Data Center Service Management: A New Imperative for Managing Today s Data Centers

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1 W H I T E P A P E R Data Center Service Management: A New Imperative for Managing Today s Data Centers

2 2 Executive Summary The data center has evolved from large buildings merely housing mainframe systems to the single most important resource in essence, the heart of the enterprise for delivering sustainable IT services to users. This massively complex and heterogeneous environment undergoes tremendous change on a continual basis caused by both internal and external forces such that a new business paradigm, Data Center Service Management (DCSM), has been introduced to ensure the data center infrastructure and applications function properly on an on-going basis. DCSM, an extension of the IT Service Management (ITSM) discipline, helps organizations evolve to a higher level of process maturity within the data center. Through the use of DCSM, organizations will be able to successfully progress from the use of ad hoc tools and limited processes into an integrated entity with access to real-time information, a holistic view into the overall data center and actionable information for valuable decision support. DCSM is the new business imperative to effectively and efficiently manage the data centers of today and in the future. To appropriately apply the principles of DCSM, a comprehensive enterprise solution must be able to provide significant levels of control over the infrastructure, manage processes, conduct robust measurements and reporting, proactively plan for changes and deliver real-time monitoring in the data center. Aperture VISTA is the only enterprise-wide solution to be able to deliver all aspects of DCSM with a multidimensional perspective and in a visual format to meet the challenges organizations face.

3 3 The Impending Data Center Crisis The demands of today s enterprise are placing unprecedented pressure on IT organizations and on the data center, in particular. With its massive, centralized computing resources, the data center has effectively become the heart of the enterprise. The external-facing customer experience and corporate brand as well as internal operational and financial systems heavily depend on the data center for services. Disruptions in this service can literally induce significant financial losses or even paralyze an organization completely. Operating today s data center with undisrupted delivery of service has become one of the most valued and challenging roles in the enterprise. Among the most critical challenges currently facing data center management are the expectations set by the organization, government and overall community to cooperate in improving energy efficiency to offset rising energy costs and to support environmental ( Green IT ) initiatives; the extension of the overall lifespan of existing data center; and innovative practices to proactively manage capacity all while focused on delivering predictable, high-quality service with 24x7 availability. Even though new technologies are continuously introduced to meet these demands, the operational costs associated with running the data center have reached astronomical levels causing a considerable dichotomy between the overall goals of the business and the actual management of the data center. Recent statistics reported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicate the total power consumed by servers (including the cooling and auxiliary infrastructure) represented approximately 1.2 percent of total U.S. electricity in 2005 more than double the use over 2000 with IT hardware and data centers being the leading national contributor to carbon emissions. Specifically, the current use of high-density equipment is generating a massive amount of heat in the data center, impacting not only power usage, but cooling and other infrastructure resources as well. Leading industry analysts forewarn that a potential data center power crisis is looming: In a recent Aperture Research Institute survey of 100 data center operations, 40 percent reported running out of space, power and cooling capacity without sufficient notice. (Source: Aperture Research Institute ) By 2011, more than 70 percent of U.S. enterprise data centers will face tangible disruptions related to floor space, energy consumption and/or costs. (Source: Gartner) Increased densities make power and cooling the number one factor to ensuring satisfactory data center operations. (Source: IDC) Over the next five years, power failures and limits on power availability will halt data center operations at more than 90 percent of all companies. (Source: AFCOM) Power management and cooling have emerged as a bottleneck and critical element in data center operations and planning. (Source: Forrester Research) As noted by the EPA, A major barrier to achieving improved energy efficiency is the difficulty in collecting data on the energy consumption by the individual components within the data center and the lack of data collection processes in many data centers overall. In addition, the segregation between the IT and Facilities group that exists in many organizations causes significant inefficiencies through the lack of integrated processes and reporting as well as the potential for catastrophic errors more frequently than not within the management of data center. In fact, the EPA recently stated that, In many data centers, those responsible for purchasing and operating the IT equipment are not the same people that are responsible for the power and cooling infrastructure,

