2010 State of the Data Center
Symantec recently released their third annual 2010 State of the Data Center report, and there were some especially important findings in the area of data center staff productivity. We’ve been talking about this important topic for a long time, and this seems like an ideal time to review the key findings, translate exactly what they mean for data centers, and tie it all together.
First, let’s start with the most relevant findings from the study.
- 50% of data centers are understaffed
- Data centers continue to grow in complexity, and as a result, are becoming progressively more difficult to manage
- 31% of data centers reported a reduction in overall headcount in 2009 (up from 24% in 2008)
- In the quest to do more with less, remaining staff members are forced to “wear many hats”; nearly half are already cross-training staff
- Hiring is especially challenging because of a lack of money and a shortage of qualified applicants when job requisitions do come available
- The top three initiatives for 2010 are security, backup/recovery, and continuous data protection
We first started talking about doing more with less early last year and about improving data center staff productivity shortly thereafter. This is a growing problem, and one that the economic challenges of the past 18-24 months have worsened.
The savvy vendor is looking at ways to help you in all of these important areas. Let’s look at some specific areas where you owe it to yourself to dig in while evaluating new products this year.
For understaffed data centers, you need the fastest and easiest way to manage your security and performance/SLA metrics. But you cannot speed up the process if you are managing important pieces of your monitoring assortment in piecemeal fashion. Where do you do your filtering? If you are still doing it at the SPAN port, via filtering taps, or in the tools themselves, why? There are excellent solutions on the market that offer a central point where all of this can be managed quickly and efficiently.
How much time do you spend troubleshooting? Many of the data center professionals we meet complain about being forced to wait in line for a Network Architect to come available to help configure the filter rules so they could do their jobs. Is CLI-based filter rule coding a challenge for you? Would you even know how to set up filters for every troubleshooting challenge if you were a whiz at CLI? If you answered “No” to either of those questions, there is room for improvement in this area. If you answered “Yes”, it is highly likely that someone else in the organization is dependent on your help to do their job. In either case, I contend that you should consider another way of managing your monitoring tools.
Here’s the kicker – many of you are now being forced to take on additional roles, responsibilities, and oftentime, additional jobs! Recent research has indicated that over 60% of you are being pushed into more of a generalist role, which was validated in the Symantec report. The data center is getting harder to manage, you’re being forced to be in three places at once, and the workweek simply isn’t getting any longer. Even if you get authorization to bring on new hires, where will you find them? Don’t underestimate the value of your own time and effort.
With important security concerns at the top of everyone’s priority list, you simply don’t have the luxury of cutting corners with your monitoring efforts. If you don’t find an easier way to aggregate, filter, and distribute network traffic to the most important tools, the onus will be on you to put in the effort to band-aid it all together.
This study is important, because it serves to validate several of the main points we have been evangelizing for a year now. We built our Monitoring Optimization solution specifically to help in three areas, network access (i.e. visibility/coverage), tool utilization (doing more with existing tools), and staff productivity, because this problem is not going away. Data centers will continue to have increasingly challenging demands placed on them, particularly in an environment where information security is threatened by not only your run-of-the-mill hackers, but sometimes cyberterrorists themselves (case in point: the recent Google announcement about reconsidering their presence in China).
Monitoring is a requirement, but it doesn’t have to be a burden. It’s important to take these results to heart and find a way to make your daily life easier.
Now the $50M question – are you seeing these trends in your data center? What are you doing about it? Please comment below or chime in @AnueSystems on Twitter!
If you want to read more analysis on this study, Network World offered their take in Half of all data centers understaffed, Symantec survey finds.
