Dc ops

IBM Global Technology Services IBM Global Data Center Study i

Research Report

Data center operational efficiency
best practices
Enabling increased new project spending by improving data center efficiency

Findings from the IBM Global Data Center Study

ii Data center operational efficiency best practices

Data center operational efficiency best practices: Enabling increased new project spending
by improving data center efficiency is an IBM study that developed a data center operational
efficiency model for assessing the capability levels of today’s data center and describes the ways
IT organizations can progress along the path of data center transformation. The report was
written by IDC, which also executed the survey and interviews on behalf of IBM.

The authors would like to give special thanks to the following individuals for their assistance and
support in developing this report:

● Dr. Ian Stewart, Director of Advanced Computing, University of Bristol
● Antonio Buratti, CIO, ABI (Associazione Bancaria Italiana)
● Pierre Debagnard, General Manager of Albiant-IT, BPCE Group
● Xiao Xiao Bin, IT Manager, INESA Information Solution Group Co. Ltd
● Martin Constant, Corporate Director of Information Technology, NORAMPAC

IBM Global Data Center Study iii

Executive Summary Basic data centers
Today’s data center is changing rapidly. Many enterprises
are integrating new technology solutions to modernize and New projects Maintaining existing
35% infrastructure
evolve their organizations. Most are pursuing a path to ensure 65%
appropriate levels of IT service delivery and cost efficiency
and alignment to business goals. For some data centers this
means providing state of the art levels of availability, flexibility,
and scalability, while for others the goal may be to provide
“sufficient” levels of services while keeping new capital
expenditures to a minimum.

Either way, data centers can be placed on a spectrum of
Strategic data centers
efficiency and flexibility. IBM and IDC have developed a
data center operational efficiency model for assessing the
capability levels of today’s data center and describing the ways New projects Maintaining existing
53% infrastructure
IT organizations can progress along the path of data center
47%
transformation. There are four key stages that describe the
typical evolution of a data center as it relates to efficiency:
Basic, Consolidated, Available and Strategic.

Figure 1: Data centers that operate at the highest level of efficiency allocate
Data centers that are operating at the 50 percent more of their IT budgets to new projects than those operating at the
lowest efficiency level.
highest level of efficiency allocate 50 percent
Applying the results of a January 2012 global study of CIOs
more of their IT resources to new projects. and IT managers to the efficiency model, 21 percent of today’s
data centers—about one in five—have reached the peak of
efficiency and are operating at the highest level.

iv Data center operational efficiency best practices

Improving data center efficiency can yield tangible benefits to While the “right” solution cannot be dictated by a single,
the organization. This study found that Strategic data centers standardized blueprint, and reaching the Strategic efficiency
were able to deliver: level may not align with the goals of all organizations, many
IT professionals are looking for something analogous to
● Greater investment on strategic initiatives. Staff spend more a playbook that provides context for designing an
than half of their time on new projects versus maintaining appropriate strategy.
the infrastructure, compared to only 35 percent for Basic
data centers (Figure 1). Further, 39 percent are planning
transformational projects to reengineer their IT service About this study
delivery as compared to 23 percent. The information for this paper came from a global survey of 308
● Greater efficiency. They enjoy more than 2.5 times the
IT executives in seven countries to understand the current state
staffing efficiency, averaging 27 servers per administrator of their data center operational efficiency—processes, tools,
compared to 10 for Basic data centers. and technologies—across eight separate areas: data center
● Greater flexibility. More than half of the companies support operations, facilities management, servers, storage, network,
a high rate of organizational change compared to just 6 applications and tools, governance and staffing. The survey
percent for Basic data centers. was supplemented by in-depth interviews with IT managers and
CIOs from North America, Europe and Asia. For additional study
details, see Study Methodology.
There were four distinguishing characteristics of companies
that have moved toward a more strategic approach:

● Optimize the server, storage, network and facilities assets to
maximize capacity and availability
● Design for flexibility to support changing business needs

● Use automation tools to improve service levels and

availability
● Have a plan that aligns with the business goals and keep

it current.

