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same role. More advanced traffic direction and distributed applications will become more necessary as the balkanisation of the Internet picks up. Another effect of the Snowden revelations will be that more nations will look to gain control over Internet connectivity in their regions. Whether it’s in- region root servers or deeper traffic control, these attitudes will move out of the fringes and could start to affect cloud operations. Which is not to say that cloud use is without its benefits. We’ve been pondering the amount of revenue that could be generated by renting out freed-up data centre floor space for functions and events. As more capacity moves to hosted and cloud venues, there will be ever more square footage to be repurposed. If there’s to be a shift to CMOs driving IT budgets, as some have posited, can this sort of thing be far behind? Those forces of efficiency will be pushing for effective utilisation of all assets.
For those CIOs that hold the financial reins, the coming months will be spent in much closer collaboration with the CFO. An emphasis on better metrics will be driven by a need for agility in selecting best execution venues for the various applications the organisation fields. This will lead to the adoption of internal and external cloud brokers and a push for greater analytics.
Next year is still the year of PaaS
After all of the predictions of next year being the year of platform as a service, we’re in enthusiastic agreement once again. This will not be the year that PaaS soars to wild success. While its attractions are large and developers see the value in its charms, the market is still faced with an ‘I’ll adopt it right after I finish this next app’ attitude. As with many aspects of application development, the conflict between utility and efficiency is holding off a move to new technology adoption. PaaS could offer more efficient application delivery, but developers find it expedient to use the tools and techniques with which they’re familiar.
Two legs good, four legs bad What this year will see is the death of multi- tenant-only cloud application delivery. Many providers have been holding to the idea of a single way of delivering their services. While we’ve been harangued about the dangers of ‘false clouds,’ concerns about performance and security will push more providers to offer single-tenant versions of their cloud-based products. That old demon data gravity simply creates too many concerns about noisy and nosy neighbours for some users. Their worries about some clients being more equal
than others will encourage them to own their own means of production. This won’t deter those comfortable with managing multi- tenancy, but it will allow the more cautious to take a first step on their cloud journeys.
The moon and the sun The moon is much smaller than the sun, but its proximity to the earth means that it’s powerful enough to drive the tides. In 2014, we’ll see the small but powerful ARM processors establish a greater presence, trading on their system size and power efficiency. The power dissipation of these much denser configurations will make them resemble the sun, rather than the cooler moon, however. In an interesting paradox, that will limit the deployment densities for low power servers that are possible except in those facilities that have the power and cooling densities to handle them. Some will experiment with using these dense configurations as an alternative to virtualisation, an interesting option where there are concerns about multi-tenancy. For highly parallel workloads, the power efficiency will be attractive, but will remain a distant challenger to conventional processors.
One of the effects of the forces of efficiency will be to take the greater densities that are becoming possible in server configuration and break apart traditional architectures to unlock higher performance. Server disaggregation allows higher levels of utilisation and greater systems flexibility as distributed storage mechanisms put more capacity closer to compute engines. Storage proximity becomes a greater reality with cost declines in SSDs and also conveys the additional benefit of cutting down on storage- generated east-west traffic flows within the data centre. Added to this is the improving position of silicon photonics and its ability to reduce the impact of distance on server construction. It’s a combination that will draw users beyond the hyperscale types.
Hot tubs in every data centre All the power density issues that are created by denser architectures will need better cooling and 2014 will have both data centre operators and systems builders up to their necks in hot water, in some cases literally. In a move to reduce the energy requirements for data centre cooling, operators will be relying less on chillers in favour of raising water temperatures and using more energy-efficient cooling mechanisms, such as evaporative and direct/indirect economisation. It requires re-engineering heat transfer expectations, but the energy savings are substantial. With exit water
temperatures at better than 95° F/34° C, we can expect some very toasty systems administrators. IBM has been operating an air-cooled data centre in Zurich that heats a nearby pool with waste heat. What’s to keep other data centres from adding a great new perk for the operations team?
Liquid cooling will make its first extension from the aisles and into the chassis in 2014. Where it was once the realm of exotic components and extreme performance, direct liquid cooling will make it into more mainstream applications. Bringing cooling water to the components generating the heat will require additional plumbing, but the savings in energy costs from both more efficient heat transfer and reduced air handling will make it worthwhile for those applications that have headed to higher energy dissipation. The change in high- performance computing deployments will lead the wave, with broader application following in later years. There will be more warm water for the hot tub!
Data centres through the looking glass Environmental management won’t be the only thing on the minds of data centre operators in the year ahead. Multi-tenant facilities will be looking to bulk up on a steady diet of fibre, both lit and dark, to become more attractive. That glass will link facilities to clients as interest grows in creating execution venues that feel like they’re close to home, but are managed by others. Metro fibre assets are the first of these, with longer distance connections and increasing carrier densities following.
At the same time as ties to clients increase, broader connectivity options will also begin to play a larger role in data centre competitiveness. That competition is creating a collision in approaches as the Internet exchange model that’s been popular in Europe makes landfall in the US and carrier densities increase in facilities that haven’t traditionally offered those options. The Open IX Association is signing up members, while larger operators are creating inter-facility links and adding capacity and carriers. Customers will benefit the most because they’ll be happy to see more light at the end of the fibre tunnel.
The data revolution will not be televised In our final installment, we’ll head into information management, analytics and social business. While the soporific effects of dealing with digital governance might be debatable, the revolution in analytics and data handling is much less so. There are changes afoot that will expand the availability of analytics, increasing its impact and reach.
February 2014 I
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