Name
Title
Date
Data center operational efficiency best practices
Enabling increased new project spending by improving data center efficiency
RLP03010-USEN-00
© 2012 IBM Corporation
IT professionals are under increasing pressure to deliver
transformative business value
Increased connection
Increased demand
Increased risk
700M
2.7ZB
40%
smartphones and tablets
will ship in 2012, a jump
of 34%
of digital content in 2012,
a 50% increase from 2011
Increased opportunity
Increased expectations
60%
68%
of CIOs view cloud computing
as critical to their plans
2
of Fortune 500 and
popular websites
contain a vulnerability
of senior management rank
technology as critical to
business success
© 2012 IBM Corporation
The study addressed server, storage, network, facility and data
center operations to learn what is being implemented today
It represents 308 clients in 7 countries and 25 industries
Geography
Asia Pacific
30%
Sector
Europe
29%
Other
18%
Comms
10%
Latin
America
10%
North America
31%
Public
21%
Organization Size
Distribution
12%
>10,000
employees
13%
0 – 999
employees
28%
Industrial
26%
Financial
Services
13%
1,000 – 9,999 employees
59%
58% plan significant data center investments in next 2 years
68% are the first to adopt or rapid technology adopters
3
© 2012 IBM Corporation
One in five, or 21%, of clients have highly efficient data centers—
and are allocating 50% more of their IT budget to new projects
How much of your IT budget
is spent on:
Maintain existing
infrastructure
New projects
35%
Basic
data
centers
65%
data
centers
• Improving public safety or
providing more citizen services
• Transforming core banking and
payment systems
• Implementing smart grids or
improving generation performance
New projects
Strategic
Improving data center operational
efficiency allows spending to go to:
53%
• Allocating funds to other business
priorities
47%
4
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Characteristics of highly efficient data centers
Optimize the IT and
facilities assets to maximize
capacity and availability
Design for flexibility to
support changing business
needs
Use automation tools to
improve service levels and
availability
Have a plan that aligns with
the business goals and
keep it current
5
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Optimization
Leaders have moved beyond consolidation to high levels of
virtualization for server, storage and network environments
Asset optimization: virtualization is table stakes
93%
92%
48%
27%
Percent of
servers virtualized
21%
Use storage virtualization
14%
Use data deduplication
technologies
Strategic
Basic
Leaders have 2.5x more servers managed per administrator (27 versus 10). They have
higher virtual machine densities of 8.2 versus 4.5 VM’s per server.
6
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Flexibility
Leaders design for flexibility, with optimal levels of availability and
redundancy in their IT and facilities infrastructure
Design for flexibility…and minimize disruption to operations
90%
46%
47%
45%
31%
21%
9%
8%
Primary data center
replicated with active-active
Replication used for
storage backup
Network architected to
flexibility introduce new services
Upgrade mechanical /
electrical equipment without
disruption
Strategic
Basic
Business resilience for IT is increasingly essential to address new regulations, security
threats and service outages; leaders are using more sophisticated methods.
7
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Automation
Leaders employ higher levels of automation to offload manual tasks,
reduce error rates and meet service level agreements
Automation provides flexibility to improve availability
87%
58%
31%
30%
1%
Move virtual machines
to meet SLA’s
3%
Implemented a storage
service catalog
3%
Network services are
automatically provisioned
0%
Monitor thermal
conditions
Strategic
Basic
Over 30% of leaders have implemented self-service portals to provision virtual machines,
with 80% of leaders planning them by 2013 to support cloud computing.
8
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Planning
Leaders adopt and refresh technology faster
Have a plan – don't wait to adopt new technology
86%
75%
62%
43%
31%
27%
21%
9%
First and fast
technology adoption
Refresh technology
within 12-23 months
Plan to implement
converged
infrastructure
Planned growth rate in
server virtualization in the
next year (mean response)
Strategic
Basic
Leaders value faster migration of workloads to new technology and integration into
existing service management processes.
9
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Planning
Leaders use fact-based planning to be more flexible and responsive
to rapidly changing needs
Forecast to be flexible to the business needs
77%
68%
53%
33%
25%
14%
2%
0%
Build capacity in
smaller increments
Forecast space
(10 to 20 years)
Forecast power
demand
Implement low and
high density zones
Strategic
Basic
Good design is an insurance policy that provides flexibility to support new technology.
Vendor and technology tradeoffs can reduce total data center costs 15 – 30%.
10
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Planning
Leaders realize their staffs can not do everything
Leverage managed services and outsourcing resources
80%
64%
15%
12%
13%
3%
Use own data center
Use outsourcing
provider
Use managed
services provider
8%
5%
Use Colocation provider
Strategic
Basic
Leaders tend to use more off-premises resources to complement their IT resources
and free up critical staff to meet their business needs.
