Be Aware of These 5 Data Center Trends in 2018
Welcome to 2018! We’ve already been gearing up to tackle new challenges, more connected users, and an ever-evolving digital world. Many of the broader trends are having an impact on the modern data center. A few key projects that started over the course of 2017 will help shape the data center over the next few years.
In 2018, new solutions and concepts around data center architecture will force business leaders and IT professionals to think differently when it comes to helping the data center run more optimally and create competitive advantages.
Today, we look at those considerations, technologies, and new solutions. Remember, as the data center shifts to support more digital strategies, the business will rely on the capabilities of your IT ecosystem to support new initiatives. As a note, the following technologies are projects that are currently dominating the list. These solutions aim to have the greatest impact without completely disrupting functionality.
With that, here’s the list of data center trends that everyone should be aware of for 2018:
1. 2018 is the year of the Edge Data Center. I’m not saying the cloud bubble has burst. And, it’s important to note that the edge is not here to replace the cloud. In the many edge projects we’re working on, edge solutions are designed to complement data center and cloud services. Edge computing serves as the decentralized extension of the campus networks, cellular networks, data center networks, or the cloud. “Organizations that have embarked on a digital business journey have realized that a more decentralized approach is required to address digital business infrastructure requirements,” says Santhosh Rao, principal research analyst at Gartner. “As the volume and velocity of data increases, so too does the inefficiency of streaming all this information to a cloud or data center for processing.” Effectively, organizations are working hard to decentralize compute power and place it closer to the point where data is generated. That is, the edge.
2. All-flash solutions will eliminate a number of design challenges. We are seeing rows and rows of spinning disk being removed to make way for far more efficient all-flash solutions. Gartner recently predicted that by 2021, 50 percent of data centers will use SSAs for high-performance computing and big data workloads -- up from less than 10 percent today. "Advancements in SSD technology and lower price points are driving broader SSD adoption and are making SSDs a ubiquitous storage technology," said Jeff Janukowicz, a research VP at IDC. "SSD adoption in the client PC and in the enterprise data center market continues to increase, which will drive SSD unit shipments to grow."
2. All-flash solutions will eliminate a number of design challenges. We are seeing rows and rows of spinning disk being removed to make way for far more efficient all-flash solutions. Gartner recently predicted that by 2021, 50 percent of data centers will use SSAs for high-performance computing and big data workloads -- up from less than 10 percent today. "Advancements in SSD technology and lower price points are driving broader SSD adoption and are making SSDs a ubiquitous storage technology," said Jeff Janukowicz, a research VP at IDC. "SSD adoption in the client PC and in the enterprise data center market continues to increase, which will drive SSD unit shipments to grow."
[iframe id="google_ads_iframe_/3834/dcknowledge.home/article/manage_9" title="3rd party ad content" name="google_ads_iframe_/3834/dcknowledge.home/article/manage_9" width="300" height="250" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0" style="box-sizing: inherit;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px; border-right-width:0px;border-top-width:0px;vertical-align:bottom"] [/iframe] 3. It’s all about converged technologies in 2018 and beyond. This type of architecture aims to remove siloes of resources, challenges around administration, and issues with scale. Like all-flash solutions, converged and hyper-converged infrastructure (CI and HCI) is designed to drastically simplify data center design and allow the business to be a lot more agile. "The converged systems market is benefiting from an expansion into new environments and a new set of customers," said Eric Sheppard, a research director at IDC. "This expansion is driven by products that are offering new levels of automation, tighter integration between technologies, and, in many cases, software-defined solutions based on scale-out architectures."
4. Prepare your data center for hybrid. On the theme of decentralization, hybrid cloud continues to be a dominant factor when it comes to data center design and integration with cloud. Most of the organizations that I work with have active hybrid cloud initiatives or deployments. They’re not planning on going full public, and they’re not interested in reintroducing cloud elements on premises. Hybrid has been a great model for many organizations across all sizes and verticals. Moving forward, the adoption will only continue to grow. Gartner recently pointed out that more than $1 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the shift to cloud during the next five years. The market for cloud services continues to grow, say analysts, making cloud computing one of the most disruptive forces in IT spending today. Gartner predicts that by 2020, 90 percent of organizations will adopt hybrid infrastructure management capabilities. That said, it’ll be important to understand where these types of solution can impact your business and where you should be deploying hybrid.
5. More investment made in data center efficiency: AFM, DCIM, Liquid Cooling, Microgrids. As you read through the previous four trends, you probably noticed that they’ll each require you to look at the data center a bit differently. This might mean that you’re deploying an edge data center, removing legacy components and replacing them with all-flash or converged systems, or leveraging a hybrid cloud model. All this will impact how your data center is designed and operated. Organizations are looking at new ways to optimize their data centers and the critical resources they house. Airflow management and computational fluid dynamics have helped data center operators create more efficiency and better understand how to design their data centers. Some will work with modular containment around key systems to help optimize airflow. Others might look at new airflow management systems that impact HPC or new converged systems.
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