Over the last five to 10 years, big data, mobility, virtualization, and cloud computing have radically transformed enterprise IT. Consider the following:
In 2006, the digital universe was 161 exabytes, or about 161 billion gigabytes. By 2013, it had grown 27 times larger, to 4.4 zettabytes, or 4.4 trillion gigabytes. Experts estimate that by 2020 the digital universe could reach 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes.1
In 2005, only about 5 percent of data center resources were virtualized.2 As of mid-2014, more than 70 percent of x86 architecture workloads had been virtualized on servers, according to Gartner.3
In 2009, vendors shipped 173.5 million smartphones. Four years later, they shipped nearly six times as many, more than a billion.4
In 2009, public cloud computing revenues totaled $58.6 billion. By 2013, they had more than doubled to $130.7 billion.5
In 2010, manufacturers shipped nearly 18 million tablets. Three years later, they shipped about 12 times as many, 217.1 million.6
In 2012, the private cloud computing infrastructure market was worth $12.3 billion. By 2017, experts estimate, it will likely increase to $22.2 billion.7
As a result of these technological revolutions, today’s IT environment is more complex than ever. The applications that have become critical to business operations require greater processing power, memory, and storage. Every hour – or minute, in some cases – of downtime can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line, costing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.8
In this setting, IT managers’ responsibility for infrastructure reliability looms large. But it’s far from their only concern. IT leaders also must make sure that their systems are flexible enough to handle increasing demand. They have to plan for the technological advances they know are coming as well as those they haven’t anticipated.
At the same time, changes in the server market are leading some enterprises to reconsider their vendor options. Now, more than ever, IT decision makers are seeking stability, agility, and the best value for their IT infrastructure. They also need a plan that will ensure low total cost of ownership (TCO) into the future and that is flexible enough to handle what’s coming next – even when they don’t know exactly what that is.
Based on historical trends, enterprise IT leaders can make a few reasonable assumptions about the future:
Their systems will need to scale as demand grows.
Technology will advance, and they’ll need to adopt these innovations to remain competitive.
The business will pressure IT to keep costs low.
The business’s success (and IT leaders’ jobs) will depend on reliable, consistent access to IT resources.
So how can IT decision makers survive in an environment that demands that they build an infrastructure that’s ready for the requirements they expect – and the curve balls they don’t see coming? Keeping in mind the following factors when evaluating vendors can help prepare them to adapt.
1. Evaluate the track record
One indicator of how well a manufacturer’s servers will likely perform in the future is how they have performed in the past. To select a vendor with a solid track record, organizations should first consider how long the supplier has been in the server business. Well-established players have more than a decade of experience.
Another useful guide is market performance. A large, loyal following bodes well for the quality of its products.
Finally, buyers should consider the supplier’s history. Has it provided stable, consistent architecture? Or has it made dramatic changes that required customers to rip out their existing boxes and replace them when it came time to upgrade?
By doing their homework, organizations can weed out suppliers that lack the stability or experience to meet the needs of a mission-critical infrastructure.
2. Seek out complete solutions
Many organizations find that they get the best results from servers, storage, and networking gear that were designed to work together. With end-to-end solutions like desktop virtualization, it’s also beneficial to choose an organization that can supply and, perhaps more importantly, support end-user computing devices like laptops or tablets. Consolidating with a single vendor simplifies contract management and support, helping to reduce TCO.
Organizations that want to purchase storage and networking gear from the same vendor that supplies their servers must make sure they have a supplier that offers the most advanced and cost-effective features
For storage, they should look for solutions with features that accelerate response times to achieve faster performance for related applications.
When it comes to networking, IT leaders should look for a vendor with products that support software-defined networking (SDN) and that offers a range of networking options and advanced management tools to simplify configuration and maintenance.
The best end-to-end vendors also offer a full array of software and services to support their infrastructure.
