Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/611691
14 | THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL www.datacenterjournal.com i t's no mystery. ere's plenty of pres- sure coming down from the C-Level to rein in costs in the data center. IT managers are constantly being asked to do more with less, while capacity constraints push them in the opposite direction. How can we do more with less when we don't fully understand what resources we have today, where they're located, what applications are running and when, or how they're provisioned? But if you can use what you have more efficiently and eliminate waste, you can free up some dollars to expand capacity, if that's what's actually needed, or move on to more- pressing IT projects. For instance, the typical data center is probably wasting up to 30 percent of its resources on "comatose" servers. at is, powered-on servers that are sitting idle and not serving any useful purpose. And the waste is oen compounded by inef- ficient provisioning, where workloads are distributed over older, less energy-efficient servers. Being on the inside, IT staffers are in the best position to identify and root out waste—they just need some kind of incentive. it starts With a Cultural shift—anD it starts at the toP Most people resist change. So, traditionally, the default mode in the data center was to leave everything as is. If it ain't broke, don't fix it; and why risk botch- ing your service-level agreements? But recent advances in technology that enable IT optimization without compromising performance, as well as economic pressure (usually from the CFO or some other ac- countable senior executive), are changing that mindset. Increasingly, non-IT executives are becoming interested in what's happening in the data center. ey want transparency, and they want to start seeing some move- ment on cost reductions. So they're asking more questions and want more answers. In turn, IT managers are looking for new ways to safely cut costs without reducing data center performance. so Where's the Waste? Although it's a good start, driving reductions in the data center requires more than just a cultural shi. What's truly needed is the ability to see how the facility, network, compute and storage resources work together, as well as how the interac- tion between each of these departments affects the cost of delivering applications. Some organizations engage consul- tants to get answers, and some do it in house. Regardless, ferreting out the waste (and getting 30 percent "instant" savings by cutting off zombie servers) requires deep, holistic visibility into the infrastruc- ture, along with actionable intelligence. Tens of thousands of data points from across every silo in the data center must be captured and analyzed in real time to determine hardware and soware baseline efficiency levels. Companies that have deployed a specialized analytical soware solution are using it to baseline the costs of waste and detect inefficient workload-distribution schemes. An important benefit of using such a platform is that it enables every department in an organization—includ- ing non-IT management—to see where its data center can be optimized, and it provides the ability to measure and track improvements. it Can't Do it alone For those work- ing on the IT side, the pressure coming from above to cut costs can present a great oppor- tunity: if IT managers can lead the way in decreasing costs in the data center supply chain, they are sure to garner significant recognition from the business—and perhaps more than just kudos. But IT managers can't do it alone. A program to incent the IT organiza- tion must be created in tandem with senior idle and Zombie virtual machines