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Analyst uncovers datacentre chaos |
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Today's datacentres are in a state of chaos according to new research from analyst firm Quocirca.
According to a survey of senior IT professionals revealed that 28 per
cent could not say how many servers they were running; 30 per cent had
no idea how many devices were connected to their networks. Nearly one
in five (19 per cent) of those surveyed could identify which room
equipment was located – but not its whereabouts in the room.
Consequently, when it came to locating a server that goes down, one in
five said it took longer than a day; 22 per cent said it could take
them up to a day; and a third said up to half a day.
There were also alarming signs in respondents' estimation of how well
utilised their equipment is – almost half of those polled did not
measure it. In such cases, respondents "estimated that their server
utilisation was over 75 per cent, whereas industry standard figures
give something like 15 per cent - they’re living in dreamland,” said
Quocirca analyst Dennis Szubert.
There were also some startling results concerning datacentre power and
space. When Quocirca asked for forecasts of when their datacentre would
run out of space and power in the datacentre, eight per cent said they
had no idea. “If you know when you’re going to run out of power, that’s
a problem, if you don’t know when you’re going to run out – that could
be a bigger problem,” said Szubert adding that commissioning a
datacentre could takes years sometimes.
The survey also revealed that 14 per cent had already hit a power
limit. “They cannot get any more power into the datacentre, to cool and
power any more servers,” commented Szubert. Thirty per cent know they
have a limit but they have not yet hit it.
“I’ve heard there are no new datacentres being built within the M25
because of power constraints – and if you want to get more power into
the datacentres you already have, there’s an 18-month wait just to get
the cable run in. This also depends on whether your local substation
can bear the load – if you need a new substation – you’re talking of a
cost running into millions of pounds. So keeping tabs on what power
limit you have is crucial – and six per cent of those we questioned
have no idea what that limit is," said Szubert.
Szubert also noted that few firms had got to grips with datacentre
power usage. More than half of datacentre managers deal directly with
the energy bill, he said. That meant that the people who could most
affect power consumption in the firm didn’t even know what they’re
using.
Szubert advised that virtualisation of simple ‘file and print’ and
‘test and development’ services could save a lot of money, “But there’s
no incentive because they’re not paying the bill. This also means
there’s no pressure from the business users to reduce power because
they’re not being charged back for the power they’re using,” he added.
Asked whether they have a formal policy to reduce power, 43 per cent
said they did, but of those that have 35 per cent do not pass it on to
IT as a formal objective, “This shows a major fault line - there’s a
either a major breakdown in communication between finance and IT or
these firms are paying lip service to the green agenda,” said Szubert.
Quocirca’s advice is to incentivise the datacentre and its management,
by making sure that datacentres pay the power bill and charge it back
to the people who are using the power.
Quocirca’s survey data was taken from 301 interviews with senior IT
influencers and decision makers completed in November and December 2007
in the US, the UK and other European countries. The survey was
performed in conjunction with datacentre management vendor Global
DataCenter Management (GDCM).
http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/news/
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