Virtual is the Future of Data Centers

16 Oct 2014 by Datacenters.com Cloud

"The face of data centers is changing - from initiatives to pursue more economically-friendly practices to completely reimagining how workloads are delivered, data centers are adjusting to user demands. Some organizations are even virtualizing some of their operations in response not only to the costs of a physical data center, but also to have more reliable access to certain assets. While virtualization is still a relatively new phenomenon, many businesses are already looking to migrate their processes to virtualized servers. As these data centers in the cloud become more popular, it will be important to consider what format to pursue and which environment will be most beneficial for company needs.

Taking a step toward cloud-driven models
The cloud is one of the most disruptive technologies of the modern era, and it's making its mark on data centers with the interest in virtualization continually increasing. Data Center Knowledge contributor Rick Braddy noted that cloud deployments provide agile solutions in comparison to expensive in-house procurement and deployment cycles that have existed for years in data centers. Virtualization has influence how IT infrastructure is organized, no longer requiring application workloads and data to have direct bonding to underlying hardware. This effectively mitigates the need for most traditional data centers. Not only does virtualization help meet the current demands of organizations, but it can also bring other benefits to operations.

""The ultimate objective for IT in the 21st century is no longer just keeping the lights on,"" Braddy wrote. ""Instead, it's to add critical and much-needed strategic value to the business.""

Interoute launches virtual facilities
Many organizations are looking to virtualize their data center operations, going as far as to put the majority of their processes in the cloud for the potential value afforded by this move. Interoute recently opened two virtual data center locations in London, functioning as a fully automated, scalable Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution, according to Datacenter Dynamics. Of Interoute's 10 virtual data centers positioned around the globe, five of them have been launched this year. The London sites can send and receive information from each other within 1.3 milliseconds, enabling local users to have low latencies between U.K. and European locations for disaster recovery and replication purposes. All of this within the cloud can reduce overhead expenses and improve overall service reliability.

""Our recent U.K. data center and network expansion brings our cloud within a few milliseconds of our customers, partners and major business hubs in the U.K.,"" Interoute CTO Matthew Finnie told Datacenter Dynamics. ""Low latency means higher throughput, fewer servers for the same application and less rewrites to get it there.""

EMC virtualizes as part of federation strategy
Many organizations are attempting to change their procedures with the help of the cloud, but few are doing so in the manner akin to EMC's efforts. EMC recently opened its first Federation Software-Defined Data Center Solution, in collaboration with technologies from VMware, RSA Security LLC and Pivotal Labs. According to SiliconANGLE, this project aims to provide an enterprise-ready data center solution across compute, storage and network requirements by extending virtualization to these areas. This will make these elements easier to manage while delivering high utilization. With a collaborative support model, any of the four federation members can easily remedy problems through the virtualized model, instead of having to implement workarounds that would be necessary in more traditional data centers.

Without virtualization, EMC would not be able to deliver such a comprehensive system to users. It would also be more difficult to provide any type of easy support that is afforded through the cloud's accessibility. These types of benefits are the reason that so many organizations are pursuing virtualization for their own processes and are gradually turning away from older service delivery models.

""It will help enterprise IT accelerate the strategic imperative of migration to a hybrid cloud while utilizing their existing investments,"" David Floyer, co-founder and CTO of Wikibon, said, according to SiliconANGLE. ""This will allow for improved costs, availability and flexibility to ensure enterprise IT can compete directly with cloud providers where it makes business and technical sense to deploy in-house, and at the same time enable seamless access to next-generation cloud applications, infrastructure and data resources."""

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