White. Paper. Building Next Generation Data Centers. Implications for I/O Strategies. August 2014

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1 White Paper Building Next Generation Data Centers Implications for I/O Strategies By Bob Laliberte, Senior Analyst August 2014 This ESG White Paper was commissioned by Emulex and is distributed under license from ESG.

2 White Paper: Building Next Generation Data Centers 2 Contents Changing Dynamics in the Data Center... 3 The Need for Highly Agile and Scalable Data Centers... 3 Challenges... 4 Characteristics Required for Next Generation Data Center Environments... 5 Implications to I/O Strategy... 6 The Bigger Truth... 7 All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at

3 White Paper: Building Next Generation Data Centers 3 Changing Dynamics in the Data Center The Need for Highly Agile and Scalable Data Centers At the start of the 21 st century, information technology is undergoing a period of fundamental transformation in how compute, network, and storage are deployed and consumed. Virtualization and cloud technologies are radically changing the concept of how a modern data center environment should be constructed. The need to have highly flexible or agile data centers that are capable of rapid scale has become the new best practice. In order to make this transformation, organizations are: Increasing their use of the public cloud. According to ESG research, almost three quarters (72%) of respondents to the annual IT spending survey reported that they will be increasing spending on cloud computing in 2014, making it the most reported technology for increased spending. Overall, the respondents indicated that 8% of their organizations overall budget will now be spent on cloud computing, and when considering the responses exclusively from younger companies (ten years old or younger), that number climbs to 11% of the IT budget. 1 As a result, organizations need to understand that a data center environment in the 21 st century will likely be a mix of private and public cloud resources. Changing how applications and workloads are deployed. In order to accelerate application deployment, applications themselves are rapidly changing. Applications are no longer monolithic structures they are far more modular so development can take place more rapidly. What used to be six-month or yearlong marathon development sessions have now been shortened to six-week sprints. In addition, data analytics has become far more important and big data applications are now common in the data center. Becoming more dependent on the network to carry traffic. Whether it is carrying data to a cloud data center, to servers in a big data cluster, or between application modules, one thing is clear: The amount of east-west traffic in a modern data center will be increasing exponentially. This has ramifications not just in the network switches, but also in the I/O traffic itself. Handling traffic between virtual machines, servers, or application workloads and even between data centers will require organizations to focus on I/O efficiency and leverage VXLAN or NVGRE technology. Feeling pressure from the business to respond faster. CIOs are under pressure to deliver or they risk becoming minimalized and only seen as a broker of IT services instead of an innovator delivering value to the business. ESG research finds that more business units and departments are becoming involved in making technology decisions. Indeed, ESG research shows that more than a quarter (26%) of marketing managers say they are more involved in technology decisions, and 58% of IT managers report that non-it stakeholders are involved. Most concerning to IT, though, is the statistic that 29% of the non-it respondents indicated that they had made technology purchases without the assistance or knowledge of IT (see Figure 1). 1 Source: ESG Research Report, 2014 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February 2014.

4 White Paper: Building Next Generation Data Centers 4 Figure 1. Impact of Non-IT Personnel on IT Purchasing Decisions Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, As a result of these changing dynamics, organizations need to create next generation data center environments that are far more responsive to the business. Within the four walls of the data center, the transformation is rapidly occurring in the form of private clouds. Organizations are also transforming as the traditional silos are merged to create transformation teams to help accelerate this transition. These new date center environments will also have to scale to meet the demands of a rapidly changing global market and will increasingly incorporate a hybrid cloud environment. All of these changes will place more pressure on the server I/O and network. Challenges Creating next generation data center environments sounds far easier than it is. Trying to emulate cloud data centers certainly has its challenges. Specifically, those with large enterprise environments need to consider the following: The number of supported applications could number in the thousands. For most older enterprises, these will be a solid mix of modern and legacy applications. This mix may also necessitate a mix of bare metal servers and highly dynamic virtualized server environments. Many of these applications could have mixed workloads and I/O requirements. Plus, IT will have to balance application development and operations. The dramatic increase of east-west traffic. The proliferation of modern applications and highly virtualized server environments means a lot more east-west traffic some of which may be from VM to VM within a physical server, while some amount of that traffic may traverse WAN links. Organizations need to carefully consider I/O traffic to ensure new bottlenecks do not arise. Connectivity to hybrid clouds. If an organization is going to leverage public cloud services to help scale the data center, it must take into consideration the WAN links and ability to make the transition from private to public cloud a seamless experience. This may require organizations to adopt new technologies like VXLAN or NVGRE environments. ESG research 2 shows that organizations that have already gone to the cloud cite performance concerns twice as often as those planning to. The key is to learn from those that have gone before you. 2 Source: ESG Research Report, 2013 Public Cloud Computing Trends, March 2013.

