Server update is not the best solution

The data center in 2010 will face problems such as energy consumption, floor space and human resource degradation, but Gartner Consulting predicts that server replacement is not a solution to the problem, which is undoubtedly for server manufacturers and channel vendors. It's all bad news.

Although Gartner Consulting warns that the huge problems facing the data center can be partially mitigated by smaller, more powerful, and less energy-consuming servers, Gartner still recommends that users try to get their existing The server usage period is extended by one to two years. Rakesh Kumar, vice president of research at Gartner, said the advice was not as contradictory as it sounded.

Gartner's Data Center International Conference will be held in Las Vegas from December 1-4, Gartner said that data center managers are currently facing energy, floor space and technical issues. In 2010 it became even more severe. Energy costs will be the fastest growing cost factor in the data center portfolio. Kumar said that phasing out a single x86 server would save the data center more than $400 per year in energy costs.

Kumar emphasizes that acquisitions and energy consumption costs only account for 10% to 12% of the total server costs. "In this case, it is wise to extend the useful life of the fixed assets by an additional one to two years, and many users are doing this. This is ultimately the concern of the CFO. We encourage users to fix assets. The period of use is extended for one to two years."

Kumar also said that users will feel that it is more economical to continue to hold fixed assets than to replace them, even if the additional warranty period is excluded. This trend has emerged over the past few years, which is certainly bad news for hardware vendors and channel distributors.

Suppliers like IBM are changing the views of CIOs as much as possible through a combination of technologies, financing incentives and market research projects, but Kumar believes their efforts will not be achieved. Too big a success.

"I don't think the supplier's good days will come back. It will be more difficult for channel providers to make money. Users have seen the benefits of extending the life of fixed assets."

But even if replacing the server is not the answer to the problem, it is still good news for selling more servers. Although server sales have shrunk by 20% to 25%, the expansion of many user data centers has been on the verge of maximization. The space, energy consumption and cooling resources are frequently rushed. With the stabilization of the economic situation and the recovery of server sales, this kind of The situation will only get worse, Kumar said.

Gartner predicts that the market is currently experiencing shrinking sales of x86 servers and is expected to gradually pick up in a relatively short period of time. But suppliers must find users who need new equipment, energy and cooling resources.

Somewhat surprisingly, virtualization is not an important factor in improving the current state of the data center. Kumar said that the current average utilization rate of the system is about 10% to 15%, but if the management costs and redundancy are taken into account, the optimal utilization rate should be maintained at around 60%. This means a four to six-fold increase in system utilization, and Gartner says the reality is lower. In fact, the application of virtualization may increase the situation.

"This may be worse than if there are too many servers." Managing the physical environment is much simpler, and managing multiple applications in a virtual machine environment with a mix of production and R&D systems and multiple operating systems will be a more complex situation.

"Once you reduce the number of servers, the complexity of management is actually increasing. Users reduce the number of physical servers, but greatly increase the operational and management issues." Kumar said the number of IT staff and Not reduced as a result, and actually increased slightly.

"The situation we are currently facing is the increased complexity of management and the proliferation of virtual machines." Kumar believes that we will eventually achieve the highly automated level of the mainframe, but at least five years later.

Gartner Consulting offers the following tips for reducing data center costs:

*Working with workloads by integrating or eliminating underutilized or legacy systems to optimize server ratios More efficient hardware running (Gartner users report that the rationalization of the server can reduce the number of servers that need to be configured by 5% to 20%)

*Consolidate data center sites

*Manage energy Cost and equipment cost

*Personnel management costs are still the biggest cost factor that most data centers need to consider, and sometimes labor costs can account for 40% of the overall cost: this is bad news for server manufacturers. >

*Deferred purchase of new equipment, especially to extend the life of the server.