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Virtualisation key to modern data centre

Lebo Mashiloane
By Lebo Mashiloane
Johannesburg, 16 Apr 2014
Companies take the modern data centre route thinking that they can amend its requirements at a later stage, says Warren Olivier, regional manager at Veeam.
Companies take the modern data centre route thinking that they can amend its requirements at a later stage, says Warren Olivier, regional manager at Veeam.

Virtualisation is a rapidly growing technology, with lots of companies virtualising and is central to the modern data centre. It is seemingly becoming the standard going forward and having the right tools for implementation is absolutely key.

This is according to Warren Olivier, regional manager at Veeam, who notes that the first wave of virtualisation helped organisations get more out of their existing investments in servers while reducing their carbon footprint; and the next wave will see the same happening in networking, storage and security.

Olivier says storage, for example, will be the next target for virtualisation. "Vendors have done their best to lock customers in to using only their hardware. Once you add a virtualisation layer on top, that problem goes away. With a mixed storage pool, it's possible to scale your operation without scaling your costs at the same rate."

For businesses moving into modern data centres that are virtualised, Olivier says there needs to be an understanding that this comes with a wholesale change in the way they must plan for implementation, management, backup and recovery, business continuity, data management and documentation.

"Are all these factors designed to help them fully take advantage of the benefits the modern data centre provides?" he asks.

According to Olivier, a lot of companies take the modern data centre route with the thinking that they can make amendments to these considerations at a later stage. This, he says, not only limits them in taking advantage of the data centre's flexibility, but they also miss out on opportunities because the tools they have are not designed for it.

"It's like owning an HDTV set without the HD programme, the TV is ready, but you can't watch because you don't have the tools to do so. You don't want tools that purely tolerate the data centre; you want a tool that embraces everything about it."

The bottom line, Olivier adds, is that it's now software, not hardware, which dictates what businesses can do in their data centres. "But it does mean they need to upgrade their tools."

What CIOs and IT managers should be aiming for, he says, is reliability first and foremost. Today's environments are so complex you can't possibly hope to manage them manually - you need automated tools that just work.

"Just as you can't fix a digital watch with a clockmaker's tools, you can't run the modern data centre properly with tools designed for an earlier age," concludes Olivier.

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