Continuous Data Center Transformation

The reality of next generation data center managementis that there is no such thing as a steady state.

As virtualization management becomes more complex, virtual machines and their application workloads will be moving within and across multiple data centers. And when you add in the notion of hybrid cloud computing, it may very well wind up that virtual machines will be moving across organizational boundaries as well.

The folks at SANpulse Technologies think that IT organizations are going to need some help managing that. To that end, SANpulse at the 2010 Gartner Data Center Conference this week announced that it is making the tools they use in their consulting practice directly available to IT organizations. Those tools, based on the SANlogics Software Platform from SANpulse, help automate tasks such as data discovery and correlation, storage analytics and reporting for auditing/planning.

Marie-Pierre Belanger, vice president of product management for SANpulse, says the basic idea is to have SANpulse consultants help set up the initial data center management processes, and then transfer the management of the data center over to the IT organization using the tools and methodology developed by SANpulse.

It’s become clear that data center optimization is no longer an event; it’s an ongoing process. And right now, there is more data center transformation taking place thanks to the advent of virtualization and new integrated servers than at any time in recent memory.

When it comes to the management of modern data centers, it should come as no surprise that IT organizations need a little extra help. The real challenge is getting the whole data center transformation process started. Of course, you could argue that the process already started with the deployment of the first virtual machine. The only real questions are: How long will it take for the rest of the transformation and how will it ultimately be managed?