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Data center capacity planning

• 6 DCIM software vendor tools address data center complexities

  DCIM tools can improve data center management and operation. Learn how six prominent products can help organizations control costs, manage energy and track assets. Continue Reading

• Data center backup power systems, standards to address downtime

  Backup power is essential to reduce -- or eliminate -- downtime. Admins can refer to industry standards, UPSes and generators to build out systems that support critical components. Continue Reading

• Evaluate hyper-converged for high-density data centers

  Although rising data center densities don't seem problematic for hyperscale providers, they create challenges for enterprises. Discover how hyper-converged systems can help. Continue Reading

• Build a high-availability system with containers, data mirroring

  Traditional backup systems are no longer the go-to data recovery method for IT. Learn how to create high availability with containers, data mirroring and cloud. Continue Reading

• Anticipate data center challenges with an IT monitoring strategy

  Data center challenges come in all shapes and sizes, but by keeping close tabs on systems and data, admins can be ready to react. Continue Reading

• Five IT troubleshooting tips to beat storage, network bottlenecks

  When something goes wrong in the data center, there are many possible culprits, ranging from the network to storage. Here are some tips to identify and solve common bottlenecks.Continue Reading

• Mainframe capacity planning takes on unpredictable workloads

  An extension of Capacity Provisioning Manager into the hardware eases mainframe capacity planning headaches.Continue Reading

• Two key aspects to consolidating data centers after an acquisition

  When consolidating data centers after a corporate merger, scrutinize custom software applications and security. You may improve IT operations.Continue Reading

• Adopt this battle-tested IT implementation plan

  New business initiatives live or die by the quality of their IT implementation plan. Experienced IT teams share their methodology.Continue Reading

• Cut data center sprawl to improve IT capacity

  This guide offers tips and strategies to corral all types of sprawl -- VM, server and automation -- as well as other drains to data center resources.Continue Reading

• Who controls big data implementation?

  In the rush to capitalize on big data, enterprises can pitch a battle against their own IT departments. In these conflicts, no one comes out the winner.Continue Reading

• Managing shadow IT risk to the business

  With more users turning to external IT platforms to meet business needs, IT professionals must take steps to start managing shadow IT.Continue Reading

• Do I need another VM host server?

  Operations manager Adam Fowler explains the many factors that determine a VM host server's ability to increase its workload and whether you need to buy additional equipment for your VMs.Continue Reading

• Guide to software-defined everything in the data center

  It's time to start thinking about a software-defined infrastructure in the data center. Here are benefits of software-defined architectures, tips for implementation and tools to help.Continue Reading

• Outsource IT support without losing control

  Secure a highly available IT platform by ensuring you have the best data center support. Without precautions, you may suffer from greedy resellers and vendors.Continue Reading

• Resolve a network bottleneck with these techniques

  Data center network performance problems will disappear with fixes from a simple reorganization through a strategic overhaul.Continue Reading

• Keep your server sharp and upgrade memory techniques

  It's about memory, remember? This guide covers the server memory choices -- flash, DIMMs, multi-channel -- that might solve problems in your IT shop.Continue Reading

• DCIM vendors' promises vs. data center realities

  Weigh the cost, integration and staffing implications of DCIM to make a smart buy and put DCIM's monitoring and analytical capabilities to work.Continue Reading

• A data center migration checklist to mitigate risk

  Alleviate the pain points for IT upgrades, consolidation or mergers with this 10-step data center migration checklist.Continue Reading

• What data center Tier levels can and cannot tell you about uptime

  When it's time to go colo, it's important to know what level of facility uptime you need, as well as the data center operator's specific procedures.Continue Reading

• No faults here: Advanced techniques to attain more reliable servers

  A new generation of reliability features can keep busy servers running in the face of serious fault conditions.Continue Reading

• Five data center upgrade strategies to modernize your facility

  These five data center upgrade strategies can revitalize older data centers and stave off expensive construction projects.Continue Reading

• The basics of selecting server memory

  Understanding modern memory helps IT professionals make the best choices for selecting a server memory configuration and upgrades.Continue Reading

• A deeper look at memory ranks, channels and types

  Looking for new server memory? Learning about memory ranks, channels and types is a good step to making the right choice.Continue Reading

• How do I justify data center expansion plans and expenditures?

  Funding a data center project or an expansion requires building a business case that focuses on three areas.Continue Reading

• The basics of selecting server memory

  Understanding modern memory helps IT professionals make the best choices for selecting a server memory configuration and upgrades.Continue Reading

• A deeper look at memory ranks, channels and types

  Looking for new server memory? Learning about memory ranks, channels and types is a good step to making the right choice.Continue Reading

• Modern server room design to fit your business needs

  Server room design has changed. So when planning one for an existing facility, make sure it meets current and future needs.Continue Reading

• Scale-up or scale-out: What fits best in your data center?

  A growing enterprise with the need for more computing power will have to decide whether to take a scale-out or scale-up approach.Continue Reading

• Preventing virtual resource oversubscription with capacity management

  Identify the symptoms of resource oversubscription, and learn capacity management strategies to prevent it.Continue Reading

• Improving server capacity planning

  Allocating computing resources to changing workloads is an ongoing challenge, but proper server capacity planning can lead to more efficient use of a data center's resources.Continue Reading

• Setting up a centralized Linux log server

  One of the many benefits of using Linux as a central logging server is that you can set up logging via syslog. Syslog allows messages to be sent over the network to a centralized log host, which is the ideal scenario for managing logging.Continue Reading

• Increasing network bandwidth available to virtual machines

  These three tips on increasing the amount of network bandwidth available to your VMs, including virtual network creation, can also potentially increase a host server's VM density.Continue Reading

• Configuring load balancing with Linux Virtual Server

  Using Linux Virtual Server, learn how to configure load balancing to help avoid busy servers and achieve optimal resource utilization on your Linux system.Continue Reading

• Best practices for VM workload management, resource allocation

  Effective VM workload management practices such as setting metrics can help you achieve the most efficient workloads and avoid the mistake of over-allocating resources to a VM.Continue Reading

• Finding the best capacity planning tool for your data center

  A capacity planning tool can benefit data centers by collecting data, managing virtual machines and preventing bottlenecks. Keep these considerations in mind when choosing and implementing a capacity planning tool.Continue Reading

• Capacity planning tools tutorial for Linux and Unix

  Effective capacity planning is a proactive way of ensuring that your data center servers will not prematurely run out of space or horsepower. Learn the tools available to help you, both native to Linux and Unix platforms including Solaris, Red Hat, ...Continue Reading

• Mainframe capacity planning: More than MIPS

  Capacity planning is a well understood, strategic exercise. But data center managers need to consider strategic versus tactical performance planning to keep high-priority workloads running without problems.Continue Reading

• Data center consolidation, virtualization: Ultra-dense server deployments

  Combining blade server, virtualization and SAN technologies in the data center leads to ultra-dense server deployments, which can save on hardware costs and power.Continue Reading

• Top 10 things to review when developing a hardware scalability plan

  Developing a plan for scalability for an application is based on many complex variables and requires a detailed analysis of the applications, operating systems, and hardware platforms to be used. Here are the top 10 items to include in your ...Continue Reading

• Consolidation and virtualization: The same, but different

  While they're similar, these two approaches are also fundamentally different. Managers need to explore how to use both if they want to end server sprawl.Continue Reading