Utilizing Networks for an Evolving Data Center

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In today’s high demanding environment within the ITES industry, there is a strong transformation going on, a transformation that calls for better utilization of networks for data center environment. And as a result,

the basic datacenter network design architecture is going through a fundamental change that talks about the growing IT trends in distributed applications and virtual computing arena

In this type of demanding scenario, new computing models require a flat network that is flexible enough to handle the sometimes unpredictable traffic patterns caused by less hierarchical, more peer-determined computing in virtual or cloud environments.

Different global IT research firms believe that, despite the fact that the current networking market numbers are running quite low, present and near term future deployment of network equipment will drive networking in general and move to take into consideration a larger share of the overall IT budget as the economy recovers.
 
Data Center Applications

There is no doubt that today’s applications have evolved from a typical scenario of client/server-type deployments to a more peer-based architecture at the end user level. Ten years ago, applications had a huge structure with a particular goal, a server with client computers attached for tasks such as payroll accounting or order entry.

This essentially created individual silos of computing resources, which got the job done but resulted in unused resources at multiple levels of massive computing environment. Similarly, data was stored in silos that enabled fast access by these applications, and capacity was increased by adding more computing units. This type of environment is largely seen a big waste of money and resources. 

On the other hand, in the present scenario, distributed applications of today, are more than capable enough to pull out bits of information from individual computing locations and compile them to meet the desired need of a particular application. In other words, there’s bigger and swift interaction between applications and raw data, which then results in pure play intelligence. From a server and storage perspective, this focus on distributed architecture, as well as the need to consolidate resources, has led to the rise in virtualization at the data center level.

Today, it makes sense with these applications running within data centers to centralize their storage systems, or at least logically understand exactly where all the data exist through a centralized view. Moving forward, data centers when equipped with networks that think on their own and have intelligence are sure to increase efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the overall data center and help achieve their broader objectives as well.