For a data center in a climate with hot summers, this can mean massive cooling costs. These costs can be so high that it makes sense to locate a server farm or data center in a cold climate with frigid winters and cool summers—the sort of climate where air conditioning is rare and the locals complain if the summer temperature rises above 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Data center consulting companies are increasingly recommending locating server farms in cool climates.

Minnesota is especially well-suited for data centers and server farms. These facilities do not always require a large staff but it’s important to have IT talent available—which is why being too remote can be a mistake. So Minnesota combines a deep pool of IT talent, especially around the Twin Cities area, with cool weather year-round.

According to an article on the Minnesota Public Radio website, a company based in Iowa is building a $12 million data center in Duluth, Minnesota, precisely due to the cool climate. One “tenant” in the building is Essentia Health—which simply outgrew its ability to cool the building that housed its data center.

“We’ve outgrown mainly the power and cooling in these data centers,” Dennis Smith, Essentia’s director of technology systems, told MPR. “As these systems get more dense, hotter, we had to do something.”

The developer of the server farm believes it will only have to use air conditioning units 14 times a year. While server farms use significant amounts of electricity—even without the air conditioning—Minnesota still provides an advantage because power costs are in the bottom 10 percent in the United States.

It’s likely that IT companies in Minnesota will start to recommend that their clients locate servers in the state. This provides clients with added peace of mind—knowing their IT experts are close to their servers and related IT infrastructure. While few of the major players have located server facilities in Minnesota, they’ve chosen upper Midwest locations including Omaha, Nebraska; West Des Moines, Iowa; and Council Bluffs, Iowa.

To compete, the Minnesota government has been looking at legislation that would provide tax incentives to companies that locate server farms in the state. In addition to benefitting from the cold hard winters of Minnesota, companies could benefit from some cold hard cash—in the form of useful tax breaks.

How do we know so much about these benefits? Datatrend’s headquarters are in Minnetonka, Minnesota, which is west of Minneapolis in the Twin Cities metro area. We’ve experienced for ourselves the benefits of cold locales for data center implementation and so can you.  Consider Minnesota next time your company needs to expand or upgrade data center services – and consider Datatrend to help you do it.

Although there are benefits to server storage in Minnesota, our capabilities go beyond the state’s borders: Datatrend is ready to provide a wide range of IT solutions including server management and installation throughout the United States.

Want to Reduce Data Center Costs? Head for Minnesota was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it

• Worldwide data is doubling every 18-36 months
• By 2013 the amount of data flowing over the Internet will exceed 667 Petabytes annually
• 87 percent of enterprises store more than one Terabyte of data and 29 percent store more than 100 TB

To help you keep up with the explosion of data, the Datatrend data storage solution experts offer their top four data storage picks:

1. IBM Storwize® V7000 Unified – One of our mid-range market favorites for its versatility in virtual environments, the V7000 enables block and file storage in a single system.  An active cloud engine reduces storage costs by incorporating policy-based management of files with tiered storage.  We also like that the V7000 automatically migrates data between storage tiers based on real-time usage.  In our opinion, it’s one of the most advanced, yet easy-to-manage data storage options.
2. IBM XIV Storage System – This high-end server made our list for its performance with ultra-demanding and diverse workloads.  We’ve found that the XIV data storage solution gives database administrators high reliability and performance at a low overall total cost of ownership (TCO).  In fact, according to an IBM case study, the XIV storage system reduced TCO by as much as 69 percent.  We think the XIV Gen3 version is an ideal solution for enterprise storage applications including business intelligence, archiving large email setups, data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads.
3. IBM System Storage DS8000 – Given the complexity of today’s data centers, the IBM System Storage DS8000 is our pick for a broad scope of storage workloads.  Features including automated storage tiering, automated quality of services management, broad server support and outstanding scalability help optimize storage performance, application workload management and workload performance.  We like the DS8000 because it has the proven reliability and performance you’d expect from an IBM data storage solution, but with automation updates.
4. IBM System Storage DS3500 Express – Robust, yet easy to use, the DS3500 Express is our top pick for mid-range, cost-sensitive businesses.  And its mid-range performance at entry-level prices isn’t the only benefit.  We consider it to be quite powerful from a storage management perspective, due to its built-in storage management software.

While hardware represents part of the solution to the growing data epidemic, it goes a long way toward improving efficiency and application performance. Learn how the Datatrend data storage solutions experts can keep you ahead of the growing data curve.

