Thursday, April 26, 2012 Sydney New South Wales TECHNICAL ARTICLE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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1 RITTAL Pty Ltd Parraweena Road Miranda NSW 2228 ABN Thursday, April 26, 2012 Sydney New South Wales TECHNICAL ARTICLE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE RITTAL Pty Ltd HEAD OFFICE Parraweena Road MIRANDA NSW CONTACTS Troy Gersback Marketing Coordinator - Australia & New Zealand P: M: F: tgersback@rittal.com.au CLOUD COMPUTING: THE MEGATREND OF THE FUTURE A megatrend is sweeping through the IT world: Cloud computing is revolutionising virtually all communication, work and business processes. New services are helping to create a billion-dollar market, and securing numerous benefits for companies. Suitable systems and solutions are needed if companies are to benefit from greater flexibility, lower costs and enhanced efficiency. Weather forecasters for the IT world are predicting cloudy skies because market researchers unanimously agree that cloud computing will become the decisive trend over the next few years. For example, Gartner described cloud computing as the single most important strategic technology of In a recent survey by high-tech organisation BITKOM, 62 percent of suppliers surveyed in the ITC sector named cloud computing as the hot topic of the year. While cloud computing has long been commonplace in the B2C sector, as indicated by numerous Webmail offerings, photo-sharing tools and social networks, the B2B sector is only just starting to catch up. But why? IT-assisted processes are an indispensable part of every company. Both the number of devices and applications in use, as well as the complexity of the infrastructure, are increasing. Inadequate management may cause overloading of some systems, while others are left standing idle. For example, studies have revealed that a server in a conventional data centre is currently only operating at full capacity for 10 percent of the time, while continuing to consume 100 percent electricity and cooling. A system must have good capacity utilisation in order to be efficient. The flexibility of the IT infrastructure, which must adapt constantly to business processes, represents a further challenge for data centre operators. Virtualisation is one possible approach. EVERYTHING VIRTUAL Virtualisation means using virtualisation software to sever the link between an application and the server hardware and related operating system. The application is "tricked" into believing that it has sole and exclusive use of the exact environment it needs. This allows highly divergent applications with varying requirements to run on a virtualised machine. A second, related basic technology is consolidation and/or migration, allowing you to optimise capacity utilisation of the existing infrastructure. Tasks are shifted from one server to the next depending on the requirements and available capacity, thereby balancing out many load peaks. New South Wales Parraweena Road Miranda 2228 Canberra 7/23 Brindabella Circuit Brindabella Business Park Canberra Airport 2609 Victoria Cnr Sharps Road & Assembly Drive Tullamarine 3043 Queensland 2/20 Graystone Street Tingalpa 4173 South Australia 106 Hayward Avenue Torrensville 5031 Western Australia 10 Kenhelm Street Balcatta 6021

2 The next logical step is to (partially) outsource applications into the clouds, allowing applications and entire desktop workstations to be virtualised. In such a scenario, the PC on your desk has only a basic operating system, while all personal settings, programs, services and information are retrieved from the data centre. However, these are not stored on a specific server, but are instead provided by a pool of virtual servers, irrespective of the hardware. Virtualisation as a technology leads directly to cloud computing as a service. In this new cloud world, IT services such as computing capacity, backup memory, development environments, application software or entire work environments can be rapidly adapted to meet current requirements in a network-based system, and charged on the basis of actual use. PRIVATE CLOUD PUBLIC CLOUD However, cloud computing is not an outsourcing technology, since the business processes continue to operate at the company's own responsibility. For many companies, the introduction of a private cloud in their own data centre is the first step toward cloud computing. This is only accessible to authorised individuals; all data, processes and applications are protected by a firewall. Small and medium-sized enterprises, for example, may use a fail-safe micro-data centre from Rittal and Bechtle that is available for immediate use. According to a study by Niederrhein University (Germany), the costs of such a solution are similar to an equivalent cloud solution from a suitable provider. Using the IT infrastructure of an external service-provider, as with Webmail services and social networks, is the equivalent of a public cloud. As it is also accessible to external users, data privacy and data protection are highly critical issues. What is more, clients do not know where their company data is currently located, which could potentially lead to trans-boundary legal problems. Availability, speed of use and open standards enabling customers to switch suppliers at any time if needed are other important points to consider. The third option is the hybrid cloud, in which the public cloud is only used during peak times, in case of emergencies, or to increase storage capacity. THE STRENGTHS OF THE CLOUD The major benefit of cloud data centres is that they adapt rapidly to changing requirements. Because IT services are supplied flexibly with a dynamic infrastructure, significant cost savings can be achieved. Software applications are quickly activated and deactivated on virtualised server farms, allowing them to be scaled precisely to current requirements, while at the same time ensuring maximum availability of the services. This flexibility must be reflected in the physical infrastructure of the cloud data centres, which primarily comprises the power supply and backup, together with the cooling chain. Two basic technologies are needed for this purpose: A dynamically adaptive infrastructure, plus intelligent management software. SOLUTIONS FROM RITTAL: INFRASTRUCTURE FROM ENCLOSURES TO MONITORING When it comes to accommodating their IT infrastructure, companies can choose from a wide range of options. Many companies would like to keep their corporate IT applications in their own data centres in future. Others continue to operate their own data centre but use cloud solutions for computing-intensive

