Gaining control of the data center

With just enough time for the Thanksgiving turkey dinner to be digested Network World editors and columnists will be on the road again on Dec. 2 and 4, for our latest Technology Tour – The New Data Center.

For the past year or so, we have been bombarded with announcement by vendors about their so-called utility computing models. The idea is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your data center by allowing it to grow and shrink according to business demand.

Through techniques such as consolidation, virtualization and automation of various data center resources, you should be able to take better command and gain control of your IT assets. The computing resources would be better distributed across the enterprise and extra resources would be easily available to parts of the organization whenever they are needed. But how exactly do you get from where you are today to this new data center?

Speakers from APC, Concord, EMC, Foundry Networks, Inkra Networks and NetScaler will join Johna Till Johnson, president of Nemertes Research and Network World columnist, to give you practical advice about how to bring this strategic vision to work.

Among the topics discussed will be practices in managing and modifying the data center, paths to consolidating server and storage resources, techniques for managing heterogeneous operating platforms and strategies for implementing service-level management.

Along with the Technology Tour, you should check out our Network/Systems Management Research Center (https://www.nwfusion.com/topics/management.html), where Senior Writer Denise Dubie brings you breaking news, reviews and opinions from the management field. In particular, check out what Denise has to say in her Weblog about HP’s recent slew of announcements in the utility computing arena.

To learn more and to register for The New Data Center event, please go to: https://www.nwfusion.com/events/datacenter/index.html

You can also receive breaking data center news in your in-box every Tuesday by subscribing to our newest news alert, the aptly named Data Center News Alert. Click here to subscribe https://nwwsubscribe.com/highlights/facepage.asp?k=%5bEAR%5d&U=https://www.nwfusion.com&n=59