3. Consider commitment to innovation
In order to future-proof the data center, consider which vendors have a consistent record of innovation – not just innovation for innovation’s sake, but customer-led innovation that meets the most pressing enterprise needs.
IT departments in organizations of all types and sizes consistently say that reducing costs is one of their top priorities. It makes sense, then, to look for a vendor whose current products help IT save time and money. Features such as agentless management, for example, reduce complexity and simplify day-to-day administrative tasks.
IT leaders may also want to investigate vendors that offer converged infrastructure platforms, which combine servers, storage, and networking in a single chassis. These platforms can provide outstanding performance while reducing TCO.
4. Look for products with superior agility and flexibility
Of course, it’s not only the vendor that is important when looking for future-proof servers – IT decision makers also need to examine the hardware itself.
The key consideration in planning for the future is trying to avoid “rip-and-replace” upgrades. It’s faster and more cost-effective to add or upgrade components in an existing system than to completely swap out its boxes.
When researching servers, IT leaders must make sure they’ll be able to upgrade the components in their infrastructures. Ideally, they should be able to add or upgrade cores as well as RAM. For some applications, expansion slots, the capability to add GPUs, or the ability to add SSDs may be necessary.
As the organization grows, the infrastructure will undoubtedly need to scale up and out, so organizations should choose a vendor with a complete line of server designs, providing multiple form factors engineered for specific environments. And they should ask about scalability features that may be built into the products.
5. Ensure optimization for workloads and environment
The applications an organization will be running in five years undoubtedly will differ from the applications it is running today. So another important part of future-proofing infrastructure is finding hardware that can be optimized for changing workloads.
Customers should look for hardware that comes with resource optimization software that improves utilization while reducing TCO. These tools can automatically route workloads to the most efficient infrastructure and schedule workloads for maximum efficiency.
Similarly, automation tools can increase productivity and reduce IT headaches. With this type of software, IT can reduce the amount of time spent on manual deployment, configuration, upgrades, patches, and maintenance activities, freeing staff for more valuable projects.
In some cases, the hardware comes with flexible configuration options that can help IT meet cost control needs by improving productivity and helping to contain expenses.
6. Choose products with a reputation for reliability
Finally, organizations should consider the reputation of both vendor and products. Because servers support mission-critical applications, reliability is paramount. Look for:
Resiliency, including the use of high-quality components and design strategies that make failure less likely
Redundancy, the use of duplicate components within the hardware to help ensure uptime
Recoverability features, which can get servers back on line faster in the case of unexpected downtime
While they don’t tell the whole story, industry awards and reviews can be a good indicator of quality.
Future-proofing the data center
No one knows what changes the future will bring. Wise infrastructure choices give IT managers a better chance to prepare their organizations to weather – and profit from – changes.
The best way to future-proof infrastructure is to choose a vendor that has consistently provided the innovative, scalable, flexible, reliable products its customers need. That way, the data center will be prepared for growth and changing business requirements, while minimizing total cost of ownership and maximizing productivity.
6 reason to consider Dell infrastructure
1. Market leadership. Dell is one of the top server manufacturers in the world; nearly one out of every four servers sold is made by Dell.
2. End-to-end solutions. Dell offers a complete line of desktops, laptops, tablets, servers, storage solutions, networking gear, software, and services. It has pioneered new technologies like Fluid Cache for SAN, which allows an eight-node cluster processing an Oracle workload to perform 3.9 times more transactions per second, handle 6 times more concurrent users, and reduce the average response time by 99 percent.9
3. Customer-focused innovation. Dell servers offer benefits that are among the most important to IT leaders: exceptional performance and cost savings. The Dell PowerEdge R720 provides the world’s best two-processor Linux® SAP® SD performance10, and the unique Dell PowerEdge VRTX shared infrastructure platform delivers 26 percent lower TCO over five years compared to separate servers and storage.11 Dell also leads the way in energy efficiency: The PowerEdge R720 is the world’s most power-efficient rack server12; the PowerEdge M620 is the world’s most power-efficient blade server13; and the PowerEdge R720 is the world’s most power-efficient server of any kind.14
4. Superior agility and flexibility. Dell hardware and software enable organizations to optimize their infrastructures for changing workloads. The Dell FX platform, for example, features a unique modular design and advanced management tools that offer unprecedented scalability and flexibility.