Top 4 Data Storage Solutions was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it

1.       Secure your network. Consider a DMZ (also known as a perimeter network) to protect your wired LAN but understand what users will be doing on the DMZ.  For large file transfers, a DMZ and a wired Ethernet can significantly improve transfer speeds, but security can be compromised despite the fact that a DMZ is designed to provide an additional layer of security.  Consider additional wireless security—authentication and encryption schemes (See point #3).  If you’re providing guests wired access, then consider a designated Ethernet guest port that bypasses the corporate LAN and routes to a guest LAN using authentication.

2.       Mind the gap. Most wireless LANs require multiple access points for better access and data transfer speeds.  Make certain you consider a properly planned structured cabling installation in your distribution system.  After all, the distribution system is the “wired backbone” that enables roaming protocols to work on a wireless network.  Consider the distance between the hubs or switches and make certain it doesn’t exceed the length of the Cat5/Cat5e cable.

3.       Know your scope. Many smaller wireless LAN deployments are effective with just a hub.  However an enterprise-wide wireless LAN is not only more effective with switches, but also more secure because you can use optical fiber to connect the switches to a master.  Optical fiber also can increase the range of your distribution system.

4.       Get the rate straight. As bandwidth demand increases, faster speeds are necessary to handle the 100+Mbps data transfer rates.  Connecting 802.11g access points using 10-Base-T cable installation instead of 100-Base-T twisted pair can result in bottlenecks.  In addition, newer 802.11n access points may require a cabling installation using Cat5e or even Cat6 cable.

5.       Plan for power. Power over Ethernet (PoE) is another important upfront consideration that can save time and money later.  The extra pairs of wires within a Cat5 cable can supply electrical power to your access points as part of the distribution system.

The performance of your wireless network is, in part, the result of the network cabling installation on your wired network. Taking this information into account when you roll out your wireless network and making accommodations for it can vastly improve its function.

Contact our expert team to learn how Datatrend’s network cabling installation services drive high performance wired and wireless networks.

Network Cabling Installation: Are You Wired for Wireless? was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it

With more advanced application dependency tools, network administrators can gain an in-depth and holistic view of business critical applications from a user’s perspective.  In today’s heterogeneous application environment, it’s not enough to know that a business application is running.   Quality of service relative to the business application is critical, especially when it comes to identifying or even pre-empting an issue from affecting service levels.  In addition, most data center initiatives—including virtualization and business continuity and disaster recovery planning—require a keen understanding of application dependencies before embarking on a decision.

Application Dependency Mapping Can Reduce Risk and Costs

Through application dependency mapping, you gain greater insight to what drives your business critical applications at service and transaction levels.  For example, let’s say latency is hampering order processes, putting your business at risk of losing valuable orders.  Application dependency mapping can help you pinpoint the root cause quickly before valuable orders are lost.  Armed with the details your IT teams can resolve issues faster and with a full understanding of how the resolution will impact the network, not only providing optimum service levels, but also reducing risk to the top line.

Application dependency mapping gives you a holistic view of the critical applications that run your business.  So you’re not simply looking at a business application and the environment in which it’s running, you’re also visualizing how other infrastructure changes may be impacting the performance of the business applications.

Enhance Business Growth

Application silos are a deterrent to profitable business growth.  Fully leveraging the value of IT to capitalize on business opportunities requires visibility to the key applications that run the business.  The IT executive must answer the tough question, “How can IT help make business growth more profitable?”  The answer could lay in consolidating data centers, considering a virtualized environment or standardizing configuration management among other potential answers.  Understanding application dependency helps you make better business-based IT decisions, and do so faster because you can more easily assess the impact of a decision on other areas of your infrastructure.

So whether the business-related IT decision is as broad as optimizing application performance or as focused as mapping common interface (CI) relationships and collecting data for the CMDB, visibility to application dependency is essential.  And newer tools aimed at optimizing application service management can help.

Contact our expert team to learn how Datatrend’s BlueStripe FactFinder can optimize the performance of your business critical applications.

How Application Dependency Can Improve Business Performance was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it

Although there are hundreds of reasons to go green with your network cabling, here are 5 major reasons the businesses we work with choose green network cabling:

1)    Improving energy efficiency. Data centers and other network operations can be structured to have a reduced impact on the environment by using less electricity. Power saving designs that use less electricity may cost more up front, but translate into companies spending less money on energy bills.

2)    Fewer toxins. Efficient cabling that uses less energy results in less pollution and toxins outdoors. What people might not expect is that green network cabling manufactured without hazardous substances results in less pollution within interior spaces where employees are working. Improved worker health can also bring about lower health insurance costs.