IBM Global Data Center Study 1

Contents Emerging from the survey responses were four distinctive
stages that differentiate data centers from one another as
1 Defining the state of the data center IT organizations move toward business alignment (Figure
2). Each stage characterizes the data center based on a
3 Distinguishing characteristics of a Strategic
combination of efficiency, availability and flexibility.
data center

8 Recommended investments to improve your data ● Basic: The environment is relatively stable and is
center operational efficiency maintained based on short-term objectives, with standalone
infrastructure as the norm. Companies gain the advantages
11 Moving up the efficiency ladder: Case studies
of server consolidation but have not implemented tools
14 Moving toward a Strategic data center to improve availability levels, which vary widely from
application to application and site to site.
14 How IBM can help ● Consolidated: Server virtualization and site consolidation

are used to take out sizeable numbers of systems and
15 Study methodology facilities and thereby lower capital costs. Server and storage
technologies are well utilized and the possibilities for
improving availability through virtual machine (VM)
Defining the state of the data center mobility are beginning to be realized.
There are two critical concepts to keep in mind when ● Available: IT infrastructure is treated as a general esource
r
evaluating the state of data center efficiency and alignment “pool” that can be allocated and scaled freely to meet the
with the needs of the business. First, there is no single “magic changing demands of workloads and to ensure uptime and
bullet” indicator of movement from one efficiency stage to the performance while providing high rates of utilization. The
next. The data center environment is a compilation of servers, focus is on measuring and improving service levels while
storage, network systems, mechanical/electrical systems, building out governance procedures that capture
applications and tools, governance procedures and staff. The business requirements.
only effective means to measure the efficiency of data center ● Strategic: Widespread adoption of policy-based

operations is to take a holistic approach that considers multiple automation tools lowers the manual complexity of the data
measures across all elements. Second, the evolution of the data center and ensures availability requirements and dynamic
center is a journey, one in which the destination may change as movement of applications and data. Instrumentation and
the business needs change. This framework should therefore metrics are consistently used to validate compliance with
not be considered a recipe that should be followed blindly, but governance polices.
rather a playbook that should be flexibly applied based on the
individual needs of the organization.

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2 Data center operational efficiency best practices
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Basic Consolidated Available Strategic
0/9/80/0 0/9/80/0 0/44/100/0
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11+ years Data center age < 3 years
Operations
2.5+ Power usage effectiveness 0/9/80/0 0/9/80/0 < 1.5
0/44/100/0 0/44/100/0

None Mechanical/electrical redundancy Full 0/9/80/0
Facilities
Not at0/44/100/0
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High Mechanical/electrical upgrade disruptiveness all
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<10% Percent virtualized 60%+
Servers
0-4 Virtual machines per physical server 8+

10-20% Storage virtualization 80-90%
Storage
Backup eDiscovery
Archiving
as archive data mapping

Network Days Disaster recovery time Seconds

Applications Managed by Centralized
Application portfolio decisions
and tools individuals approach

Slow
Governance Ease of decision making Quick and easy
and difficult

0-10 Physical servers per FTE Over 100
Staffing
< 30% Staff time on new projects 60%+

Not efficient Highly efficient

Figure 2: The four distinctive stages of data center maturity are based on a combination of efficiency, availability and f lexibility.


When taking a more strategic approach to data center Distinguishing characteristics of a
operations, IT organizations put the needs of the end user Strategic data center
at the center of their strategy. As data centers move up the With almost 60 percent of the respondents indicating plans
efficiency scale, many have already taken out a significant to upgrade their data centers in the next two years and 68
portion of hard cost via consolidation and virtualization, and percent indicating rapid technology adoption, it is useful to
the real focus is on providing business benefits. understand the key differences that characterize Strategic
data centers. Not all organizations have environments that
These include not only application availability and require data centers built to support high rates of change,
performance but, even more important, the ability to respond and some may never require the near-real time flexibility
rapidly to business changes. This focus on business outcomes and “always on” availability typified by the Strategic level.
can result in huge payoff for organizations where revenue However, for those that do require these capabilities, this
generation, innovation or competitive advantage is the goal; framework provides a roadmap for thinking about the future
in comparison, efficiency and cost containment are typically data center and underscores how companies can build an
foundational elements. infrastructure that prioritizes availability and flexibility as
well as cost containment.
Globally, the distribution of data centers follows a bell curve
with 21 percent, or about 1 in 5 data centers, operating at Companies that operate a Strategic data center consistently:
the highest Strategic level of optimization, with more than
half moving into differing stages of Consolidated and ● Optimize the server, storage, network and facilities assets
Available environments. to maximize capacity and availability

● Use automation tools to improve service levels

and availability

it current.


