Fine Corinthian Leather... or Data Center Analysis?

http://blog.modius.com/modiusblog/bid/36499/Fine-Corinthian-Leather...



Think back to the last time your purchased a new car. I would bet that within the first 30 minutes of actually looking at the brochures or sitting in the car, the attention turned to the Leather seats, body color, Stereo system and electronics package.

By inference, the consumer (you) had already assumed and agreed that the car foundation itself was as stated in the data sheet and their design engineers had done their job building a functional car. It had a chassis, it had an engine of a certain size, and it was as speedy and efficient as the TV commercial showed. No need to be concerned that the physical layer had any issues. Somehow the car would perform.

Instead, your attention was to the 'soft' details. There you are, buying a $30,000 car, and most of the sales configuration and cost discussion was about the $3000-$4000 worth of options. Most people don't even know how big the gas tank is when they drive home in the car!

The Data Center is much the same. The underpinnings for most data centers have for the most part been specified by the building design engineers of record, built per spec, and typically installed far away from view. The mechanical and electrical structures were designed and installed based upon equipment resource requirements and assumptions at the time, and at the end of the day, the IT organization ultimately 'inherited' what was installed. How many watts per square foot were really possible? What is the redundant Cooling capacity? None of these critical resource available capacities or real-time usage is actually well understood or even visible to the IT organization over time. (And UNTIL LATELY, not even much concern about it). This situation is compounded by the fact that all of the major IT vendors are now selling boxes that consume 2-4 times the amount of power in the same space as the units shipped just two years ago. It can be seen that the data center is a VERY dynamic system, and the most valueable on-going data center analysis and KPIs must be based upon it's real-time aspects.

While IT as a whole has focused for years on their own 'Fine Corinthian Leather", (like virtualization/operating systems, storage and networks), the real challenge at hand today is to better understand the real-time performance of the chassis. The amount of fuel in the gas tank and it's current efficiency, the engine performance, the available redundancy systems, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of Fine Corinthian Leather, but I think it's prudent to understand the bigger picture before claiming victory...

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