3)    Reduce, reuse, recycle. Copper and oil-based plastics are not unlimited resources. What happens once the mines and wells are depleted? Green network cabling not only contains post-industrial recycled content, it offers more complete recyclability of both copper and plastics at end-of-life.

4)    Fewer replacements. Lower-performing cabling has to be replaced more often, leading to consumption of more materials and costing companies money with every rewiring installation. Green cabling aims to reduce what materials will need to be replaced over the lifetime of data centers. Products that have a longer life also help to maximize upgradability and modularity of network products.

5)    Advantage green. In addition to substantial reductions in the overall cost of operations and savings on energy and water resources, green cabling initiatives can help data centers and other network operations acquire a better corporate image. A green network concept is a demonstration of the company’s commitment to environment protection, which resonates will with consumers.

Going green is about transforming your business environment for the future and using technology to its fullest. Installing green network cabling not only has a positive effect on the individual business installing it, it is one of the primary ways that the cabling industry, data centers and network operations can have a greater positive effect on the environment.

Does your business run a green data center? Share your story below.

5 Reasons For The Rise Of Green Network Cabling was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it

The ‘Mores’ of IBM Power Systems
1) More power
2) More speed
3) More efficiency
4) More productivity

These aspects of business are interrelated and can build on each other when it comes to technology infrastructure solutions. More processing power means more speed within the network. When servers or people can quickly access the information needed, more speed means more efficiency. When people and servers are able to work more efficiently, productivity can be increased.

Today’s IT landscape for enterprises large and small is evolving rapidly. New measures of performance means services are delivered faster, with greater quality, efficiency and better economy. But not if you’re still using an old, outdated system.

Power Systems technology infrastructure solutions offer servers and software that are the basis for a network infrastructure that can help businesses manage change, reduce risk and meet higher expectations, all in a cost-effective manner. IBM Power Systems include products, solutions and services that matter to small, midsized and large businesses alike. An integrated approach to the design of Power Systems servers ensures businesses can depend on high quality of service, while increasing energy efficiency and reducing costs associated with computing infrastructures.

In fact, more organizations are recognizing the benefits of consolidating onto Power Systems. Over the last five years, there have been more than 3,900 migrations from Oracle and HP UNIX® systems to IBM Power Systems™.

At Datatrend, we can evaluate your current system, current needs and future predictions, and then deliver a made-to-order technology consultation. We cover in-depth how organizations can leverage advanced functions to optimize or to deploy IBM Power-based solutions that meet scaling, performance and availability objectives.

Contact our expert team to learn more about Datatrend’s IBM Power-based services and other technology infrastructure solutions.

More POWER with Power Services was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it

Before I review the WHY, allow me to take a moment to discuss the WHAT. What really is a data center assessment? A data center assessment is a thorough review of a data center’s conditions and environment. Such an analysis may involve a review of an existing data center’s reliability and points of failure, as well as a review of growth, floor space, and power and cooling needs. By examining these conditions, a business can establish facts about a network on which analysis and recommendations for management can be based.

Now on to the WHY. Here are 4 reasons WHY a data center assessment can benefit you:

1) Enhanced performance and maintainability of the network due to accurate system awareness

2) Precise identification of infrastructure areas that need improvement

3) Reduced chances of investment in unsupportable equipment

4) Superior risk mitigation planning and disaster recovery

A data center analysis can identify a center’s strengths and weaknesses, lead to better-informed decisions, and lower costs for hardware, software and facilities. The recommendations made through a good assessment can have an immediate impact for the better once implemented.

Is it time you had your data center assessed?

4 Benefits of a Data Center Assessment was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it

The one unrelenting IT truth is that as a business evolves and expands, its IT infrastructure becomes more complex. Don’t believe me? How many servers does your business have? It’s a simple question that can be difficult to answer (don’t feel ashamed if you’re still working towards that answer).

Even a relatively small infrastructure can have hundreds or thousands of dependent connections that could stretch across counties, states or even nations. If a single dependent server or connection breaks down, getting the network back up and running can be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack, costing time and money until the issue is found.

Server discovery consulting and dependency mapping services like ours at Datatrend can help businesses untangle the web of complexity of even the most advanced businesses. With Server Discovery, technicians use industry leading IT infrastructure tools to identify the dependencies of each server and connection, from applications to switches, operating systems to configuration.