4 4 who in turn typically pay the utility bills. This leads to a split incentive, in which those who are most able to control the energy use of the IT equipment (and therefore the data center) have little incentive to do so. Efforts to increase energy efficiency within the data center, however, are most certainly on the upsurge, with many organizations implementing Green IT initiatives to produce a much smaller carbon footprint than before. Organizations such as The Green Grid a non-profit consortium of information technology companies and professionals are working to provide data and guidance with respect to data center design, planning, deployment and day-to-day operations. The group plans to establish standard performance measurements and best practice processes to lower overall power consumption. Furthermore, the EPA has made recommendations to establish ENERGY STAR labels for servers and potentially storage and networking equipment in order to create protocol to measure server energy efficiency and allow for fair competition. Other factors contributing to the noteworthy pressure on the data center include a variety of internal and external forces that impact general day-to-day operations, issues related to compliance and the introductions of new technologies within the organization. Internal Forces The escalating complexities and heterogeneity of today s data center environment and the depletion of resources have motivated organizations to evaluate intelligent infrastructure solutions to overcome the complexity crisis and to address the critical needs of the heart of the enterprise. As Gartner states, New data centers should be perceived less as a static structure and more as an agile, living organism that evolves. The following solutions exhibit the possibilities for organizations to dynamically manage the business-critical applications within the data center to fulfill the goals of availability, reliability, scalability and affordability. Examples of intelligent infrastructure solutions include: High-Density Equipment Of all issues impacting the data center, the implementation of high-density equipment (e.g.., blade servers) has had the most significant effect. As blades servers continue to fill the racks, hot spots are being created that surpass 30 kilowatts per rack. Not only are many data centers not designed for such levels of power consumption, but many also cannot obtain enough power to distribute to the racks or experience insufficient power capacity from local utilities. It is now essential for data center management to implement best practices, monitoring and reporting to effectively manage all data center infrastructure resources including power, cooling, floor space among many others. Age of Existing Data Centers Another critical challenge that organizations face is the overall age of existing data centers, as well as the time required to design and build new ones to accommodate the needs of the business. Gartner estimates, more than 70 percent of the world s Global 1000 organizations will have to modify their data center facilities significantly during the next five years. The U.S. contains the biggest concentration of large greater than 50,000 square feet data centers, with the majority being built more than seven years ago. Their current design envelope is insufficient to handle servers current and future energy needs. As such, it is crucial for organizations to forecast their capacity requirements three years into the future. For those companies who do not wish to deploy new builds, it is evermore

5 5 essential that they closely monitor their data centers power and cooling infrastructure, with particular attention paid to high-density devices. Virtualization Driven primarily by business demands to reduce capital and operating costs, the introduction of virtualization into the data center has fundamentally allowed companies to run multiple applications (with multiple operating systems) on a single physical server. Rapidly transforming the IT landscape, virtualization inserts an additional layer of complexity into the data center and requires real-time monitoring and robust documentation to effectively manage all systems and applications associated with the shared resources. ITIL Initiatives As the data center evolves into the heart of the enterprise to satisfy corporate goals and meet business needs, establishing a foundation of best practices and procedures to manage the overall environment is an absolute imperative. The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework is the most widely accepted set of integrated recommendations to support data center management in the planning of consistent, documented and repeatable processes to improve service delivery. Disciplines highlighted within ITIL including Change Management, Configuration Management and Capacity Management and many others assist organizations in efforts to best align IT with overall business objectives and to drive operational improvements.

6 6 External Forces In addition to the soaring energy costs and lack of available power capacity, a multitude of other external forces impact the data center environment and overall infrastructure on a continual basis requiring strict discipline to generate effective and actionable information to make necessary changes in an agile manner. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) The pressure to keep the data center available, reliable and performing at the highest levels has never been more extreme, leading to a significant increase in formal SLAs between service providers and customers. Implementing a framework to manage to these SLAs can assist the evaluation of downtime and prevent significant financial losses and negative impacts to the organization s reputation from occurring. Compliance IT and business services face increasing regulation due to the organization s continuing burden to meet compliance mandates stemming from a combination of legislation, executive directives and business governance. As the heart of the enterprise, the data center is responsible for the regulated operational tasks and the real-time monitoring and reporting to ensure compliance. With the pressures upon the data center, organizations must reevaluate their philosophical, strategic and technical principles to incorporate more flexibility, real-time monitoring and best practice processes in order to sustain operations well into the future. Data Center Service Management: The New Business Imperative Today, many organizations that are attempting to focus on improving the overall IT process maturity, tend to neglect implementing these processes within the physical domain of the data center specifically. Through the IT Service Management (ITSM) discipline (and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework in particular), many organizations have elevated their people, technology and process maturity to more proactive levels. However, by not extending these disciplines to the heart of the enterprise the data center they risk the potential of exorbitant operating costs, significant downtime and the inability to meet both current and future demands. DEFINITION OF IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT (ITSM) IT Service Management (ITSM) is a discipline for managing IT systems, philosophically centered on the customer's perspective of IT's contribution to the business. ITSM is process-focused with common ties to the process improvement (e.g., TQM, Six Sigma, Business Process Management, Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)) frameworks and methodologies. The ITSM discipline is focused upon providing a framework to structure IT-related activities and the interactions of IT technical personnel with business customers and users. (Source: Wikipedia -

