Data Center Consolidation: Understanding The Basics

Data center consolidation is essential to consolidating and managing resources in your company’s IT architecture. Consolidation benefits chief technology officers (CTOs) seeking solutions to operate efficiently while using fewer resources that employees can access in a single data platform.

While a data center consolidation strategy is a significant help for businesses and IT departments, many technology leaders need to be aware of it as a concept and how to execute consolidation. This article will help you better understand data center consolidation and the outcomes you can anticipate if you select this investment.

Data center consolidation is a crucial resource for many businesses, with various benefits to organizing and navigating your data. But what is data center consolidation, and why does it matter?

Data center consolidation describes the process of IT departments consolidating and downsizing various data servers and systems into a centralized, straightforward data system. Additionally, data center consolidation encompasses a range of technologies and business strategies developed for IT architectures to improve the efficiency of your organization’s IT department.

Data center consolidation involves fewer resources and creates an efficient data warehouse for your organization. Your IT department will benefit from different consolidation strategies, including consolidating multiple data centers or creating a single data warehouse to access crucial information quickly.

Additionally, data center consolidation merges IT data systems to consolidate necessary data and eliminate unnecessary equipment taking up space in your data center. Consolidating your data allows for more space in your data center and easier access to locations and hubs of crucial data and analytics.

Before you consolidate data centers in your organization, you need to know the numerous benefits of data center consolidation. Below are some significant advantages of data center consolidation to help you understand the importance of executing a data consolidation strategy in your business.

One of the most significant and intriguing advantages of data center consolidation is the cost-effectiveness of this strategy. One of the main reasons that companies choose to execute data center consolidation is to reduce operating costs and save money to spend in other departments.

While your IT department will spend money during the process of executing a data center consolidation strategy, you will save significant sums of money in the long run that can help sustain your business. Additionally, data center consolidation lowers operating costs because it can consolidate physical locations, allowing for less energy consumption and reduced costs associated with having numerous physical data centers.

Another significant advantage of investing in data center consolidation is improving security and risk mitigation for your company’s data. Data center consolidation allows IT departments to centralize their data centers, thereby reducing any digital footprint and lowering the chance that their organization will be the victim of a cyber attack.

Additionally, data center consolidation eliminates outdated and ineffective data systems that are potential security risks. It would be best if you considered data center consolidation because it will allow your organization to navigate data systems better and improve security by reducing the chance of data vulnerabilities.

Consolidating your organization’s data centers benefits the environment because it improves energy efficiency by eliminating outdated systems that consume energy in higher amounts. Data center consolidation will allow your organization to reduce the energy it consumes, allowing for environmentally-conscious, advanced data infrastructure.

Unconsolidated data centers are vast energy sources and can contribute significantly to global warming and climate change. With consolidation, businesses can lower their carbon footprint and combat climate change.

Multiple data centers can confuse IT teams in any industry, leading to lower productivity and time wasted in your organization. By consolidating your organization’s data centers, you can improve productivity and efficiency in your business with modern, advanced operations.

Additionally, data center consolidation improves productivity because it combines systems to eliminate any redundant or outdated information. Your IT team can do more with data center consolidation and produce work faster when you weed out unnecessary data.

A significant concern for any IT department is the risk of data being destroyed, damaged, or inaccessible. With data center consolidation, your organization can recover quickly from disasters.

If disaster recovery is necessary, data center consolidation will make your team’s recovery easier by reducing the time spent restoring your data servers. If you have not consolidated your company’s data center, you risk wasting time if an outage occurs and you have to restore servers in multiple locations.

Data center consolidation centralizes crucial IT resources to ensure that your IT department can respond to data center issues and restore crucial data that your business needs to remain profitable.

Data center consolidation might seem like a long process that isn’t worth your company’s time. However, there are many reasons businesses invest in data center consolidation, and you should consider following suit to help your organization.

Businesses invest in data center consolidation in many scenarios, such as mergers, significant data growth, or reductions in data requirements. Your company might also consider data center consolidation if you operate from multiple locations. Data center consolidation is cost-effective and can boost productivity in your organization.

