white paper | physical infrastructure optimization: a foundation for growth

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PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTUREOPTIMIZATION: A FOUNDATION FOR GROWTHAccording to Gartner, the rise in big data is one of the forces that will change IT. The proliferation of data is accelerating, and most IT departments are not prepared to handle the demands of managing and storing so much data. At the same time, corporate data centers are ill-equipped to handle the flood, driving the need to consolidate and optimize the physical infrastructure.

That’s because the staggering data loads and increased complexity are creating problems inside the data center’s

physical infrastructure, including challenges with optimizing space, maintaining cooling efficiency and providing

reliable high-speed data transport.

Global IT Executives Plan Data Center Upgrades According to a new IDG Research Services survey of more than 400 global IT executives based in North America,

EMEA, Asia/Pacific and Latin America, organizations are responding to the increased pressures on their data

center by undertaking different types of data center optimization projects. Globally, survey respondents report

server virtualization and server consolidation as their top IT objectives during the next year, and in many cases

their physical infrastructure is preventing this growth. Nearly three-quarters of the respondents from each

region cite server virtualization as their most important initiative.

Meanwhile, respondents from regions with newer data center infrastructures have a higher tendency

to prioritize improvement of network speed and bandwidth, as well as green computing and cloud

initiatives. For example, nearly 80% of respondents from Latin America cite server consolidation

as their number one project during the next 12 months. And more than 80% of respondents

from Latin America list expanding or retrofitting bandwidth and moving to higher-speed

networks as near-term priorities, as well.

Across regions, survey respondents name reducing downtime, improving

business continuity, meeting compliance demands and increasing flexibility/

agility as important data center objectives for the next 12 months.

It is no surprise that reduced downtime tops the list. “Keeping the data center running smoothly without unplanned

downtime is critical to supporting the business,” says Reynaldo Gonzalez, Senior Manager, Data Center Operations

EMC Corporation, a $20 billion supplier of data storage products based in Hopkinton, Mass.

EMC recently built a new data center in Durham, N.C., to replace its decades-old data center in Westborough,

Mass. After years of squeezing as much as it could out of the Westborough facility, Gonzalez and his team became

convinced that nothing but building a new data center from the ground up would suit the growing company’s needs

over the long haul.

“We struggled with uptime at that facility,” says Gonzalez. “We had challenges around maintaining 100% uptime.” In

addition, the physical infrastructure was problematic.

“All of our cabling was going through the subfloor. That just creates a mess. What you can’t see, you can’t manage.

Air flow was impeded; we had hot spots,” says Gonzalez. EMC’s physical infrastructure design was more than five years

old, the point after which problems become common. Changes and simple upgrades took hundreds of man-hours.

With almost three decades of service—a long time, even by North American standards—EMC’s Westborough data

center had nonstandard racks and different types of power distribution. “There was a lot of nonstandard equipment. We

lost 12% to 15% of our floor space to host our main [power distribution units] inside the data center. It wasn’t a solution

that could grow over time.” The new EMC facility is a state-of-the-art cloud data center that runs the company’s mission-

critical applications and features advanced power management capabilities. Gonzalez expects it will suit EMC’s needs

into the next decade and beyond.

EMC’s state-of-the-art facility continued to evolve after the building was launched. For example, to address the cooling

challenges, EMC approached Panduit Corp., a provider of advanced physical infrastructure solutions for data centers.

Panduit Advisory Services conducted a cooling assessment. From this assessment, cold-aisle containment was

determined to be the most energy-efficient and cost-effective solution for EMC to maintain low cooling cost.

Like Gonzalez, the majority of survey respondents also cite adds and changes as a challenge. The difficulty of making

changes often relates to the age of the infrastructure, which is five years, on average, across respondents. Most

respondents from the North American region report their infrastructure designs are older than five years.

Physical Infrastructure Challenges Get in the Way of Data Center Objectives The challenges Gonzalez faced at EMC with outdated physical infrastructure would likely be familiar to most of the

respondents in the IDG Research survey. Nearly 80% of all respondents report their companies are planning changes

to the physical infrastructure during the next 12 months. That’s because—as cited by 80% of all respondents—

physical infrastructure challenges are inhibiting the progress of important data center objectives.

There are some important regional distinctions to note here. In Asia/Pacific, respondents are concerned

with power, density and cooling. Half of these respondents say they ran out of space, forcing data center

expansion plans. These respondents were most likely to report cooling demands have inhibited their

virtualization plans.

In Latin America, nearly half the respondents cite space constraints as inhibiting achievement of

data center objectives. More than 33% of respondents report the lack of space has forced data

center expansion plans. Just over 33% of respondents name cable congestion

and the need for increased staff to handle moves, adds and changes as hindering their

objectives.

These limitations in physical infrastructure can also impact uptime and inhibit

important initiatives such as virtualization and cloud deployments. Something as

white paper | physical infrastructure optimization: a foundation for growth

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white paper | physical infrastructure optimization: a foundation for growth

simple as running out of space on the floor of the data center can directly hinder critical functions and impede the

organization from achieving business objectives.

In the North American region, 33% of respondents say that increased power density demands are inhibiting the

progress of data center initiatives; 27% of respondents report that lack of space is an issue.

Respondents indicate they are experiencing a host of negative effects as a result of increased complexity and

intensifying demand on their physical infrastructure. The most commonly cited effects across regions are network

bandwidth issues, lost staff time in resolving power issues and increased staff needed to deal with moves, adds and

changes.

