Oct 2 2008 7:57PM GMT
Posted by: Mark Fontecchio
DataCenter,
AFCOM,
Data center user groups
Based on a pre-conference survey, here are some of the sessions generating the most interest for the Data Center World conference being held in Orlando next week, Oct 5-7:
- Inexpensive Techniques to a Greener Data Center (Monday at 10:10-11am; Tuesday at 4:30-5:30pm)
Vinnie Jain, Advanced Marketing Manager, Ortronics/Legrand
With the constantly increasing demand for higher density and higher speeds in data centers, data center managers are always looking for ways to save energy wherever they can to avoid the ever growing problem of power and cooling. This session reveals some inexpensive and effective best practices to improve airflow and thus reduce energy consumption while keeping the data center cool. Data center layout, heat simulation, energy efficiency, and cable management will be discussed. IT managers will learn efficient and cost-effective processes for saving power and creating room for the equipment needed to handle increasing demands on bandwidth. In today’s world, going green is essential to running an efficient data center. Attendees will leave this session with some inexpensive energy saving techniques that will lead them to a greener path.
- The New Role of the Data Center Manager (Monday at 9-10am; Tuesday at 4:30-5:30pm)
Paul Clark, Data Center Manager, The Ohio State University Medical Center
Ron Kibbe, Assistant Director-Customer Support Services, The Ohio State University Medical Center
The role of the data center manager has changed. Dramatic growth of open systems, virtualization, increased network complexity, and storage area networks require higher rack densities that must be balanced with rising energy costs demanding more efficient power and cooling strategies. The data center manager’s role now requires effective understanding of emerging IT technologies and how to fit them into less space, with less environmental impact. This session discusses and offers recommendations to overcome some of the business, technical, and political challenges that the new data center manager faces. Attendees will learn what the industry experts suggest, resources that are available, and the tools to make it all work.
- Data Center Trends and Best Practices Performance (Monday at 10:10-11am; Tuesday at 8-9am)
Mark Levin, Sr. Partner, Metrics Based Assessments LLC
Over the past five years, data centers have grown in both size and complexity, and performance has improved for unit cost and staff productivity. However, basic data center functions, such as disk management, and problem, change and asset management have not improved for most data centers. The gap between average and best practice performance for these areas continues to widen. This session will present a discussion of these trends (z/OS, Windows, UNIX and Linux), and describe what best practice data centers are doing to achieve outstanding performance, e.g., data center and server consolidation. Many of the best practices discussed during the session can be adopted by attendees. They will learn what data centers can do to outperform the average and achieve best practice, how to measure the characteristics of excellence, what attributes identify a best practice data center, how does a world-class data center organize to do its work, how performance is monitored in a world-class data center, and how do you target improvements to achieve best practice?
- Building the Next Generation Data Center Facility (Monday at 9-10am; Tuesday at 3:15-4:15pm)
John Savageau, Managing Director, CRG West
Data center designers and planners are stepping up to the challenges of building high powered, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective facility solutions to meet the needs of tenants deploying a variety of dense server, GRID, and high-availability applications and services. Data center managers face many issues, including how to acquire utility power, space and permits for additional emergency power generation equipment and cooling equipment without eliminating available space or creating an unreasonable environmental burden. This presentation will offer a systematic approach to data center acquisition, design, and construction strategies to meet the needs of the next-generation, high powered user.
For a full guide to all the sessions, visit the Data Center World site.