Data center spending has reached an impressive $212 billion, which indicates that the industry is rapidly growing. Data centers often need to scale up to accommodate more applications and data, which explains the rise in spending.
But that’s not where all the money goes, as many data centers spend to improve operations efficiency, which brings us to data center consolidation.
Data centers are often an integral part of IT infrastructure for enterprises and governments. Consolidating data centers into fewer or a single facility requires careful planning and resources. Of course, it’s a big undertaking, which may make you wonder if it’s worth all the trouble.
Weighing the pros and cons of consolidating your data centers can help you make a more informed decision.
In this article, we will:
- Provide an outline of data center consolidation.
- Outline the benefits and challenges of data center consolidation.
- Explain how you can move forward.
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Understanding Data Center Consolidation
Many confuse data center consolidation as the unification of several different data centers.
While that’s often the case, data center consolidation involves making the data centers more efficient with fewer resources. Such a system focuses on using less to get more done.
The process typically involves consolidating servers, storage, and other networking equipment using an efficient architecture. That could mean moving several data centers into a central location. However, data center consolidation can even involve a single data center that’s downsized and improved in terms of productivity.
The scope and goals of a data center consolidation endeavor can vary from enterprise to enterprise. For example, some data centers may want to improve or upgrade from legacy servers.
These days, IT enterprises are leaning toward server and storage virtualization, which allows them to require less physical infrastructure. Thanks to technologies like SD-WAN, companies can leverage the Internet to manage different networks without requiring a physical connection.
Even the US government has been consolidating federal data centers for the past decade. It’s part of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI), which aims to incorporate advanced technologies to make data centers efficient and secure.
Benefits of Data Center Consolidation
There can be many reasons why you may consider consolidating your existing data centers. For some companies, it’s not even a choice, as in the case of mergers or changes in business goals.
Here are the main advantages of data center consolidation:
Cost Savings
Data center operational costs can take a significant portion of the overall expenditure of an enterprise. With rising energy rates, such costs are likely to get even higher. Consolidating several data centers to a smaller, central, and, ideally, more energy-efficient location can reduce this cost.
According to Gartner, data center consolidation and modernization efforts can result in 10 to 20 percent savings.
For most organizations, the bottom line is money. Data center consolidation reduces running costs without compromising performance, which helps increase revenue.
Higher Efficiency and More Productivity
If you have a quickly growing data center, you can’t just buy more hardware to accommodate more extensive storage and processing needs. You have to innovate and maximize the efficiency of your resources.
You can scale up and down by reducing redundancy and using innovative virtual solutions as and when necessary. Similarly, you can efficiently handle large data, even with a smaller IT footprint.
Better Security
You can monitor those more easily when you’re downsizing to fewer servers. The bigger your infrastructure is, the more endpoints there may be for attackers to exploit.
Multiple data centers in different locations have unique security advantages, such as during natural disasters or human error-caused outages. However, the security of a single, central data center with fewer resources is much easier to manage than dozens or hundreds of servers and arrays spread across the world.
Better Compliance
Consolidating data centers is also beneficial from a compliance point of view. Over the years, data collection and storage regulations have become more stringent. Non-compliance with these regulations can result in legal trouble and losses.
Suppose you have data centers in different locations worldwide. In that case, each may be required to implement the compliance standards for their specific region, which can increase the complexity as you don’t have a single compliance policy to follow.
On the other hand, consolidating the data centers to a single location would remove these complications and allow you to implement a single security and compliance policy for the data.
Energy Savings
If you’re considering going green with your data centers, consolidating them with more energy-efficient architecture can help you do that.
Data centers in the US used 70 billion kWh in 2014, which likely has doubled. You can reduce your energy usage and emissions by consolidating data centers into smaller, more efficient facilities.
Many companies are taking such initiatives solely as a bid to go green.
Challenges of Data Center Consolidation
Consolidating data centers may have many benefits, but it’s not without risks, which you must mitigate with the right strategy.
Risk of Downtime
A common challenge, especially when you have to move your equipment and shut down data centers, is that it can cause user downtime. And downtime comes at a cost, so you must prepare for it. It’s possible to make contingency plans and prevent downtime, but there are still risks.
Delays
Like any enterprise project, data center consolidation can also run into delays. While some delays may be out of your control, you can prevent costly ones by planning better.
Long lead times in equipment delivery (a big problem right now), lack of engineers, or logistics delays with shipping providers can cause delays.
A common reason for such delays and downtimes is that enterprises take on more than they can chew. In other words, they take on all the tasks, even those they are not equipped to do.
Asset Disposal
Another challenge for data center consolidation is decommissioning existing assets. What do you do with the equipment you no longer need? Should you sell it? Destroy it?
You should answer these questions in the planning phase. You can use IT asset disposition (ITAD) services for this purpose.
Leverage Professional Services for Successful Data Center Consolidation
Taking such a critical move alone can be challenging. You may need more expertise or resources to complete every consolidation plan step quickly.
Here is where professional services like PivIT’s EXTEND services can come in and help complete your data center consolidation safely and swiftly. EXTEND encompasses various professional services that make data center consolidations easy, from planning the move to setting up the new infrastructure to disposing of old equipment.
If you’re short on engineers to help you implement your centralized data center, you can request on-demand who can reach your location and complete the job quickly.
Similarly, PivIT provides multiple options for decommissioning legacy equipment through its buyback program and ITAD services.
You can save on the consolidation costs by selling equipment that’s still usable. Legacy devices that are no longer functional or near being dysfunctional can be disposed of safely and sustainably. Moreover, PivIT can help with data destruction on your closing sites.
You can also use PivIT to procure new, advanced equipment and sell the legacy hardware as credit.
Data consolidation can be expensive, but it pays for itself in the long run.