5. A record of reliability. For nearly 20 years, Dell has provided enterprises with the systems they need for mission-critical applications, leading the way with innovations like Failsafe Virtualization. This unique technology stores an embedded hypervisor image on a redundant SD card within the server and enables organizations to restore virtualization host servers to productivity quickly in the event of a problem.
6. Industry accolades. Dell’s PowerEdge servers have won more than 40 top reviews and awards from leading technology publications and websites. For example, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX recently won InfoWorld’s 2014 Technology of the Year award for best server15, and the Dell PowerEdge R720 is No. 1 on the CRN Test Center’s All-Time list.16
About Dell
Dell Inc. listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit www.Dell.com.
1 http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/expanding-digital-idc-white-paper.pdf and http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/idc-digital-universe-2014.pdf
2 http://www.informationweek.com/intel-amd-redesign-chips-for-faster-virtualized-servers/d/d-id/1056787
3 Gartner, Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure, Thomas J. Bittman, Mark A. Margevicius, Philip Dawson, 02 July, 2014, https://www.gartner.com/doc/2788024?srcId=1-2819006590&pcp=itg
4 http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24645514 and http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110207005332/en/Android-Rises-Symbian3-Windows-Phone-7-Launch#.VL8N8kfF8fU
5 http://www.statista.com/statistics/273818/global-revenue-generated-with-cloud-computing-since-2009
6 http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110310005523/en/18-Million-Media-Tablets-Shipped-2010-Apple#.VL8OakfF8fU and http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24650614
7 http://www.marketresearch.com/IDC-v2477/Worldwide-Private-Cloud-Infrastructure-Forecast-7527920/
8 http://itic-corp.com/blog/2013/07/one-hour-of-downtime-costs-100k-for-95-of-enterprises/
9 http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/dell-fluid-cache-for-san-claims.pdf
10 Results of the Dell PowerEdge R720 on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark: 9,900 SAP SD benchmark users with the SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux 6.4 and Sybase® Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 15.7; two Intel® Xeon® E5-2697 v2 processors (24 cores, 48 threads); and 256GB main memory. Certification number 2013031. Results of the HP® ProLiant® DL380p Gen8 on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark: 9,815 SAP SD benchmark users with the SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4, and Sybase ASE 15.7; two Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 processors (24 cores, 48 threads); and 256 GB main memory. Certification number 2013029. Results as of October 23, 2013. For more details, visit sap.com/benchmark
11 http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-vrtx/pd
12 Dell PowerEdge R720 achieved a SPECpower_ssj2008 result of 8,458 overall ssj_ops/watt which is higher than all published SPEC power results for rack servers as of October 2, 2013. SPEC® and the benchmark name SPECpower_ssj® are trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation
13 A chassis full of Dell PowerEdge M620 blade servers achieves up to 25 percent higher performance/watt ratio than a chassis full of Dell PowerEdge C5220 blade servers. The 16-node Dell PowerEdge M620 achieved a SPECpower_ssj2008 result of 7,525 overall ssj_ops/watt, compared to the 16-node Dell PowerEdge C5220 with a SPECpower_ssj2008 result of 6,000 overall ssj_ops/watt score
14 Dell PowerEdge R720 achieved a SPECpower_ssj2008 result of 8,458 overall ssj_ops/Watt which is higher than all published SPECpower results for rack servers as of October 2, 2013
15 http://www.infoworld.com/article/2606402/data-center/135876-InfoWorlds-2014- -of-the-Year-Award-winners.html
16 http://www.crn.com/reviews/crn-test-center-top-10-server-reviews.htm
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