Moving beyond consolidation to high levels 93% 92%
of optimization
Consolidation through virtualization is a necessary first
step in the path to achieving data center efficiency. Most IT
organizations initially introduce consolidation into the data
center at the server level to cut costs by reducing redundancy
in physical servers. This is often followed by virtualization
in storage and networking environments, usually driven 48%
by a similar goal of consolidation to streamline and reduce
expenditures on physical infrastructure.
27%
Virtualization is table stakes for data center capability, and in 21%
fact by the time data centers reach the Strategic phase they
14%
have high levels of virtualization across their servers, storage,
and network environments and are advanced in the use of
software and automation tools. Leaders achieve significantly
higher staff productivity by managing 8.2 virtual machines Percent of servers Use storage Use data
virtualized virtualization deduplication
(VMs) per server, compared to 4.5 VMs per server for
Basic data centers. Key asset optimization characteristics of
Strategic data centers compared to Basic data centers include Strategic Basic
(Figure 3):

● 48 percent of all their servers are virtualized, compared to Figure 3: Strategic data centers are characterized by virtualization across all
27 percent components of the physical infrastructure.
● 93 percent use virtualized storage, versus 21 percent

● 92 percent use deduplication technologies, compared to

14 percent.


Designing for flexibility to meet changing
business needs 90%
Change is accelerating, putting pressure on infrastructures to
keep pace. Almost 90 percent of executives operating Strategic
data centers indicate they are the first to adopt or among the
first to adopt new technology. Having a plan that is designed
to be flexible to respond to the ever changing needs of the
business and technology is critical. 47% 46% 45%
Flexibility also means having the right level of availability and
redundancy to ensure meeting the service-level agreements 31%
(SLAs). Availability and redundancy characteristics of Strategic 21%
data centers as compared to Basic data centers include
(Figure 4): 9% 8%

● 47 percent can upgrade mechanical and electrical
equipment without disruption to operations, compared to Upgrade Primary data Replication Network design
mechanical/ center replicated used for storage flexibly supports
9 percent electrical equipment with active-active backup new services
● 90 percent have active-active configurations for their without disruption
primary data center, versus 21 percent
● 100 percent have a backup or secondary site for disaster Strategic Basic

recovery—over half of which are hot sites—compared to
15 percent Figure 4: Strategic data centers are designed with the right level of availability
● 46 percent take a sophisticated approach to storage and redundancy for meeting business needs.

backup including synchronous replication, geo-replication
or consistency groups for multiple snapshots, compared to
8 percent
● 45 percent have a network design that flexibly supports new

services, compared to 31 percent.


Employing automation tools to improve service levels
and availability 87%
Automation is typically the next step in the data center journey.
Introducing higher levels of automation enables greater levels
of flexibility and helps support even higher levels of availability.
Greater reliance on automation tools and technologies offloads 58%
manually intensive tasks for system administrators, reduces
error rates and ensures the performance of applications against
their SLAs. Management characteristics of Strategic data
centers compared to Basic data centers include (Figure 5): 30% 31%

For server management:
● 81 percent move VMs across physical hardware, compared

to 27 percent, enabling much higher levels of flexibility 3% 3%
1% 0%
and availability
● 100 percent use automation tools to manage their virtual
Move VMs Implemented a Network services Monitor
server environment—and 58 percent use automation to meet storage service automatically thermal
SLAs catalog provisioned conditions
tools to move VMs automatically based on service level
agreements (SLAs), without the need of manual Strategic Basic
intervention—versus 1 percent
● 32 percent offer a self-service portal that enables cloud-like

capabilities, versus 4 percent, and another 48 percent plan Figure 5: Extensive use of automation across server, storage and network
to offer one in the next 12 months—meaning 80 percent management enables the high level of availability and service levels that
characterize Strategic data centers.
expect to offer one by 2013.

For storage management: For facilities management:
● 85 percent have automated tiered storage, versus 12 percent ● 31 percent use software tools to monitor thermal conditions

● 87 percent use a service catalog approach for storage, versus 0 percent, providing insight to adjust to real-time
leading to higher levels of availability and automation, operating conditions.
versus only 3 percent.