5 White Paper: Building Next Generation Data Centers 5 Security. This often comes up as a top concern when dealing with the public cloud, and ESG research validates that information security is a top IT initiative reported by respondents for Given recent security breaches at retail stores, security is now a CEO problem and not just a CIO or CISO issue. It will be imperative to ensure security in next generation data centers. Tilting the needle to risk mitigation while also driving innovation is a difficult balance. IT budget. Not many enterprises have the luxury of building greenfield data centers, but rather have to rebuild while still operating. According to ESG research, enterprises now spend about 38% of their annual IT budget on new technology projects, while the majority goes to funding maintenance on existing infrastructure (see Figure 2). 4 Depending on the age of your company, that percentage could shift; for example, younger companies (those ten years old or less) report spending 44% of their budget on new technology, while companies 50 years old or more only spend 34% on new technology. The data highlights the idea that this transition will be more difficult for those older and more well-established companies. Figure 2. Percentage of IT Budget Spent on New Technology versus Maintenance Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, Characteristics Required for Next Generation Data Center Environments Given the changing dynamics and challenges facing organizations trying to build out next generation data centers, what are some of the core characteristics that these environments should possess? They would include: The ability to rapidly scale internally or via a hybrid cloud environment. In a private data center, this means the ability to rapidly deploy or scale applications as needed. Powering this growth is the ability to scale VMs and optimize VM density per server. When internal efforts are exhausted, organizations can implement a hybrid cloud environment. While perhaps only a select few have architected a seamless hybrid cloud environment, they do exist. One of the key elements was understanding that any capability in the private cloud had to be replicated in the public one. This allows organizations to easily burst to a public cloud in order to accommodate seasonal or growth. The environment must be able to dynamically allocate resources and services based on changing requirements. This increased scale also needs to be 3 Source: ESG Research Report, 2014 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February Source: Ibid.

6 White Paper: Building Next Generation Data Centers 6 balanced with efficiency. Power and cooling requirements need to be a consideration, and power is not an unlimited resource. Performance matched to the application or workload. Again, an enterprise environment could have thousands of different applications. Taking a one-size-fits-all approach could either mean that highperformance applications are underperforming or the environment is overbuilt. Organizations need to assess application requirements and create the appropriate environment for the workload. HPC environments, big data clusters, and transaction-heavy applications may require 10 or 40 Gb networks and SSD to deliver the requisite performance, while web-tier apps and highly virtualized workloads may require more services like application delivery controllers or web application firewalls. Organizations should ensure that all of these environments can transfer to the public cloud. A highly robust network environment. Highly virtualized and dynamic cloud data center environments require far greater reliance on the network. The ability to move and connect virtual workloads within and between data centers will be very important. In fact, it needs to be done seamlessly. This would entail leveraging new technology like VXLANs and NVGRE. Because security is important, the need for secure connectivity is also important. Implications to I/O Strategy While organizations building out these new environments should consider the implications to the compute, storage, and network as a whole, it is also important to consider the implications to the I/O strategy. Organizations shouldn t simply let the server vendor salesperson choose a solution. Consider the effect that the right I/O strategy can have on a next generation data center environment. This I/O card should be capable of: Providing support for overlay networks. This would include the ability to support technologies like NVGRE and VXLAN to ensure virtual LANs can scale to meet demand and will also play an integral role in enabling secure private to public cloud connectivity. It will also enable organizations to quickly move data centers to new locations in the event of weather or other regional events without re-architecting the network. Offloading CPU-intensive activities. In a highly virtualized environment, organizations strive to improve efficiencies and create higher VM densities per physical server. The ability to offload CPU processing to an I/O card will help increase VM density. In addition, this could also aid in lowering power and cooling because the I/O card may only consume 2-3 watts instead of 50 watts for a server CPU. Meeting the requirements for high-performance environments. For those organizations that require clustered compute environments in HPC or big data, modern Ethernet adapters are capable of delivering RDMA over converged enhanced Ethernet or RoCE, enabling a unified I/O strategy for both highperformance and standard computing. In addition, the need for low latency connectivity is also important for SSD environments. Incorporating SDN at the I/O level. At the very least, this would mean opening up I/O cards to provide a level of programmability. Creating an interface either via a development kit or API that will provide organizations the option to take advantage of the CPUs and position of the I/O card could allow network services to be injected at the I/O level for security or load balancing. Eliminating bottlenecks across the entire environment. The choice of I/O technology can have an impact well beyond the server, but also across a rack or data center, or even between data centers. By providing the appropriate technology, organizations can eliminate bottlenecks from east-west traffic, vlans, and movement between data centers.

7 The Bigger Truth White Paper: Building Next Generation Data Centers 7 As organizations make the transition to highly dynamic and agile computing infrastructures, it will be imperative for the CIO to take a more proactive role. With so much attention being given to cloud-scale and hyper-scale environments, internal enterprise IT needs to demonstrate that it is capable of creating a next generation data center environment capable of scale. Whether that is through a private cloud, public cloud, or a hybrid of both, IT needs to take action to avoid being minimalized by business units procuring their own IT. For most enterprises, it is important to remember that each goal will have unique requirements. There may be thousands of different applications or workloads, many of which may require different levels of performance. So while a standard infrastructure model may be desired, the technology deployed also needs to be flexible enough to accommodate different tiers of service. Special attention should be given to the network because these highly dynamic environments will be very dependent on the network to provide connectivity between distributed VMs, servers, racks, data centers, and cloud environments. To ensure optimal performance and eliminate bottlenecks, organizations building out next generation data centers need to understand and implement a solid network strategy, beginning with the I/O. Selecting the right I/O technology can have a significant impact on a next generation data center s ability to perform, support future SDN requirements, scale VMs, and easily connect hybrid cloud environments.

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