11
© 2012 IBM Corporation
As companies move up the efficiency scale, they become more cost
effective and better able to respond rapidly to change
Basic
Operations
11+ years
2.5+
Facilities
Data center age
Power usage effectiveness
< 3 years
< 1.5
None
High
Mechanical/electrical redundancy
Mechanical/electrical upgrade disruptiveness
Full
Not at all
Servers
<10%
0-4
Percent virtualized
Virtual machines per physical server
Storage
10-20%
Backup as
archive
Network
Days
Applications Managed by
and tools individuals
Sourcing &
Governance
Slow
Mainly inhouse
Staffing
0-10
< 30%
Not efficient
12
Strategic
Storage virtualization
Archiving
Disaster recovery time
Application portfolio decisions
Ease of decision making
Use of off-premise resources
Physical servers per FTE
Staff time on new projects
60%+
8+
80-90%
eDiscovery data
mapping
Seconds
Centralized
approach
Quick
Managed and
outsource
Over 100
60%+
Highly efficient
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Operating at the strategic level: Albiant-IT, BPCE supports 36M
financial customers, served by 117K employees and 8K branches
Data center
environment
at a glance:
Optimize
assets
4 data centers
2 sites (Paris and
south of France)
80K sq ft combined
Unix servers
2
1.7
of servers are virtualized; high levels of
storage virtualization and deduplication
 PUE* actual and planned target
 Focus on energy efficiency
 Operate in active-active mode 2(N+1)
Design for
flexibility
capacity, extendable
to 97K sq ft
18K servers
80% x86 servers
7 mainframes, plus
60%
Activeactive
Plan for the
future
10
years
architecture
 Each data center replications into the
other; workloads moved as necessary
 Backup onsite with geo-replication
 Recovery from outages in real time
 Ten-year capacity plan
 Capacity is added in small increments
 Evaluating introduction of new technology:
converged infrastructure
*Power usage effectiveness
We are already using automated hierarchical storage, storage
virtualization and deduplication as well as dynamic resource allocation.
Pierre Debagnard, General Manager
13
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Moving from basic to consolidated: Associazione Bancaria Italiana
focuses on mechanical/electrical and power and cooling
Data center
environment
at a glance:
1 data center
110 servers
50 switches and
routers
Optimize
assets
35%
 Accommodate requirements of cultural
Design for
flexibility
860 sq ft in one
In-rack
water
cooling
location (reduced
from 6)
600 internal
connections +
thousands of external
connections
reduction in average power consumption
of IT infrastructure (25 kW)
heritage building (no raised floor)
 APC in-rack water cooling blocks
connected to chillers above rack cabinets
 Allow for expansion within existing
footprint
 Continue server virtualization
Plan for
the future
5 years
 Consolidate servers from rack-mounted
units to blades
 Incorporate advanced management tools
By transforming our data center, we have reduced the average power
consumption of the IT infrastructure by about 35 percent or 24Kw.
Antonio Buratti, CIO
14
© 2012 IBM Corporation
How available becomes strategic: the University of Bristol reaps the
benefits of efficient power usage and high automation levels
Data center
environment
at a glance:
Optimize
assets
1 new data center, 2
20 kW
Clustered
floor space in new
center
Design
for
flexibility
Lightsout
600 server nodes
1.3 petabytes of
storage
APC hot-aisle
configuration
and distributed system configuration, with
high levels of virtualization and redundancy
 Alleviates the need for staff to enter the
storage systems
190 sq meters of
per rack, with built-in potential for higher
densities
data center for routine tasks
 Data center managed by staff of 4 system
administrators
 Automated scripts monitor machine room
environment
 Expand 38 racks to 48
Plan for
the future
10 years
 Pursue green initiatives, including
intelligent software for more efficient use
of processing power
We have developed lights-out administration tools that let us manage
the data center and the data storage systems with a staff of four FTEs.
Dr. Ian Stewart, Director of Advanced Computing
15
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Invest in simple actions to improve your efficiency and determine
where to leverage managed services alternatives
Server
 Drive high levels of
server optimization
and standardization
 Use automation tools
to prepare for cloud
Storage
 Drive high levels of
storage optimization
 Use automation to
provision storage
faster
Network
 Develop and
execute a network
strategy
 Implement network
automation tools
Data Center Facility
 Right size capacity
and availability
 Design for flexibility
 Optimize total costs
over the long term
 Design for flexibility
 Take advantage of
technology
Business Resilience
 Review your business continuity and
resiliency plan
 Understand the impact of not having optimal
levels of availability
Evaluate managed services and outsourcing
16
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Enable new projects by improving data center operational efficiency
4 out of 5
Companies are not operating their data centers
as efficiently as possible
3 out of 4
IT managers planning transformational projects
will turn to the outside for help
17
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Leverage the unparalleled strength of IBM to help
A comprehensive
end-to-end enterprise
portfolio—software,
systems, services and
leading-edge research
working in concert
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Unmatched
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in services research
and development
Robust Smarter
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capabilities with deep
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Industry-leading
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Consistent senior
management focused
on a clear vision and
strategy
The only way to drive the results from a small shop like the NFL is
being able to partner with IBM to get the world-class results faster and
with better outcomes.
Nancy Galietti. VP Information Technology, National Football League
18
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Thank you
Register for the data center study paper
ibm.com/data-center/study
19
© 2012 IBM Corporation
Four distinctive stages differentiate data centers from one another
as IT organizations move toward business alignment.
32%
% of survey respondents
30%
21%
17%
1 standard
deviation
Basic
Consolidated
1 standard
deviation
Available
Strategic
Efficiency level
20
© 2012 IBM Corporation
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Produced in the United States of America
April 2012
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© 2012 IBM Corporation