For network management:
● 60 percent use automated network management, compared
to 20 percent
● 30 percent versus 3 percent use policy management

processes to automatically provision network services,
which drives faster response to service as well as network
recovery times in minutes and seconds instead of hours
and days.


Having a plan that aligns with business goals and
keeping it current
Organizations with Strategic data centers are far better 77%
prepared to take advantage of market opportunities as the
68%
economy rebounds. They have heavily utilized consolidation
projects to optimize the number of data center sites they
maintain. Moreover, we find they are significantly more likely 53%
to continually evaluate the target number of data centers they
should have in a continual focus on strategy and execution.
33%
For example, IT organizations with Strategic data centers 25%
were much more likely to have expanded and modernized
their capabilities during the recent economic downturn. Over 14%
60 percent of Basic data center operations made no strategic
0% 2%
changes or investments over the past two years, and more than
70 percent don’t expect to do so over the next two. In contrast,
Build capacity Forecast space Forecast power Implement high- and
nearly all Strategic data centers experienced some form of in smaller (10 to 20 years) demand low-density zones
increments
expansion or growth over the past two years, and more than 80
percent of them expect to do so over the next two. Strategic Basic

Additionally, IT organizations operating Strategic data centers
were more likely to regularly engage in formal planning Figure 6: Managers of Strategic data centers enable alignment with business
exercises. Characteristics of Strategic data center planning objectives by engaging in regular forecasting and employing expansion
strategies that ensure f lexibility.
that increase flexibility compared to Basic data centers include
(Figure 6):
Strategic data centers are in a better position and are nearly
● 68 percent plan to build in smaller increments of capacity twice as likely to pursue transformational projects. Fully 39
rather than build out all at once, compared with 53 percent percent of Strategic data center managers are planning projects
● 25 percent forecast the space needed to support the 10–20 over the next five years to significantly change the way they
year useful life of a data center, compared to 0 percent deliver IT services to their organization, compared with only
● 77 percent forecast power demands, versus 14 percent 23 percent of Basic data center managers.
● 33 percent plan to implement low- and high-density zones

to support the varying power demands of new technology,
versus 2 percent.


from one stage to the next, getting to the Strategic level
requires a succession of steps. Leveraging the distinguishing
85 percent of Strategic data center managers characteristics of leaders applied to each discipline area can
planning major projects, and 77 percent of help determine how to get started, including:

those planning projects overall, say they will ● Data center operations and facilities management
turn to outside help. ● Servers
● Storage

● Network

● Business resilience

● Governance, including applications, tools and staffing.
Data center managers across the board understand that this
will require investment in outside tools, technologies and
Data center operations and facilities management
assistance. Of those planning a major project, over three in
Strategic data centers pay careful attention to their facility
four said they will turn to outside help, with an even greater
design and understand the need for a holistic view that treats
percentage (85 percent) among Strategic data centers. What’s
the data center as a single system. They plan to meet the
more, Strategic data centers are significantly more likely to
business needs over the useful life of a facility by forecasting
leverage more off-premises capabilities—including hosting,
power, space, capacity and availability—which leads to better
collocation and alternative sites for disaster recovery—while
predictability and lower disruption during changes and build-
still having 64 percent of their capacity on-premises.
outs. Insights from leaders include:

Recommended investments to improve ● Right size capacity and availability. Forecast capacity
your data center operational efficiency and availability to meet the business needs of primary and
While cost containment is certainly a critical benefit of data backup centers. Then continue to manage for efficiency
center efficiency, probably the most important benefit comes using real-time monitoring and management software.
in the ability to better serve the needs of the core business and ● Design for flexibility. Ensure that investments provide the

respond to shifts in market demand. Evidence shows that the scalability required to support rapid changes in demand
journey toward greater levels of data center efficiency requires and technology by, for example, building new capacity in
significant changes to the organization’s tools, technologies smaller increments over time and designing mechanical/
and processes. electrical systems so that equipment changes can be made
without disrupting operations.
Once companies understand what stage they are at and ● Optimize total costs over the long term. Ensure trade-

where they want to go on the efficiency spectrum, they offs between capital and operating costs are included in
will need to consider appropriate investments in time and facilities design, and measure energy efficiency and power
resources. Because there are dependencies required to move consumption on a real-time basis.


