DatacenterDynamics Bangalore provides timely input as data centre professionals consider the implications of fast business growth and 24x7 availability in an environment beset by power problems.

The success of the first DatacenterDynamics Bangalore, held at the Leela Palace Kempinski on 29th September 2006 not only confirms Bangalore's status as one of the rising stars in the data centre universe, it also highlighted the challenges facing those charged with ensuring the non-stop services on which the city's success is built.
To emphasise the importance of mission criticality to the area, 422 delegates attended the event to set a DatacenterDynamics record for the highest number of data centre professionals at a first event'. The audience was comprised of equal numbers of IT and facility managers. Bangalore is ranked as the world's fourth largest Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) and Outsourcing Hub, as well as the Silicon Valley of Asia. It is also India's fifth-largest and fastest growing city.
The background to DatacenterDynamics Bangalore is the region's spectacular growth as an ICT and outsourcing hub. A straw poll taken by Stephen Worn, Global Technology Director for DatacenterDynamics at the start of the day indicated that four in ten delegates are in the process of planning a new data centre and that half of delegates plan to invest in their facilities over the next 12 months.
However, unlike many other regions visited by DatacenterDynamics, the Blade Server revolution has not taken hold and therefore power density is not an issue with over half of facilities providing 2kW - 4kW. Only 1% of facilities are built out to provision 12kW or more per rack position.
One of the key themes to emerge from the day was the problems associated with a fast-growing and mission-critical industry and the uncertainty of an irregular and intermittent grid power supply. Brownouts, ongoing shortages, dirty power and spikes are common concerns in the Bangalore and Chennai region, forcing all data centre operators to have best in-class real-time high availability redundant power.
Over 40% of the delegates present are considering moving to the next generation of back-up power systems and going battery free. This strong interest was evidenced by the large crowd attending the presentation by Chris Dow of Hitec and Piyush Shah of Hi-Rel, as well as by the number of concerned questions raised during these sessions. The Rotary UPS systems discussed can save energy, increase reliability, and dramatically increase available space by reducing the need for stand-by batteries.
Strong local contribution to the event highlighted the challenges in running a mission critical facility when the grid goes down daily. "It takes a certain mentality to deal with this commented Vidyasagar Puthran, IBM who has been designing data centres in India since 1977 and who spoke in the morning sessions. "Knowing you cannot rely on power from the grid means seeking alternatives such as diesel power generation, however the quantities required to sustain sometime 24 hours of disruption need underground tanking to be factored in to any build. The future of gas-powered generation was also discussed as a potential solution to the power crisis.
Kris Kumar, CEO of Kris Infrastructure Pty used his afternoon presentation to address other peculiarities in the local market including the corrosiveness of air in certain Indian cities which can be catastrophic both to sensitive equipment within the data centre and to the mechanical electrical infrastructure if protection against this threat is inadequate. The increased frequency of flooding in major Indian business centres was also raised as a concern.
Chandra Kopparapu, VP Asia Pacific, Foundry Networks raised the importance of network infrastructure to mission critical data centres, as organisations demand modular, scalable, and resilient system architecture. His facility walk-through presented delegates with one of the most comprehensive insights into Critical IP Service Infrastructure seen at any DatacenterDynamics event this year, and covered the importance of complete hardware redundancy from management modules, switch fabrics and line cards to power supplies and fans. Chandra indicated that operators are demanding flawless and hitless layer 2 and layer 3 failover, software (OS) upgrade and high availability network architectures for mission critical data. His presentation also covered sub-second L-2 convergence: MRP, VSRP, RSTP, 802.3AD and fast re-route for SONET-like 50ms resiliency (MPLS).
Another recurring theme in Bangalore was the impact of IT in the data centre, based on the premise that IT challenges in India are largely business driven. According to an overwhelming number of delegates the critical issues in design and operation are security, manageability, scalability, and compliance. A high proportion of delegates were dealing with these issues and they were covered in the session presented by Ken Ang of Avocent. His presentation looked at security needs and at the internal and external threats to the datacenter, the need for audits, the manageability of multiple locations and time zones, the pressures of managing ever increasing servers and network devices as well as managing multi-vendor, multi-platform environment. Many delegates are dealing with scalability and planning issues over the next 12 months, as over half of delegates are finding that their current infrastructure cannot scale with their business. Compliance with local government and global regulations is also emerging as an issue that will impact on regional operators.
Devi Shankar of TCFI, a seasoned veteran of the Indian IT conferencing scene, commented that the final panel session was the most absorbing he had ever seen. Led by Stephen Worn the panel discussion included pre-eminent professionals from the Indian data centre industry and discussed what elements were necessary for infrastructure in the sub-continent to survive and prosper into the future.