Data center management for CIOs

This guide is part of the SearchCIO.com CIO Briefing series, which is designed to give IT leaders strategic guidance and advice that addresses the management and decision-making aspects of timely topics. For a complete list of topics covered to date, visit the CIO Briefing section.

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Target's data centers keep pace with retail growth

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[Shamus McGillicuddy, News Writer]

DALLAS -- Doug Hall could be the envy of every CIO whose data center is running out of capacity.

Hall, a technical architect at Minneapolis-based retail giant Target Corp., runs a 28-person facilities management team that sits within IT. The team's job is to make sure each of the company's 4,000 IT employees knows exactly how much capacity is available to them. More important, if someone needs a new server, there's a place to put it.

It's not that Hall doesn't have space issues at Target's data centers. But by using data center capacity management and forecasting best practices, Hall and his team have clear visibility into data center operations. As a result, they've had little trouble making the case for new data center construction.

   Learn more in "Target's data centers keep pace with rapid retail growth." Also:

• PG&E CIO energizes California utility (SearchCIO.com)
  Following a very public bankruptcy, a beleaguered California utility brought in a new team of executives to turn the company around. Among them was Patricia Lawicki, who is now getting a charge out of making IT a star player at the 102-year-old utility.
• Strategic Plan Starts With a Data Center - (problem solved) (CIO Decisions)
  The data center at Catholic Charities of Boston got a boost from a five-year plan and a higher IT budget.

Top 10 ways to save energy in the data center

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[Shamus McGillicuddy, News Writer]

LAS VEGAS -- Gartner Inc. has predicted that the cost of supplying energy to a server over its three-year lifetime will soon exceed the server's acquisition cost.

With this in mind, Chris Loeffler, product manager of data center solutions at Eaton Corp. in Cleveland, offered delegates at this week's Gartner Data Center Conference the top 10 ways to save energy in the data center. He said these "low-hanging" management options and technologies can combine to reduce data center energy consumption by up to 50% without compromising availability.

   Find out more in "Top 10 ways to save energy in the data center." Also:

• Data center strategies: Five ways to handle a heat wave (SearchCIO.com)
  The heat is on in the data center and will be for years to come, according to recent reports. Here's a primer from Gartner on what you need to know going forward.
• Neglecting AC units gets data centers into hot water (SearchSMB.com)
  Too many data center managers rely on only a UPS to keep the servers running when the power goes out. But neglecting to back up the air-conditioning units puts the servers at an unnecessary risk.

Energy, market drive up price of hosted data centers

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[Shamus McGillicuddy, News Writer]

The cost of outsourcing data centers to hosted or colocation providers is skyrocketing, and CIOs are getting burned.

Bill Martorelli, principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge Mass., observed in a new research note that Forrester clients with expiring data center colocation contracts are experiencing "sticker shock" as vendors double their fees.

"Companies that have been under contract these last three or four years, there has been so much change during that period," he said. "It's not necessarily a new phenomenon, but since they're renewing their contracts now, they're coming face to face with it. I haven't heard anyone being brought low and completely destroyed by it, but it makes for some difficult choices."

   Learn more in "Energy, market demands drive up price of hosted data centers." Also:

• Green IT strategies could lead to hefty ROI (SearchCIO.com)
  Various green IT technologies and strategies, such as virtualization and storage capacity consolidation, are allowing CIOs to cut costs and improve the ROI in their data centers.
• Green data centers are about money, not the environment (SearchDataCenter.com)
  Data centers' impact on the environment is overblown, says systems management expert Richard Ptak. The real goal of green data centers should be save money through systems management tools like IBM's Tivoli.

CIOs save green by going green in the data center

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[Jeff Kelly, Associate Editor]

CIO Rick Peltz doesn't mince words when it comes to Green IT.

"I'm very concerned over the environment, but do I do anything specific to accommodate it? The answer is no," Peltz said. "To be honest with you, it's not important."

But that doesn't mean Peltz's IT department at Encino, Calif.-based Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services Inc. doesn't do its part to conserve energy. Peltz said he plans to add several American Power Conversion Corp. (APC) server racks to Marcus & Millichap's Chicago data center to do just that. His motivation, however, is economic, not environmental.

"We're always looking to cut back on power," Peltz said, "but we're looking at it strictly from an economic perspective."

   Find out more in "CIOs save green by going green in the data center." Also:

• Sun's data center consolidation reduces space, servers (SearchDataCenter.com)
  Sun Microsystems' new Santa Clara data center consolidation packs in four times the computing power in 62% less square footage than its old Newark, Calif., facility.
• Green IT in the data center: Plenty of talk, not much walk (SearchCIO.com)
  A new survey from Symantec of 800 data managers worldwide shows that protecting the environment is low on the totem pole for most data center stewards.

More resources

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• Resource center: Data centers and virtualization (SearchCIO.com)
• Resource center: Data centers and virtualization for the midmarket (SearchCIO-Midmarket.com)
• Web site: SearchDataCenter.com
• Web site: SearchStorage.com