10 Things You Can Learn at Data Center World Fall

While a data center as a physical object is a fairly static thing – fans humming, lights blinking, but not much movement beyond that – nothing is ever static in the data center industry.

The rate of change today is especially high. As far as the software developer is concerned, infrastructure today is virtual, easy to provision, and infinite. Of course, that couldn’t be further from the truth from the data center manager’s perspective, yet the direction of the industry is to continue abstracting physical computing resources more and more and making sure the developer has to worry about them less and less.

At the Data Center World Fall conference, kicking off in National Harbor, Maryland, this Sunday speakers and attendees will tackle the big questions the data center industry is facing today. Here are a few highlights of the sessions planned:

Better Insight into Cooling Efficiency Can Help Defer Data Center Expansion

As much as 40 percent of data center capacity is wasted because IT organizations are too conservative when assessing capabilities of their existing cooling systems.

Time to Test Your Data Center IQ

Of course, everyone who works in a data center generally considers themselves to be an expert in their field. The Ponemon Institute Data Center IQ Benchmark survey will enable attendees at the conference to actually put those beliefs to the test.

Microservices: Coming Soon to a Data Center Near You

Instead of thinking of VMs as “cattle” that can be easily replaced, or “pets” that need to be cared for, the future of virtualization in the data center will more closely resemble an ant colony where the ants are application containers.

How to Keep Your IT Staff From Leaving?

Given the general shortage of professionals with advanced IT skills, retaining IT employees organizations already have has become a critical priority. The challenge is that there is no shortage of companies trying to poach that IT talent.

Gauging the Length of a Data Center’s Useful Life

Perhaps the single most difficult thing about building a data center is trying to forecast what the IT needs of the organization might actually be 20 years into the future.

Putting Teeth in Data Center Lease Agreements

The data center lease agreement that defines how IT organizations can make use of a facility is probably the least-understood and under-appreciated of legal documents an IT organization is likely to sign.

Time to Rethink Data Center Design Conventions?

Because the data center is now the economic engine of the digital enterprise, data centers need to be tuned like any other engine. That means finding innovative approaches to reducing costs without compromising the integrity of the application environment.

Nomadic Virtual Machines May Be Key to Lowering Energy Costs

Most IT organizations are being overly conservative when it comes to taking advantage of virtual machine management software such as VMware vMotion to move application workloads around the data center. Most application workloads don’t need to run 24/7.

Data Security to Drive More and More Data Center Strategy Decisions

In all, there are 16 elements that IT organizations should consider when it comes to deciding whether to build a data center, rent colocation space, or move data into the cloud, according to him. All three data center strategy options can make sense as long as some consideration is given to not only the criticality of the data that will be housed in those facilities, but also who ultimately is going to be held accountable for its security.

DCIM Software Drives Granular Insight for Data Center Management

Thanks to data center infrastructure management software, IT organizations have more insight into what’s happening inside their data centers than ever.

This is just a tiny sample of what's to come. For the full schedule of events, check the Data Center World website.