Archived Content
The following content is from an older version of this website, and may not display correctly.In an effort to address the increasingly scarce capital for building new data centers, parallel with a growing demand for IT capacity, HP is exploring a fresh way of planning and building data centers that they say will allow companies to cut upfront construction costs by 15 to 25 percent.
The concept is simple: instead of following the tradition of building data centers that will be as reliable as capital allows, the company proposes assessing actual availability needs of each of the applications a future facility will implement and building that facility so that it can support deployments for both higher- and lower-tiered applications under one roof.
"We believe that (the idea's) practical application will fundamentally change the way we design and build data centers in the future," David Cappuccio, a managing vice president of Gartner said about what HP calls the multi-tiered hybrid data center. While, according to Cappuccio, many companies involved in ongoing talks with HP about building new data centers are seriously considering the idea, at this point it remains a concept.
"This is a fairly new concept we are assigned to present to our clients," he said. "Almost every single company we presented this concept to, the response was positive.
"Within the next 12-24 months we're going to see a number of data centers built with the hybrid design in mind."
Key in the new concept is determining the "critical business impact and urgency levels for each prospective application" according to HP's white paper on the matter.
Once that data is on hand, an assessment can be made of how much capacity will be needed for each of the necessary tier levels. Peter Gross, HP's vice president and general manager of HP Critical Facilities Services, said that, until recently, none of key indicators for evaluating a data center included varying degrees of performance.
"Systems were up, or they were down," Gross said. "Now, especially with 'green,' people are beginning to focus on the ... efficiency side effects. "If you're running at 5-percent utilization (on a high-availability tier), we've got a problem."
The concept is simple: instead of following the tradition of building data centers that will be as reliable as capital allows, the company proposes assessing actual availability needs of each of the applications a future facility will implement and building that facility so that it can support deployments for both higher- and lower-tiered applications under one roof.
"We believe that (the idea's) practical application will fundamentally change the way we design and build data centers in the future," David Cappuccio, a managing vice president of Gartner said about what HP calls the multi-tiered hybrid data center. While, according to Cappuccio, many companies involved in ongoing talks with HP about building new data centers are seriously considering the idea, at this point it remains a concept.
"This is a fairly new concept we are assigned to present to our clients," he said. "Almost every single company we presented this concept to, the response was positive.
"Within the next 12-24 months we're going to see a number of data centers built with the hybrid design in mind."
Key in the new concept is determining the "critical business impact and urgency levels for each prospective application" according to HP's white paper on the matter.
Once that data is on hand, an assessment can be made of how much capacity will be needed for each of the necessary tier levels. Peter Gross, HP's vice president and general manager of HP Critical Facilities Services, said that, until recently, none of key indicators for evaluating a data center included varying degrees of performance.
"Systems were up, or they were down," Gross said. "Now, especially with 'green,' people are beginning to focus on the ... efficiency side effects. "If you're running at 5-percent utilization (on a high-availability tier), we've got a problem."