ACADEMIA
Mission Possible: Data Center Provisioning at the Rack Level
- Written by: Cat
- Category: ACADEMIA
- NextIO takes the rack-level consolidation approach to reduce the complexities associated with server I/O in the data center.
- NextIO discusses “trends” in data center provisioning starting at the rack level, such as taking advantage of solid state technologies for storage solutions, utilizing I/O virtualization of traditional data and storage technologies in the server, and more.
For a large number of IT managers, increasing data center efficiency and driving down costs is always top of mind. The challenge is balancing this objective against ever-increasing needs for higher application performance. Today, most data centers have severely over-provisioned server, storage and networking hardware because performance demands have not kept pace with more efficient data center technologies. This often results in higher costs for power, cooling and infrastructure overhead.
NextIO has taken the rack-level consolidation approach to reduce the complexities associated with server I/O in the data center. This approach, which includes protocol consolidation; connection virtualization; and traffic consolidation, allows IT managers to consolidate all rack-level, non-sever resources as well as to leverage high speed PCI-Express and vendor-standard I/O drivers in order to gain the full performance and feature benefits from “best of breed” I/O companies. Better yet, the result includes lower TCO and improved availability without having to rely on proprietary solutions.
For IT managers who are considering the best way to increase data center efficiency, NextIO has identified the following “trends” in data center provisioning starting at the rack level:
For IT managers who are considering the best way to increase data center efficiency, NextIO has identified the following “trends” in data center provisioning starting at the rack level:
- On the storage front, low power Solid State Technologies are advancing rapidly to replace spindle drives closest to the server
- Solid State Storage superior performance and low latency will eliminate the need for performance-oriented RAID Arrays
- Distributed applications will once again be consolidated because of greatly improved storage latency and bandwidth
- As servers continue to shrink, consolidation of storage and server I/O will take place in top of rack appliances
- I/O Virtualization of traditional data and storage technologies will enable “on-demand” reconfiguration of server I/O resources depending on application demands