We have spoken at length in this forum about the challenges of managing data centers, both as technological ecosystems and as physical entities, in the face of explosive growth in storage and computational demands, heat generation, and power consumption. But does it have to be like that? Does the data center have to experience change of this sort? If not, what are the factors you can change to help avoid the changes, rather than simply coping with them better?

The most successful data center I ever saw was anomalous in several ways that I think are worth considering. First, and most shockingly, it was much too large for the equipment it needed to contain. It was not brand-new and yet to be filled, either. Instead, it had been carefully managed so that as servers became smaller and more powerful, the need for space shrank. Nothing in it was new for the sake of newness, nothing in it was upgraded, expanded, or replaced without a solid business case, and when things were replaced, they were replaced - that is, the old system left after the new one came on line. Some commodity activity, like Web serving, was outsourced. The option to scale up was explored before scaling out - one beefier box instead of 10 cheaper ones. Consequently, it had no space, heat, or power problems.

Secondly, it was not heavily trafficked. Admins did not - because they did not need to - spend much time in the room. They had a small but versatile set of management tools that let them do most of what they needed to from their desks. They also had a strong change management process that minimized the number of surprises they gave each other.

Thirdly, few of the people working in that data center were new to it. The average tenure of the small crew of systems administrators was about 10 years, and much of the efficiency of management derived from that fact. These admins knew their systems, their tools, and their vendors and consultants. They also knew each other, how to work with each other, and had enough cross-training and learning-by-osmosis to be able to back each other up. The measured and rational approach to change meant that these admins generally had time to learn the new skills they needed as they needed them, and that new staff brought in had time to get oriented to the way things worked there and to share their own new skill sets and perspectives.