Skip Links

Data Center Research Center

Your source for data center news, trend analysis, opinion, product comparisons and product reviews.

What to do When an Integrated Computing Platform Breaks

ESG continues to research the interest in, advantages, and disadvantages of Integrated Computing Platforms (ICPs). As a quick review, ICP is the collapsing of server, storage, and networking infrastructure into a simple-to-consume, preconfigured, turn-key platform. We have published numerous reports on the topic including Virtual Computing Infrastructures: The Movement Toward Integrated Computing: The Foundations for Cloud and Virtualized Computing Infrastructure Preferences.

I have also been speaking about ICPs during a series of events across the country and received a fantastic question: “What do I do if it breaks?” This question came from an IT pro that, like many, operates in a do-it-yourself (DIY) environment and he felt that if anything broke, he knew how it was cabled, racked, designed, etc. He felt that this gave him an advantage to troubleshoot and fix the problem should one arise.

This was a great question and let’s all agree that ICPs will, as this attendee voiced, “break.” There are two ends of the spectrum to explore when answering this question, but before I jump into them, it’s important to understand that one of the top drivers for ICPs is to deliver improved availability, business continuity, and application uptime. By design, the goal of ICPs should be able to predict trouble and minimally be able to proactively alert IT operations. If the vendor you are working with can’t validate this, keep looking and you will finds vendors that can do this very successfully.
Continued

Recent Data Center posts | Data Center Posts Archive

Data Center Blogs
Data Center News