How can Server Discovery Consulting and Dependency Mapping services benefit your IT infrastructure? This service will help a business to:

1.   Track system metrics and interrelationships through easy to read dashboard reports
2.   Generate reports and perform automated audits that can instantly answer pressing IT infrastructure questions and  aid in decision making
3.    Quickly identify, repair or replace malfunctioning, inefficient or decommissioned servers

IT infrastructure is complicated, no matter the size of a business. Because of IT interdependency, even trying to improve them can be risky. Data Center and Server Discovery Services reduce the risks while making managing IT infrastructures simpler and saving businesses money. In fact, these analyses can pay for themselves in as little as 30 days.

Analyze your IT infrastructure and start saving time and money today with help from our expert team at Datatrend.

IT Infrastructure Tips: How Server Discovery Helps Businesses was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it

Companies today need sophisticated tools to effectively consider all the options and assure the maximization of all aspects of supply chain infrastructure. This is especially when decisions involve multiple products made across various manufacturing, shipping and distribution points. The time to discover the biggest supply chain improvement opportunities is during assessment or reassessment of the infrastructure in place.

Network infrastructure and operations offer the biggest opportunities to reduce a supply chain’s expenditures. Businesses that routinely re-evaluate their network and ensure all the best processes and tools are in place experience the most stable and most profitable operations. Their managers identify and analyze potential ways to improve their business and create a plan of action to accomplish it.

However, internal infrastructure can restrict the types of decisions managers make and degrees of freedom that are available to them. The way a company responds to changes in demand or supply will determine its profitability. A recurring evaluation of infrastructure should be considered a necessity.

A good supply chain infrastructure planning process goes beyond elimination of waste to analysis of benefits and tradeoffs. Good supply chain operations happen because the people in charge of different departments, such as sales, manufacturing, logistics, procurement and finance, can communicate because they have all the information they need available. Using tools to analyze the total impact of different courses of action can optimize decision making to meet overall objectives.

Even with collaboration across all of the stakeholders, the supply chain infrastructure design process depends on forecasts of the future, some of which will prove to be inaccurate, such as customer demand, availability of raw materials and cost transportation. Advanced supply chain tools can be used to explore different possible futures and evaluate a course of action. That way, decision makers can confidently choose what will perform well and position the company for a positive return.

Following this advice can create opportunities that increase profit margins. Those who reevaluate their network infrastructure regularly tend to become supply chain and profitability leaders. However, it is not complete without putting the new network plan into action. Set your company on a course to avoid supply chain pitfalls by implementing a more thoughtful strategy.

Supply Chain Costs Too High? Analyze Your Network Infrastructure was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it

Photo Courtesy of IBM Power Systems

Are you happy with your UNIX environment? Have you thought about a better solution?  Datatrend can prove how moving to IBM Power Systems from Oracle/Sun and/or HP-UX will increase performance, efficiencies and ease of management. Plus, it will dramatically reduce costs!

Datatrend and IBM have teamed up to offer a no charge ROI and TCO analysis of your existing UNIX environment (including even older IBM environments) leveraging the patented Enterprise ROI Engine from Alinean, Inc., widely recognized by Gartner and IDC as key to successful financial modeling.

More clients are realizing the benefits of consolidating workloads that have been running on x86 servers onto Power Systems. Over the last five years, IBM Migration Factory has been involved in more than 3,900 migrations from Oracle and HP UNIX® systems to IBM Power Systems™, with no signs of slowing down. Through 2010 and first half of 2011 alone, more than 1,760 competitive migrations to IBM Power Systems were completed.

Alinean has developed TCO and ROI models that calculate applied IT spending and TCO benchmarks to compile data and metrics about your system. This information can then be used to model typical data center strategies and best practices of IBM Power Systems server and operating solutions. The difference between the two systems can then be evaluated.

IBM and Datatrend are top performers in the industry, but they are even more powerful as a team. IBM Power Systems, System x, BladeCenter and storage system solutions are dependable, consistently outperforming the competition, using significantly less energy and offering industry-leading technology. Datatrend delivers experience and results in deploying IBM storage and server technology infrastructure solutions for organizations of all shapes and sizes.

Datatrend will collaborate with you to evaluate your current system, present needs and future projection, and then deliver a tailored technology briefing. We cover in detail how organizations can leverage advanced functions to optimize or to deploy POWER-based solutions that meet scaling, performance, and availability objectives.

Contact our expert team to learn more about Datatrend’s POWER-based services and other technology infrastructure solutions.

The POWER of Power Services was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it