7 7 Although advancements in IT processes have been made overall, many organizations continue to utilize various ad hoc systems including AutoCAD drawings, Visio diagrams, multiple Excel spreadsheets and s to document and communicate changes within the data center. The selected tools chosen by either IT or Facilities provide varying degrees of completeness and disjointed reporting, making it virtually impossible to deliver reliable, consistent services to customers, both internally and externally. Moreover, the probability of errors causing points of failure is much greater within an organization that has effectively siloed the IT and Facilities groups, where very little if any, process integration exists. Bridging this gap between IT and Facilities into a consolidated group to collectively manage all aspects of the data center and leverage the same processes, tools and reporting is critical to ensure effective service delivery and efficient process flow throughout the organization. Manage the Data Center as a Single Entity Multiple Excel Spreadsheets AutoCAD Drawings Individuals Varying Degrees of Completeness Visio Planning and Management Operational Control Monitoring and Automation and Meetings Databases Vendor Dependent Monitoring Integrated Information Data Center Service Management (DCSM) Figure 1: The Evolution into Data Center Service Management (DCSM). Organizations must also employ an integrated set of systems and processes to holistically manage the data center as a single entity, including the physical infrastructure. Only by managing the data center from a holistic point of view, which takes every aspect and responsibility within the data center into account, can organizations reach a higher level of data center process maturity and deliver IT services in complete alignment with the business objectives. This particular goal is the primary underpinning of what is now defined as Data Center Service Management.

8 8 DATA CENTER SERVICE MANAGEMENT: AN EXTENSION OF IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT While Data Center Service Management (DCSM) will change the way data centers will be managed as a holistic entity, ultimately, DCSM plays a subservient role to the greater discipline of IT Service Management (ITSM). Essentially, DCSM extends the principles inherent within ITSM into the data center and the facilities domain to bridge the gap between the IT and Facilities groups and bring the management of space, power and cooling directly into the ITSM framework. Traditionally, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has been the widely accepted framework within the ITSM discipline for key IT areas including server capacity, storage and network bandwidth but has not encompassed resources such as space, power and cooling. DCSM applies similar principles including Configuration Management, Change Management and Capacity Management in the physical domain of the data center. DCSM extends the discipline and principles of ITSM directly into the data center to provide a robust framework for enhanced processes and implementation to flourish. By applying DCSM, data center executives enable optimal assessments as well as the planning and implementation of best practices to the physical domain of the data center. For example, as noted by Gartner, The ability to address the power cost issue will directly relate to an organization s ability to adopt DCSM principles in the data center and extend IT chargeback processes into the world of space, power and cooling. Similar to ITSM, DCSM addresses the need to align the delivery of IT services directly with the needs of the business, transforming the traditional business paradigm to one focused on integration and processes, as depicted in the following attributes: Traditional Paradigm Technology focused Fire-fighting Reactive User-based Centralized Isolated silos Ad hoc tools Informal processes Internal perspective Operational specific DCSM Paradigm Process focused Preventative Proactive Customer-based Distributed Integrated (bridging the gaps between IT and Facilities) Replicable, accountable Formal best practices External business perspective Service orientation

9 9 Unique Benefits of DCSM By incorporating DCSM within the data center, organizations can realize significant benefits across the data center. Most importantly, integrating all data with regards to the equipment, floor space and infrastructure resources into a central repository allows the entire organization IT, Facilities, executive management and many other groups to manage the data center through a single pane of glass ; thereby eliminating the need for various spreadsheets, AutoCAD drawings and Visio diagrams scattered across the company. This integrated information generates robust, actionable information for decision support that can then be leveraged to identify key metrics through a dashboard view, compare key performance metrics across multiple data centers and forecast new data center requirements to ensure the needs of the future are met. In addition, gaining an IT view into the data center infrastructure helps bridge the gap between the IT and Facilities groups such that each function is taken into consideration and multi-dimensional perspectives are addressed. Specifically, IT Operations can efficiently provision equipment as necessary and ensure adequate resources for future provisioning is available; the Operations Center has a better ability to identify potential facilities risks (e.g., power, cooling), correlate it to the appropriate IT assets and respond as necessary; while the Facilities group can respond more effectively and efficiently to any equipment or environmental problems within the data center. The ability for these particular groups to sense and proactively respond to a data center event in real-time is vital to the effectiveness of the data center. As such, real-time monitoring and automation are critical components of DCSM to allow organizations to better understand the relationship between infrastructure resources including space, power and cooling and to react quickly to necessary changes in the environment.