Rob Moore of The Hertz Corp., an $8.3 billion rental equipment and vehicle provider, was experiencing some of these issues

with two data centers in Oklahoma City. “Our existing data centers had some outdated power and cooling systems,” says

Moore, staff vice president and chief technology officer for Hertz, based in Livonia, Mich. “Install and deinstall was an issue

with cabling under the floor. We were having cooling challenges keeping the environment balanced.” The company undertook

a data center optimization project to head off future issues and put in place a solid platform for growth.

“We have been investing in technology a lot over the last few years. Growth requires stable infrastructure,” says Moore.

“We are aiming to bring the power of Hertz to our customers 24/7. That is critical in today’s business. We are expanding

worldwide, adding services locations, making new acquisitions and growing organically. We had to have a scalable,

flexible infrastructure that can support anything we can dream up in the future.”

Enlisting the Aid of an Experienced Partner for Physical Infrastructure Optimization When it becomes apparent that a physical infrastructure upgrade is in the cards, many IT executives look for outside

help in diagnosing the physical infrastructure, determining the gaps and identifying what they need to do to support new

technologies.

In the IDG Research survey, one-half or more of respondents in all regions rate highly the importance of performing

a gap analysis between the current and desired future state of the physical infrastructure in order to help meet top

data center objectives. Well over 50% of the respondents from emerging markets, including Asia/Pacific and Latin

America, cite the need to perform a power assessment in order to meet top data center objectives during the next

12 months.

This is a critical step, according to Jack Tison, Vice President of New Technology and Strategy at Panduit Corp., a

provider of advanced physical infrastructure solutions for data centers. “As recently as two to three years ago, many

IT executives would skip over the current-state assessment and analysis of the roadmap to attain the desired future

state, which resulted in inhibiting longer-term growth based on physical infrastructure constraints,” says Tison.

“Back then, we may have tolerated less energy efficiency because there were fewer cost constraints,”

he continues. “Energy efficiency is only one factor when creating a core logical architecture design.

If you don’t know where you are on power consumption, capacity, device utilization, cooling status,

bandwidth and connectivity, you are likely to create a design that won’t produce the results that

you’re expecting.

“Now, performing a gap analysis is crucial because it provides you with data as to the gap

between the current and future states of your physical infrastructure. Data allows you to

make informed decisions to create a strong core logical architecture design and to produce

the results you expect,” says Tison.

Moore of Hertz enlisted the help of Panduit Advisory Services for its data center

design expertise when his team was planning its data center upgrades. “We knew

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white paper | physical infrastructure optimization: a foundation for growth

we wanted to have something that would be viable for many years to come,” says Moore. “We needed a partner

that could bring one end-to-end solution that would work for us for the next 15-plus years.”

The key factor in selecting the team from Panduit, according to Moore: Their ability to design the end-to-end solution

and also help with the installation. “We wanted help with physical infrastructure design and implementation. [Panduit]

was not the incumbent vendor.” What tipped the scales in Panduit’s favor was its well-designed equipment (and

best-in-class warranty), its knowledgeable engineers and the capability to monitor everything centrally, according to

Moore.

Gonzalez of EMC also used Panduit Advisory Services to optimize its cooling systems for maximum energy efficiency

for both its brownfield and greenfield data center projects. “We work very well together. We are really collaborative

with their engineers. It’s been one of the best partnerships I’ve had in 10 years in IT,” he says.

Both Hertz and EMC have experienced a host of benefits from their data center upgrade projects, including improved

resource utilization, increased agility and reduced operating expense. The survey respondents across regions cite these

benefits, as well.

Moore also places sustainability as high on the list of benefits from Hertz’s data center upgrade and optimization

of physical infrastructure. A key strategic goal for maintaining a competitive edge was to integrate sustainability

throughout the business infrastructure while providing design, migration and future-ready capabilities that would keep

the company at the forefront of technological advancements. Hertz needed a design that would migrate the cabling

system from 10GB to 40GB and 100GB as its business needs change.

“Sustainability is very important to us,” says Moore. The updated data centers use state-of-the-art, energy-efficient

heating and cooling capabilities, part of the overall corporate program called the Living Journey. “Our IT program has

always been green, even our existing data center had advanced capabilities.” Now, in its upgraded data centers Hertz

uses the latest cooling technologies that have been optimized to the IT load and monitor all power usage, even down to

the individual piece of equipment for capacity planning.

“We’ve come a long way from the older technology where you had power strips with surge protectors. Now, we

can monitor the consumption of an individual device.” Moore’s team is currently developing metrics for power

consumption, which they will compare with past data. “I expect to see a dramatic reduction in power costs, in the

one-third range. The density of servers that we can get into one facility is so much higher, and the in-row cooling is

so much more efficient, we’re just cooling the equipment itself. We expect it to be super efficient.”

Conclusion An inadequate physical infrastructure interferes with an organization’s ability to complete needed initiatives

and makes it difficult or impossible to achieve the objectives. A silo-based approach to the design,

deployment and management of data center physical infrastructure is too costly and time-consuming,

especially in the current complex and constantly changing IT environment.

Consolidation, virtualization and cloud computing initiatives are required for data centers to

meet business objectives, and these initiatives place ever-increasing demands on the physical

infrastructure—demands that the disorganized and outdated physical infrastructures of many data

centers cannot handle.

Panduit offers world-class data center solutions, including services, software and products that help

organizations optimize their physical infrastructure, enabling the data center to be more responsive,

improving operational efficiency and increasing its strategic relevance to the business.

To read the EMC or Hertz case study in full, go to www.panduit.com/CaseStudy.

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