Storage
Strategic data centers are dealing with all aspects of storage
“Building a new data center has provided optimization and management. They realize the need to
us with more space, more efficient and green get ahead of the explosion in storage by using software and
policy-based management systems to reduce the hands-on
cooling and power, and more robust service labor required to provision and manage storage. Insights from
delivery. Incorporating greater levels of leaders include:
redundancy was a key component of that.”
● Increase storage optimization. Leaders implement
—Martin Constant, Corporate Director of Information Technology, NORAMPAC four to six times more storage optimization techniques,
Paper and Packaging industry, Canada including virtualization, deduplication, thin provisioning
and others.
● Reduce the time spent by storage architects. Implement

storage management technologies, especially storage
Servers service catalog, to drive self-service and policy-based
Strategic data center operators have consolidated their server management.
infrastructure to achieve the fundamental efficiencies from ● Don’t overlook storage backup and archive. With all the

server management. They understand the need to tackle the focus on the volume of storage, leaders realize they need
“harder” projects to leverage automation and software tools to manage the full lifecycle of data. Consider using more
to drive higher levels of availability and improved quality of sophisticated approaches to storage backup—including
service. Specific insights to leverage include: geo-replication or consistency groups for multiple
snapshots. For archiving, consider using eDiscovery data
● Move beyond consolidation to virtualization. Improve mapping or defined processes for audits.
SLA performance by using software tools and automation
to move virtual images between physical servers and data
centers based on policies.
● Prepare for cloud computing. Plan to use a self-service

portal that allows VMs to be automatically ordered online, “We are already using automated
with a choice of size, operating system and service level. hierarchical storage, storage virtualization
● Take advantage of the latest technology. Knowing how
and deduplication as well as dynamic
to optimize systems and move workloads will allow you
to take advantage of converged infrastructures (server, resource allocation (on demand).”
storage and networking systems that are sold together with
—Pierre Debagnard, General Manager of Albiant-IT, BPCE Group, France
management software in a pre-integrated package).


Network ● Review your business continuity plan. Avoid reliance
There are many external pressures on the network today, such on tape alone for data backup and recovery, whether at
as the explosion of smartphones and how they have greatly the data center or a remote location. Combine onsite and
accelerated the demand for access to applications and data; remote disk storage for backup.
the growing use of video; and the adoption of cloud ● Understand the impact of systems not being available

computing. Leaders realize the need to have a data center to specific business processes or applications. Leaders
networking strategy in place. They are also moving beyond provide the optimal level of availability to meet business
traditional network optimization techniques to approaches needs by using an active-active configuration, which allows
that include network management and automation in order for rapid failover of systems in the event of failure.
to improve overall IT efficiency and flexibility. Insights from ● Examine business and regulatory compliance

leaders include: requirements. Gain an understanding of your potential
long-term data archiving needs, including how search
● Develop and execute a network strategy. Take a holistic, capabilities affect your ability to meet compliance
long-term view that considers the network, servers, storage requirements. Have a defined process for audits and have
and applications and end-to-end manageability balanced archive eDiscovery capabilities.
against business and financial goals.
● Implement network management and automation. Governance, applications, tools and staffing
Use tools and processes that enable continuous network Strategic data center executives establish an environment that
adjustments to meet policy-based application requirements, is supportive of using a number of management best practices,
and use predictive tools to avoid unscheduled outages. including:
● Design for flexibility. Incorporate into the architecture

the ability to automatically provision network services based ● Use a centralized portfolio approach to application
on policies, with minimal human intervention. management. Leaders will also apply different service and
support levels to individual applications if the application
Business resilience owner is prepared to pay.
The ability to manage IT risk is essential for enabling growth, ● Focus on both hard, upfront capital costs and ongoing

dealing with changing business conditions and addressing operational costs when deciding on data center
new regulations, security threats and service outages. Leaders investments. Leaders use monitoring and management
distinguish themselves in their approaches and their ability software to ensure a total-cost focus in ongoing operations
to mitigate negative risks while enhancing their ability to as well as when making point-in-time investment decisions.
optimize potential opportunities. Insights from the strategies ● Implement decision-making procedures and policies.