10 10 Data Center Service Management (DCSM) Planning and Management VISTA Data Center Configuration Mgmt VISTA Capacity Management Operational Control VISTA Infrastructure Process Management Monitoring and Automation VISTA Infrastructure Monitoring Integrated Information VISTA Data Capture Handheld VISTA Integration Management Figure 1: How Aperture VISTA Products Fit within Data Center Service Management (DCSM). Aperture VISTA is the enterprise software solution that supports all aspects of DCSM with key modules to provide the best practice processes for the areas of: Planning and Management provides the information and analysis for optimizing process efficiency and cost over time. o VISTA Data Center Configuration Management is the single source for information (reporting and analytics) on the data center infrastructure, providing the visual management of the equipment, space, power, cooling and port connectivity. It automates configuration management processes as they relate to the data center and integrates the required data center configuration repository into the organization s overall configuration management database (CMDB). o VISTA Capacity Management aligns business forecasts with the current state and consumption trends for the infrastructure to proactively manage data center capacity and accurately predict future data center requirements such that service delivery is optimized, costs are controlled and the objectives of the business are supported. Operational Control of the people and processes within the data center ensures plans are executed efficiently (to minimize costs) and accurately (to meet SLAs).

11 11 o VISTA Infrastructure Process Management revolutionizes the way companies manage the data center environment by providing best practice processes for equipment installs, moves and decommissions. It is tightly integrated with the VISTA configuration repository to reduce risks associated with changes and is configurable to meet the specific process requirements of organizations. Monitoring and Automation provides information on the real-time state of the data center, including power consumption and environmental data for improved change and capacity management as well as alerts and alarms for data center personnel to respond to potential issues before they impact service delivery. It provides feedback to the planning and operational processes to enable management analysis and verification that services meet business demands as economically as possible. o VISTA Infrastructure Monitoring is a robust solution to monitor the status and impact of the critical data center infrastructure through a single pane of glass. It provides a vendor-independent monitoring platform, which interfaces with the broader enterprise monitoring systems to extend monitoring of the data center facility with an IT perspective. Integrated Information is the single system of record that provides the foundation for the other DCSM components and the basis for effective decision-making. It delivers integrated information from a multi-dimensional perspective such that organizations can create agility, deliver high-quality service and easily manage operational costs in an efficient and effective manner. o o VISTA Data Capture Handheld enables the rapid deployment of the VISTA solution and ensures the accuracy of the information base used as the foundation of the DCSM processes. VISTA Integration Management enables the VISTA system to (bi-directionally) integrate within the broader ITSM framework, supporting both data- (Asset Management, Configuration Management Database (CMDB)) and process- (Change Management) based integrations. Aperture VISTA is the only proven enterprise solution with the ability to apply the principles of DCSM within the data center. With its use, organizations can achieve significantly lower operational costs, align resource usage to available capacity, forecast data center requirements from business projections and reduce the potential errors from the human element.

12 12 Conclusion As organizations work to meet today s service-level commitments, reduce costs and manage the complexities within the data center, they have become increasingly challenged with resources pushing capacity to the limit. In the coming years, it will be essential for organizations to leverage DCSM as a primary discipline within the data center. By extending the ITSM framework directly into the physical domain of the data center, organizations can implement best practice processes and systems including Configuration Management, Change Management, Financial Management, Asset Management and Capacity Management among others to properly plan and allocate resources, meet compliance mandates and bridge the gap between IT and Facilities, while keeping costs low. In essence, DCSM is the new business imperative to improve efficiency, effectively manage capacity and right-size the data center to meet the demands of the business. Aperture VISTA is the only enterprise solution with the ability to meet the requirements of DCSM for organizations to successfully navigate the complexities and challenges inherent in today s data centers.

13 About Aperture Aperture is the leading global provider of software for managing the physical infrastructure of data centers. Aperture s solutions reduce operational risk and improve efficiency through the planning and management of data center resources. Aperture delivers the best practice processes that enable organizations to take control of an increasingly complex physical infrastructure including equipment, space, power, cooling, network and storage. With over 20 years of experience, Aperture provides organizations with the information required to optimize their data center operations, delivering better services at the lowest cost. Aperture s customers include the world s largest companies, half of which are Fortune 1000 and Global 500 organizations All rights reserved. Aperture and Aperture VISTA are registered trademarks and the Aperture logo mark is a trademark of Aperture Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners