Virtualisation, Consolidation Will Offset Data Centre Problems

According to Gartner, significant increase in server sales during the next two years will lead to a further acceleration of data center power, cooling and space problems. Gartner said that users need to quantify the effects of new deployments and take action without delay.

“While server sales expected to rise the next two years, many IT administrators are already grappling with data centre power, cooling and space issues of its current fleet,” said Rakesh Kumar, Research Vice President, Gartner. “Virtualisation and consolidation projects will help offset some of these issues, but with the snowball effect that these issues tend to create within an organisation, users need to act quickly.”

According to Gartner, the worldwide server market declined by 16.5 percent in revenue and by 16.8 percent in volume in 2009. However, analysts predict that the market will recover from 2010 onward, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.5 percent for shipments and 2.4 percent for revenue from 2010 through 2014.

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Gartner has identified a number of actions that users need to undertake to manage these problems in 2010 and 2011, including:

• Do not underestimate the issues.
  Quantify the problem. Users need to get accurate capacity-related data to quantify the impact of infrastructure expansion on the amount of data center power, cooling and available space.
• Use monitoring tools.
  Users need to start implementing energy-monitoring tools to manage and predict capacity requirements and to control operational costs.
• Accelerate consolidation and virtualisation projects.
  Many projects were started two years ago as the IT recession started. These are multiyear activities, with benefits occurring over the life of the projects. However, the benefits often increase toward the end of the project, so users should accelerate the speed of adoption and change. This should provide extra energy capacity and floor space to offset the needs of new hardware.
• Assess the benefits of delaying new server purchases.
  Gartner suggests it may be beneficial to delay the acquisition and use capacity that is freed up from consolidation and virtualisation projects.