The relentless growth in the volume of data created every day, has compelled Data Center administrators to integrate new technologies and processes. With the global popularity of cloud computing, the role of Data Centers has extended beyond providing enough storage capacity with data security. Data Centers – optimized with various tools and services, are now transformed into strategic business assets. Here are five cool features of next generation Data Centers.

Software Defined Data Centers (SDDC)

In IT, everything is literally virtualized and delivered as a service. And the virtualization of Data Centers is the next logical step. The virtual layer is taking over in Data Centers, making them flexible, highly secure and extremely agile. Infrastructure and network, both are not just virtualized in a software defined Data Center but are delivered as a service also. Many mainstream mega-scale Data Centers are moving forward to gain edge with software-defined Data Centers.

Data Center Operating Systems (DCOS)

Data Centers have a diversified need for an extended control layer and the interconnectivity in Data Centers depend upon Data Center management. Many providers deploy Data Center operating control layers that manage resources, users and virtual machines to meet the needs of improving scalability of management infrastructure. Aiming at greater scalability, Data Centers are now better equipped for controlling various crucial components ranging from chips to cooling systems. The DCOS layer has considerably enhanced infrastructure due to its integration into every critical aspect of every Data Center.

Infrastructure Optimization with Agnostic Data Center

The next generation Data Centers will have layered management tools that can pool resources logically as per required workloads. This kind of infrastructure will only be obtained with an agnostic Data Center that lets admin to create more powerful and scalable cloud platforms. The Data Center will become much more abstract and with infrastructure optimization, vendor lockdown can be prevented. Moreover, administrators get to manage traffic influx while leveraging hardware and software optimization. In future Data Centers, what will matter is that you smoothly present resources to the management layer irrespective of the kind of hardware deployed, enabling clients to integrate with outside technologies, flawlessly.

Better Control Layers

Each Data Center hosts a diverse variety of systems. Therefore, the control layer also needs to be greatly diversified. And since the management console integrates into APIs, it can grow exponentially to keep pace with the increasing Data Center footprint. The new-age Data Centers allow API integrated management consoles to render the big data clout, manipulation and management along with allocation of resources. Furthermore, you can even vie for better multi-tenancy options and optimum cloud scaling by embracing API integrated networking technologies.

Greater Logical and Physical Automation

With the continuous enterprise popularity of cloud computing, vendors lose sleep over supplying application performance and predictability. It is not easy to achieve a fully functional, automated Data Center environment. Hence, introduction of robots in Data Centers will be one of the most basic features of next generation Data Centers. It will provision the resources more actively.

Improve energy efficiency

Energy is the core of every Data Center. Power and thermal management give you a long-term strategic advantage. Cooling the equipment is indispensable and that requires a lot of power. But if you use a containment system, you may be able to reduce energy usage by 8-10 percent. And if you are yet to decide on a location, consider a place with a moderate climate, which may give you some advantage over operating a full-fledged HVAC system. You can also switch to hardware that are faster and require less power such as SSDs over hard-disk drives.

Focus on storage and capacity

Rapid data growth fuels the increasing demand for capacity storage in Data Center. And while it’s a challenge for Data Center management, it is not feasible to purchase new storage solutions every time, given the ever-increasing data. You will have to take the do-more-with-less approach to avoid the high cost of ownership. At this point, you can benefit from adopting performance analytics software. You must also monitor devices, troubleshoot drives and improve drive management processes to make sure that drives are working optimally and identify potential issues well before they affect processes.

Enhance data security

Data security is the nerve center and with the recent high-profile security breaches, it has become top priority for the management. It is imperative to improve comprehensive security measures. Data security needs vary from one organization to another and you should employ encryption for data as per your organizational needs.

Consider virtualization

With virtualization, you can bundle numerous data and computing processes into a smaller footprint, which leads to reducing life-cycle cost and adding efficiency. Virtualization means your data will require less space and power. You can replace large physical servers with a few machines that run numerous Virtual Machines (VMs), which can also serve your storage needs with virtual disks. Virtualization will ensure a modular infrastructure that incorporates networking, storage and servers on a single computing platform.

Strategies for avoiding disaster

Coming up with strategies to avoid disasters may not seem like much but in the long run, it adds to the efficiency of your Data Center. There is a growing threat of common natural and man-made disasters and planning to overcome possible failures is a priority for organizations. Locations, building designs, power standards and alternative recovery locations are the focus to avoid issues post disaster.