4 Big Wholesale Data Center Problems

The modern-day wholesale data center is a complicated place. With the emergence of mobile devices, connected cars, and other smart things, it has placed an ever-increasing pressure on large colocation facilities.

The end user’s expectations are also at an all-time high, so the demand for data is not going to slow down (ever). So, data center managers are charged with managing all the different variables while keeping costs under control.

So, what are the big problems faced by wholesale data centers?

1. Shortage of Talent

For a large and complex facility to run smoothly, you need highly skilled individuals to run a small but optimally leveraged team. As colocation facilities are growing rapidly, it’s creating a void when it comes to experienced personnel that can handle the task at hand.

The adoption of efficient and modern methods such as DevOps and Agile will require managers to find the right talent with enough experience using the right tools. So, this can be a common problem that’s going to become even harder with current immigration reforms.

It’s critical to build highly skilled and functional teams because this enables seamless communication with all stakeholders and ultimately helps solve business problems together while keeping operational costs down.

2. Where Do We Go from Here?

As technology rapidly evolves, new competitors with new paradigms will start popping up. For example, when Amazon Web Services (AWS) showed up in the marketplace, it disrupted the traditional data center model.

As a result, wholesale data center managers need to constantly think of new options that can be developed and come up with new strategies to keep the business going on an upward trajectory.

3. Maintaining Governance and Control

When you move from a rigid environment to a dynamic cloud, it can be a huge challenge to maintain governance and control. In this scenario, there needs to be complete transparency when it comes to virtual and physical utilization and usage. Further, there also needs to be complete visibility of capabilities.

This will require centralized management that can easily control utilization and consumption while keeping them strictly business-oriented.

4. The Consolidation of Infrastructure

Colocation operators are always faced with the need to create higher utilization rates to achieve much more with what they already have. So, this is always a challenge that is revisited on a regular basis.

You must approach this by first taking a look at the following subsystems separately: 

• Compute
• Network
• Storage

Once you’ve done that, the next step is to look for cross subsystem consolidation opportunities.

Modern solutions enable facilities to incorporate software-defined networks (SDN) and software-defined storage (SDS). So, there are a lot of variables to consider when consolidating data center infrastructure.

The Bottom Line

These are just four problems faced by wholesale data center managers, but they are the main issues that come up on a regular basis.

What other colocation problems can you add to this list? Share your thoughts and experience in the Comments box below.

To learn more about the problems faced by wholesale data centers, download your copy of “Lead Generation Best Practice for Colocation Data Centers.”