Data centres must evolve to meet the current and future needs of organisations. Organisations need to do more with less, which has consequences for the data centre. Moreover, it is extremely important that the individual parts in the infrastructure are not only effectively geared to each other, but that this also leads to a uniform infrastructure that is above all, simplified and unified. This approach will reduce the costs of data centre services, allowing better support of the business.
Many organisations move to different forms of virtualisation, including various alternative management options, in order to arrive at a more efficient data centre. Data centre transformation goes further than that however. For example, one of the areas of concern is the energy consumption and related costs of a data centre resources. Energy costs will only increase in years to come, while energy savings are also important from a corporate responsibility perspective. In addition, reducing rack space and data centre footprint will also translate to lower costs.
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In order to realise a dynamic, flexible and efficient infrastructure, it is essential that all components - storage, networking and servers - are mutually geared. The result is a unified infrastructure within a data centre that is flexible and efficient. It is then also possible to offer availability and business continuity in keeping with the ever increasing demands and requirements of the business.
The advantages of a unified infrastructure are realised by means of convergence of servers, storage and networking. Convergence entails the combination of best-of-breed technologies which can subsequently be optimally geared to each other. A characteristic of a unified approach is the use of a central management platform to control the entire environment. The traditional borders between management of the server, storage and network are therefore removed, giving an important benefit: the management costs are reduced drastically.
Databasement supports clients in their evolution from the traditional technological silos to the unified data centre. During this data centre transformation, the right expertise will be deployed for all important areas of attention: facilities, infrastructure, operating system & virtualisation, applications, management and operations.
Traditional blade solutions have already brought about important benefits in the field of consolidation and efficiency. Additionally, Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS) makes it possible to form a modern and flexible data centre. The UCS concept connects seamlessly with the ‘virtualisation optimised storage approach' delivered by Databasement. Cisco UCS unifies compute platforms, while working from service profiles that are automatically provisioned from the network layer, creating an optimised storage, server and network infrastructure.
As far as Cisco is concerned, the ‘unified' in UCS means: one management tool for all servers, the virtualisation layer and all connectivity. Unified also means: Only one network instead of the jumble of networks found in traditional data centres. This results in proven cost reduction by decreasing the level of complexity and streamlines resources.
Hence the data centre becomes fully virtualised and makes use of standard components. There is only one management tool, which controls all servers, storage and network connections. In other words: The data centre has evolved, been transformed, from an extremely complex collection of components struggling to work together, into a so-called Unified Infrastructure, that is both flexible and efficient.