Many organizations only accept the consolidation process once there is no other option for protecting their data. While this might be your instinct, it’s essential to consider data center consolidation sooner rather than later. Putting off data center consolidation leaves your data systems vulnerable to cyber-attacks and data recovery costs.

If a disaster occurs, data center consolidation can help your organization recover quickly; if you do not have data center consolidation, a disaster will have more severe consequences for your company’s health.

Data center consolidation has numerous benefits to your organization that you can expect from implementing a comprehensive data center consolidation strategy. But what outcomes can you expect from the typical consolidation process?

The first outcome you should expect from consolidation is the ability to streamline your organization’s data resources to simplify IT tasks. You can expect positive changes in your operation costs and improved productivity and efficiency in the long term.

Data consolidation will allow your team to convert raw data into actionable insights to encourage fast, accurate decision-making. Once you’ve executed the data center consolidation process, you should expect to notice various patterns in your data that can offer insights into your data performance.

The benefits of data center consolidation are endless, and your business will thrive once you begin executing a data consolidation strategy. However, many business leaders and CTOs need help determining where to begin with the data center consolidation process.

Below is a quick guide to help you navigate the steps of a data center consolidation strategy and what you should look out for along this journey.

A general data center consolidation strategy involves moving your organization closer to its operational goals. Your company should prioritize a strategy with an ultimate goal and design your consolidation around this goal, such as saving operational costs.

Your data center consolidation strategy will follow processes like consolidating physical centers or creating a centralized data center to encourage efficient IT architectures and operations.

A successful data center consolidation strategy will follow a few basic steps that you can tailor to your organization’s unique needs and goals. Below is an overview of steps to take during the data center consolidation process.

1. Begin by conducting a full assessment of your current physical data infrastructure and assets
2. Craft a plan tailored to your organization and your end goal to ensure success
3. Consult reference designs for data center consolidation to determine specific traits and designs for your company’s consolidation project
4. Build and commission a consolidated data center for your organization
5. Begin operating data with greater productivity after the consolidated data center is complete.

A data center consolidation checklist can help you guarantee that your strategy is thorough and will have positive results. Before you execute your strategy, ensure that you have completed everything on the following checklist.

• Update decision-makers and stakeholders about your upcoming data center consolidation
• Develop a budget for consolidation
• Assign a qualified project manager to oversee data center consolidation
• Create a scope of the work including every stage of the consolidation process, reminders for safe hardware removal, general safety procedures, and any possible questions a crew might have during the consolidation process
• A list of all contact information to open communication between necessary parties
• Plan for decommissioning and removal
• Conduct a thorough physical audit of your data centers
• Have an implementation plan

While data center consolidation is crucial to streamlining data in your organization, there are a few traps you should watch out for during the implementation process. Before executing your data center consolidation plan, prepare for the following pitfalls.

• Loss of data during the consolidation process and errors in identifying data redundancy
• Downtime due to a lack of primary and/or backup power supply, natural disasters, delayed migrations, or missing data backups
• Compromised data security because of a lack of physical data security and lack of preparation for potential security breaches

You can avoid the risks and pitfalls of data center consolidation by knowing the best tips to manage consolidation and ensure a smooth, effective transition. Remember the following suggestions as you navigate the data center consolidation journey.

• Allocate additional funding toward data consolidation
• Know the exact data you want to consolidate
• Know where to store your consolidated data
• Take measures to avoid overload and exceeding bandwidth
• Manage the transition process to effectively adjust your strategy

Data center consolidation could be a fantastic opportunity for your organization to save operational costs and boost productivity. Streamlining data and centralizing crucial information is essential to keeping your business protected and your data accessible.

Anyone with questions about the data center consolidation process or interested in developing a consolidation strategy can contact the experts at i.e. Smart Systems to find the right solution to all their data problems.

i.e.Smart Systems is a Houston, TX based technology integration partner that specializes in design and installation of audio/visual technology and structured cabling. For more than three decades, our team of in-house experts has partnered with business owners, architectural firms, general contractors, construction managers, real estate developers, and designers in the Houston market, to deliver reliable, scalable solutions that align with their unique goals.