I've been spending a lot of time researching some ideas that green the data center, but not in the facilities side which has seen great achievements over the past 5 years as PUE has helped create a focus on energy efficiency of the mechanical systems in the data center. In what area? Consider this Intel statement regarding their acquisition of Fulcrum Microsystems.
"Our customers are looking to purchase compute, networking and storage as one unit," said Steve Schultz, director of marketing at Intel.
When talking to some senior SW architects, I test the idea that the next big operating system will not be on a server, but run across servers, network, and storage devices.
To green the data center from a server OS level is frustrating as you can't see the bits move into the server and off the server through the network and access devices like storage. If you want to green the data center you want to use the least amount of energy to process bits into higher value bits.
To support better communication for the OS, there are things that can be done at the chip device level.
The key to these types of initiatives is to make servers and network components aware of each other so they can work more closely together, said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. As applications on dedicated servers give way to virtual machines that can be moved around for greater efficiency, it's harder for IT administrators to keep network policies up to date manually, he said. Such an effort is both time-consuming and prone to human errors, which are the leading cause of network downtime, according to Kerravala.
No other vendor yet has all the pieces for the kind of tight integration Cisco has achieved, Kerravala said. If Intel makes server and switch chips that can talk to each other at that level, smaller manufacturers will be able to offer coordination with products from other vendors that also use Intel.
HP and Dell have converged infrastructure initiatives.
- DRIVE BUSINESS GROWTH - by accelerating IT innovation and responsiveness
- MANAGE RISKS - by accelerating security and disaster recovery
- LOWER COSTS - by accelerating ROI and sustainability
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Intelligent Infrastructure: Redefining Efficiency in the Virtual Era
Imagine a truly efficient data center: What if you could break down your silos of isolated IT resources? What if you could manage your entire data center as a single pool of servers, storage and networking?
