Data Center Automation - The Data Center of the Future

Many forward thinking companies are assessing the opting and taking strategic steps toward data center automation (DCA). To consider creating an automated data center the company must look at the efficiency of the challenges the data centers face currently as well as planning for further technological advancements that will change the way the datacenters operates in the future. Eliminating the need for a full data management team and allowing one or two skilled IT people to maintain the data in a supervisory capacity.

Many forward thinking companies are assessing the opting and taking strategic steps toward data center automation (DCA). To consider creating an automated data center the company must look at the efficiency of the challenges the data centers face currently as well as planning for further technological advancements that will change the way the datacenters operates in the future. Eliminating the need for a full data management team and allowing one or two skilled IT people to maintain the data in a supervisory capacity.

The main capabilities that a DCA will need to have no matter what sort of business it is designed for is centralized management, and support for heterogeneous systems. The ability to provide workflow capability will become more important as the environment within the data center and networking itself changes and grows. As virtual technology increases, the DCA will have to have management systems to control both the physical and virtual application infrastructure.

The idea of DCA also bring up many risk factors, essentially by having a fully automated data center the entire business' communications, and data systems will be pooled. This puts many different tasks into the hands of the IT department to troubleshoot and prevent failure. Many businesses are already utilizing the spread of virtual machines to disperse the risk element.

Any plans for DCA need to move past the management capability benefits and include how automation and computing are going to move forward. A solid DCA plan will not only look at automation but will also address the potential problems that automation may encounter, such as how to enable resource allocation while driving responsiveness to the business' needs.

Before moving forward with a DCA any IT company needs to identify how they can alter their data center management requirements, whether this means new equipment, new servers, and even service oriented changes. Any solution chosen should work to integrate all the components of the datacenter management into an automated system.

Once the IT department has decided to move forward towards data center automation and the standards that will signify success, they will need to determine the precise steps that have to be taken to achieve complete DCA that will be about to meet all internal service levels and standards of operation that the business depends upon.

Taking this comprehensive and knowledgeable approach to altering the data center management system is the best way that a business can keep up with the changing technology and expand their business while still maintaining a stable and secure network from which to operate. Seeking the knowledge of skilled IT personnel as well as seeking more knowledge of the automation process will help insure that a business can take the changes in stride and seamlessly shift from a data center management team to data center automation.

George Edmondson is an accomplished writer on data center management. For more information about data center management, you can visit http://www.datacentermanagementguide.com