2010 is the most exciting year for data technology facilities since the introduction of air-cooled computers. At last, the speed with which data center infrastructure is evolving has begun to mirror the advancements in IT technology housed within these structures.
The evolutionary disparity between facilities and technology is reflected in a manager’s recollection of a data center outage he experienced many years ago. A simple switching error momentarily disrupted power to the computers. The recovery took three days and required an army of IT technicians performing reboots and system checks. The number of people supporting the outage was so vast that catering and hotel services became a significant cost factor in the recovery.
A year later, a second critical system outage took place at the facility, but this time almost no one from the IT support team arrived onsite for the recovery process. He reported this to the executive level only to learn that IT had completed all of their reboots, system checks, and data recovery remotely; IT was just waiting on facilities to complete their repairs.
In just one year, the technology community identified a risk to reliability and recovery and implemented a fix that was dramatically more efficient, while the facilities went unchanged and would remain so for the next 15 years.
Facilities have been slow to evolve; capital and physical barriers associated with the construction process limit how fast changes can ripple through building stock. Now, however, the era of Tier IV facilities is passing, as technology is negating dependence on the actual server. The ability to direct traffic to an alternative processing center minimizes the loss of a single device, cluster, or even a facility.
With the new generation of data centers, CFOs and CIOs are aligning on the needs of the business and creating an environment that isn’t polarized on cost versus reliability.