3 applications. Yet others rely entirely on cloud services. However, one thing is certain, because virtually all business processes are now digital, or at least digitally supported, the demand for computing capacity is rising continuously. This poses a challenge for any data centre in terms of security, high- MTBF, and cost and energy efficiency. Regardless of the application, it is important for data centres to have a flexibly scalable infrastructure which is capable of growing to meet (sometimes sudden) increases in demands placed on the computing capacity. This begins with the choice of server enclosure system, which should facilitate problem-free expansion. A timeless classic among server racks is the TS 8 platform from IT system suppliers Rittal. The enclosures are seamlessly bayable on all sides, and thanks to their high stability yet comparatively low weight, have developed into a global system standard. There are now over 7.7 million of these best-sellers in use. With an extensive system portfolio and a wide range of accessories, the TS 8 can also be adapted to suit any requirement, at any time. Because cloud computing solutions generally rely on very powerful servers, suitable cooling is a must. For this purpose, Rittal offers redundant cooling systems that bring up to 60 kw of cooling output into a single server rack. Bayable climate control solutions such as Liquid Cooling Package (LCP) technology or raised-floor cooling allow entire data centres to be cooled reliantly and redundantly. The creation of cold or hot aisles is advisable in order to prevent cold and warm air from mixing, which causes high losses. The option of using cold external air for direct free cooling saves money and energy. This form of cooling is particularly energy-efficient and may be used at external temperatures of up to 21 degrees Celsius. With cooling systems, it is usually important to ensure a modular layout for scalability and redundancy reasons. Suppliers of cloud services sign strict Service Level Agreements (SLA) with their customers regarding the availability of the infrastructure. Quite often, customers expect an uptime of 99.9 percent, which translates into just under nine hours' downtime a year. In order to achieve these targets, while at the same time ensuring optimum capacity utilisation in the cloud using virtualisation technologies, sensors and software tools are used to monitor, administer and control server farms and applications. The automated monitoring solution Computer Multi Control (CMC) III from Rittal, for example, guarantees availability and fail-safeness of the data centre. It is also freely scalable, even in the event of rapid data centre expansion due to the incorporation of entire server farms. Sensors for monitoring climate control and server rack doors are integrated as standard. They report any problems with the cold air supply to the rack, or if the temperature limits are exceeded. The performance data collated in this way can then be fed into the RiZone management software for processing, and is then made available in a structured format. The consistent merging of all information from the data centre allows the availability status of the IT infrastructure to be reliably assessed, or put another way: If you can't measure it, you can't reliably control it. Although the Australian power grid is generally considered reliable, power outages do happen from time to time. Voltage fluctuations are likewise unavoidable. This is unimportant for household appliances, but potentially very harmful to sensitive IT hardware components. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is therefore another basic requirement for ensuring high availability, and hence compliance with SLAs. A UPS system ensures that the large quantities of data in cloud computing solutions are kept safe, even in the event of power failures or power surges. Solutions must be entirely redundant, even as far as connecting to two separate transformers and the use of emergency generators. Rittal offers various

4 UPS series, such as the PMC family, which includes both single-phase and three-phase UPS systems. One common feature of these products is a high level of energy and cost efficiency with a high operating ratio, plus maximum fail-safeness with a consistently modular, scalable layout. SUMMARY Cloud computing is the latest megatrend. It guarantees maximum flexibility and high efficiency at low cost. Software such as RiZone ensures effective management of the cloud. The physical infrastructure of a cloud data centre must also be capable of adapting to rapidly-expanding capacity utilisation at different times. This cannot work unless the two main components UPS and climate control ensure consistently high efficiency. In future, the requirements placed on the IT infrastructure will continue to grow, especially in the following three areas: Reliability of data, flexibility of supply, and high-mtbf. COMPANY BACKGROUND World leader in enclosure and IT infrastructure technology, Rittal continues to expand its product offering with the highest quality, German engineering. Since its inception in Germany in 1961, Rittal has grown from a leading supplier of industrial enclosure and climate control technology to be a provider of complete data centre infrastructure. From racks, power, cooling, remote monitoring and physical security, Rittal is paving the way in data centre technology to create the most energy efficient, secure, future proof data centres on the market. Rittal Australia & New Zealand has over 100 employees with service and delivery centres in all major main land capital cities (excluding Darwin). Our modification capabilities ensure the perfect fit solution no matter what your application. Rittal Australia & New Zealand is backed by a worldwide team of 10,000 committed staff, 10 production facilities and 63 international subsidiaries. Rittal is your local global provider of market leading technology. IMAGES Available on request. ###

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