of leaders include: Leaders employ documented procedures and policies
to ease decision making regarding ongoing data center
operations.


modifications. Nevertheless, ABI identified a suitable space, an
860 square foot high-ceilinged hall located within the palace, and
“We currently manage applications via began renovating the site.

individual tools, but we are planning to After determining it could not completely retrofit the site (for
implement a single management platform in example, it couldn’t introduce raised-floor cooling), ABI opted
the future.” to equip the hall with an innovative cooling system based on
APC in-rack water cooling blocks connected to chillers above
the rack cabinets. By transforming its data center this way, ABI
—Xiao Xiao Bin , IT Manager, INESA Information IT Services industry, China
believes it has reduced the average power consumption of the IT
infrastructure by about 35 percent, or 25 kW.

Moving up the efficiency ladder: “Our system provides cooling directly to
Case studies the IT equipment, alleviating the need
to provide room-wide air conditioning.
Associazione Bancaria Italiana (ABI): Moving from Basic
By transforming our data center we have
to Consolidated reduced the average power consumption of
ABI, the Italian Bank Association, is a nonprofit organization that
represents the interests of Italian financial institutions both at
the IT infrastructure by about 35 percent or
home and abroad. Headquartered in Rome, the association’s 25 kW.”
offices are located within the Palazzo Altieri, a national historical
monument filled with significant works of art. — Antonio Buratti, CIO, ABI

In 2010, ABI’s IT infrastructure consisted of 110 servers and
50 switches and routers hosted in 6 separate server rooms
dispersed throughout the building and managed by a staff of Now that ABI has modernized its facilities, with a focus on
6 IT administrators and a total of 19 IT department staff. These mechanical/electrical and power and cooling, it has opened the
systems supported 600 internal connections and several door to completing its transition to a Consolidated data center.
thousand external connections through a web portal. There was It is planning to further consolidate servers from rack-mounted
no virtualization, the server rooms were not properly equipped units to blades, whose higher server densities can now be
or cooled, and the need to maintain each one separately led to supported by the more efficient cooling system and, in tandem,
staffing inefficiencies. Looking to take its infrastructure to the next to introduce greater levels of server virtualization. In addition, it
level, ABI decided to push forward with consolidation, beginning is planning to incorporate advanced management tools that will
with centralizing its data center into a single facility. further increase the efficiency of the data center by enabling the
operation of the entire facility, from monitoring racks to operating
One of ABI’s unique challenges was the requirement to locate the facilities security systems all from a single dashboard.
new data center in its existing headquarters—which, as a cultural
heritage, is under significant restrictions that limit structural


computing needs grow. The modular approach lets the University
support future scalability while saving on upfront capital costs
University of Bristol: Investing for a Strategic data center
and avoiding overbuilding. Currently specified at 20 kW per rack,
The University of Bristol is a leading UK research university with
the facility is designed to and can support higher densities in
a broad portfolio of High Performance Computing (HPC)-based
the future.
studies, including climatology, aerospace, gene sequencing,
social medicine, economics and computational chemistry. Its
dedicated HPC data centers support the computationally-
intensive research and teaching needs of over 600 researchers
and students. “We have developed lights-out
administration tools that let us manage both
In addition to its main corporate data center, the University has
two separate data centers that are exclusively used to house its
the data center and the HPC and research
HPC and research data storage systems, which are operated at data storage systems with a staff of four
the Available efficiency level. The data center infrastructures offer FTEs. This alleviates the need for staff
high levels of virtualization and redundancy through clustered and
distributed system configuration. The larger data center has 38 members to enter the data center for routine
racks within an APC hot aisle enclosed solution, and the smaller maintenance and monitoring tasks.”
one has 12 APC racks in a similar hot aisle configuration. They
house a total of over 600 server nodes and 1.3 petabytes —Dr. Ian Stewart, Director of Advanced Computing, University of Bristol
of storage.

