a Disaster Backup and Data Recovery Plan: “If your server room imploded, what would you do?” asks Susan Snedaker, Principal Consultant with VirtualTeam. The likely answer is, you would pay – and pay any amount – to get your critical data back. Disasters happen, and to recover will cost money. By developing a disaster backup and data recovery plan in advance, however, companies can mitigate much of the desperation costs involved with recovery.
Offered to steer your business in the right direction, the cost avoidance tips provided in our Data Center Thought Leaders interview series illustrate ways your businesses can achieve cost cutting initiatives without sacrificing efficiency or productivity.
If you have more tips to share, we welcome your insight and invite you to share via a comment below.
