Check in every month for the best data center advice directly from experts working in a variety of roles across the IT industry. The SearchDataCenter.com Advisory Board includes industry experts that help us focus our coverage and bring you the best tips for managing a data center. You'll gather expert insights on hardware, facilities, management, professional issues, and a wide range of other IT topics and trends affecting your day-to-day operations.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
This month's Advisory Board Q&A
Advisory Board roundtable: Strategic outsourcing can lift pressure
For a booming business that is rapidly outgrowing its resources, budget and staff capabilities, an outsourcing provider may offer the relief that’s needed to keep things running smoothly. But what considerations need to be made before offloading some — or all — of your business’s computing needs into the cloud? This month, we’ve asked our Advisory Board members to discuss the data center outsourcing used in their own businesses, the strategic goals in mind for outsourcing, the biggest considerations in opting to outsource and select providers, and the major hurdles they have faced.
Advisory Board members
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Previous Advisory Board Q&As
IT career paths for 2012: Advisory Board roundtable
In today’s tough market, keen business sense and strong real-world experience are often more important than formal education or certifications. And, as the industry rapidly shifts toward new technologies, like virtualization and cloud computing, it’s hard to know what skills companies value in a potential employee. In this Q&A, our Advisory Board takes the temperature of the IT job market.
Top data center technologies to watch in 2012: Advisory Board Q&A
How will the evolution and revolution of technologies affect your data center and IT staff in 2012? To herald in the new year, we asked our Advisory Board to look ahead and discuss the data center technologies that they want under the tree this year.
Approaches to data center capacity planning: Advisory Board Q&A
Planning for what a data center will look like in the future is a difficult, if not impossible, task. Technologies changes, and workloads grow as new users are added. Getting the right computing resources into place at the right time takes solid planning and a keen business sense. This month, our Advisory Board members share their strategies for data center growth, their approach to growth forecasting, their take on growth alternatives (such as virtualization or cooling temperatures), and their best business-side argument for growth.
How to reduce, supplement data center power: Advisory Board Q&A
Today’s energy costs can place a significant burden on a data center’s operating budget. Data center operators need to pay close attention to energy efficiency and consider emerging technologies that can economically supplement energy demands when utility power is strained. This month, the SearchDataCenter.com Advisory Board gives their insights on data center power issues, including the effects of virtualization, server technologies and supplemental energy strategies.
Planning a change in systems management tools: Advisory Board Q&A
IT professionals rely on a variety of systems management tools to help manage their environments, but changing from one tool to another -- or adding another tool -- can be a learning process. Each tool has different features and administrators should consider whether their chosen tool will really fit their needs. This month, SearchDataCenter.com asked Advisory Board members to discuss the factors they see behind systems management tool changes, how organizations should approach a change, the most important precautions to observe when implementing a change, and the potential problems to avoid.
Disaster recovery planning in a virtualized environment: Advisory Board Q&A
Virtualization offers many benefits to a data center, including better disaster recovery options. When done correctly, virtualization can make disaster recovery cheaper and easier to use than replicating physical machines. However, virtual disaster recovery does present some challenges and should be tested regularly. Read what our Advisory Board members have to say about implementing and testing virtualized disaster recovery options.