In 2006, the University devised a ten-year data center plan,
which called for a major upgrade to its infrastructure with the Further characterizing a Strategic level of efficiency, the data
addition of new data center capabilities to further increase its center now supports a number of state-of-the-art automation
levels of optimization. Unfortunately, the campus is tight on capabilities, including lights-out administration which alleviates
available space, so the University came up with the solution of the need for HPC staff members to enter the data center for
transforming an old water storage facility into a new data center. routine maintenance and monitoring tasks and allows both the
The unique space presented some unusual challenges, including data center and all the computer equipment to be managed by
the need to move equipment up five stories as the water storage a staff of four HPC system administrators. Automated scripts
facility was on the roof of the Physics building, and to ensure communicate with APC sensor equipment to monitor the
that no electromagnetic interference affected the University’s machine room environment and take appropriate actions, all
research radio telescope that was housed on top of the same the way up to being capable of shutting down the compute and
structure. Fortunately, it also offered advantages—such as some storage systems if something goes drastically wrong.
free air cooling since the Physics building is on one of the highest
points in Bristol. Looking to the future, the University is already planning to expand
its current 38 rack units to 48, targeting a completion by late
In the end, the new facility provided over 190 square meters spring 2012. It is also aggressively pursuing green initiatives,
of floor space with a number of state-of-the-art capabilities considering both the use of more power-efficient processors
representative of a Strategic data center. These include a and making more efficient use of that processing power through
modular design with two enclosed hot-aisle pods that act like more intelligent software. Not only will this further reduce
separate data centers. These APC Infrastructure hot-aisle water- operating costs, but it could also extend the life of the data
cooled enclosures can be easily scaled when the University’s center.


There is widespread deployment of virtualization, with overall
server virtualization levels over 60 percent. VM movement is
Albiant-IT, Group BPCE: Operating at the Strategic level
supported in an automated capacity (for example, in case of
Albiant-IT is the services provider dedicated to hosting and
server failure). Virtualization is also incorporated into the storage
managing the data centers of the banking Group BPCE, a
environment, with deduplication and dynamic resource allocation
French company offering a comprehensive range of banking and
on demand. Backup is performed onsite via tape and on disks
financial services to a wide range of corporate and consumer
with geo-replication. The network is architected to recover
customers. The group has 36 million customers served by 117,000
from an outage in real-time. Governance is provided through a
employees and 8,000 branches. To support these operations
change committee representing each of the client organizations
Albiant-IT operates a total of four datacenters across two sites,
within the bank, and the core decision making criteria are always
one in the Paris metropolitan area and one in the south of France.
ensuring the ability to deliver high availability and minimize
The four datacenters combined have a capacity of 80,800 square
operating costs.
feet extendable to 97,000 square feet and currently host 18,000
servers. 80 percent of the servers are x86, with the remainder
consisting of Unix servers and seven mainframes.

Albiant-IT has made strategic investments in its datacenter that “We operate at a 99.999 percent SLA and
enable it to operate optimally. It operates at a five nine availability have had 100 percent measured availability
SLA (99.999 percent uptime) and in fact has a measured 100
percent uptime since it put its current facilities in place more than
since our current facility was deployed two
two years ago. It currently has a ten-year capacity plan in place to years ago.”
account for its internal IT and hosting services infrastructure.
—Pierre Debagnard, General Manager of Albiant-IT, BPCE Group
The datacenters operate in a hot-hot (active-active) mode with
a 2(N+1) architecture. Each datacenter replicates into the other
and workloads can be moved as necessary. Capacity can be
added in a modular fashion, both by increasing energy capacity Even though the datacenter is operating in most respects at
and by equipping new “rooms” within the existing physical the Strategic level, this is not to say there are not future areas
facilities. Energy consumption is measured at the facility level of further optimization that Albiant-IT is considering. One of the
according to the energy capacity plan in place. A great deal of areas is the introduction of a converged infrastructure. Albiant-
focus is placed on optimizing power usage effectiveness (PUE); IT, with its BPCE clients, is considering implementing such an
the facility is currently operating at a PUE ratio of 2, with the goal infrastructure providing it helps reduce costs and enables a quick
of achieving 1.7 in the very near future. There is an entire system in return on investment (ROI).
place to optimize energy consumption that relies on a number of
variables, including a room’s population, air flow, hygrometry and
temperature optimization.


