Power games drive data centre developments

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(Source: IDGNS)

As efficiency, power and processing demands increase across top-end data centres, Alastair Waite of TE Connectivity believes clients are becoming increasingly aware of what exactly a worthwhile data centre offering should incorporate.

With this awareness, said the company’s head of enterprise data centre business for EMEA and India, comes a desire to keep an eye of what exactly is happening within the data centre itself.
“We’re seeing people demanding far more information about their data centre infrastructure,” said Waite, “trying to monitor it at every point and then using that data as a way to try and manage it. I’m talking about making sure every asset they have in the data centre space is being appropriately used and is giving them a return on investment.”
Converged infrastructure specialist for HP Ireland’s enterprise group, Davin Cody agreed that many companies “no longer view the data centre as separate to the [IT] infrastructure” and as such, they want to keep tabs on it where possible.

“Being able to monitor and communicate with each connection point in terms of the physical layers of the data centre is critical in several regards, including answering any audit or compliance challenges,” Alastair Waite, TE Connectivity

Products such as HP’s Intelligent series racks can, said Cody, “give customers a rack and data centre view of their infrastructure”. It’s the type of functionality, he said, which allows companies “to see where certain servers are residing within the data centre and then overlay that with a thermal view of the room” to offer a greater level of oversight.

Tanya Duncan, Interxion Ireland managing director told ComputerScope, “The ability to monitor and report on a lot of the things in the data centre is a real positive. We can design and engineer a data centre to the best of our ability but if it’s not operated in the right way — both by the data centre and the client — then it’s kind of useless. [Monitoring] allows for tweaking so that whatever is being installed is being used to the right effect.”

Elsewhere, TE Connectivity’s Waite said that “being able to monitor and communicate with each connection point” in terms of the physical layers of the data centre is “critical” in several regards, including answering any audit or compliance “challenges”.

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