Moving toward a Strategic data center How IBM can help
Data centers are under constant pressure to scale and evolve IBM helps enterprises around the world plan, optimize
to meet the changing needs of the underlying business. To and automate their data centers in order to support their
adapt to these challenges, each data center takes a slightly business growth and objectives. IBM has a broad portfolio
different approach. of data center facilities planning and design, cloud, IT
virtualization, network modernization, business resilience
Today, about one in five data centers operate at the Strategic, and automation services that can help you meet your data
or highest efficiency, level. Companies not yet operating at center efficiency objectives.
this level can achieve greater efficiency by emulating the
four key behaviors of IT organizations that operate Strategic You can get started on your data center efficiency journey
data centers: by taking the Data Center Efficiency Self-Assessment. This
no-cost online tool will give you a quick snapshot of your
● Optimize the server, storage, network and facilities assets to efficiency status across facilities management, servers, storage
maximize capacity and availability and networks.

● Use automation tools to improve service levels
For more information
and availability To learn more about how IBM can help you progress on your
journey to greater data center efficiency, you can contact your
it current. IBM representative or visit the following websites:

For most companies, getting there will not happen overnight. ibm.com/data-center/study
It typically takes organizations several years of planning and
strategic investments in each area of the data center to achieve ibm.com/services/smarterdatacenter
Strategic status. While North American organizations and
companies with more than 500 employees had the highest
proportion of Strategic data centers, this level of efficiency is
achievable for any company. Strategic data centers were found
in all regions of the world and in smaller companies.

Most companies, whatever their size, plan on using outside
help with the projects that advance efficiency, a realization
especially shared by Strategic data centers. To achieve the
highest levels of efficiency, data centers must continually
re-evaluate their performance, reviewing their investments in
tools, technologies and governance, and must have the right
level of skills and assistance. Doing so can yield benefits in
greater staffing efficiencies, greater levels of flexibility and the
ability to spend more time on strategic IT initiative to support
the business.


and outsourcing). Respondents were recruited by phone to
complete the survey over the Internet. Both phone and web
Study methodology
portions of the survey were administered in the local language.
The information for this white paper came from a global survey
of 308 IT executives, conducted in January 2012, and was
The surveys asked respondents to provide information about
supplemented by in-depth interviews with data center managers
their data center, tools, technologies and processes across eight
representing each stage of data center efficiency. The survey
separate areas: data center operations, facilities management,
population consisted of IT executives who have responsibility
servers, storage, network, applications and tools, governance
for or influence over their organization’s data center strategy,
and staffing. The questions were designed to unearth the data
from organizations of over $50 million in revenue with at least
center’s efficiency level in each of these areas. The data from
one enterprise-class data center. Respondents were randomly
the survey was imported into an IDC model designed to assess
recruited and screened from international panels and came from
and categorize efficiency in each of these areas and to roll it
seven different countries: the United States, Brazil, Canada,
up into an overall data center efficiency rating (Figure 7). The
China, Germany, France, and India. Global data was derived by
model examines the levers by which data centers can improve
weighting IT spending on server systems, storage, enterprise
their infrastructure and identified a number of areas, including
networks, packaged software and services (excluding telecom
availability/resilience, cost-effectiveness and the flexibility to
provide the capacity needed by the business.

The demographics of the respondents were:
32%
30% • 60 percent from mature countries and 40 percent in
growth markets
• 63 percent from large enterprise and 37 percent from
small and mid-sized businesses
% of survey respondents

21% • 83 percent were IT managers and 17 percent were chief
information officers
17% • 25 industries covering finance, communications, industrial,
distribution, public sector and others.

The information from the survey was supplemented with five
in-depth interviews with executives responsible for data centers
1 standard 1 standard in North America, Europe and Asia. The respondents had
deviation deviation responsibility for full data center operations and represented the
full spectrum of data center efficiency stages.

Basic Consolidated Available Strategic

Efficiency level

Figure 7. The study identified four stages of efficiency worldwide for
data centers.


© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012

IBM Corporation
IBM Global Technology Services
Route 100
Somers, NY 10589

Produced in the United States of America
April 2012

IBM, the IBM logo and ibm.com are trademarks of International
Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide.
Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other
companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web
at “Copyright and trademark information” at www.ibm.com/legal/
copytrade.shtml

This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may
be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every
country in which IBM operates.

THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED
“AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-
INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms
and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.

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