FEATURE : DATA CENTRE
Antoine Harb , Team Leader , MENA , Kingston
Converged infrastructure
Pereira said by converging the entire data centre stack into multiples of a single physical unit that is a server , it simplifies the data centre to the maximum . “ All that you need to build a data centre is an Ethernet switch and nodes . Setting up such a data centre is extremely fast and adding capacity is simply performed by adding more nodes , at any time , without the need to touch any other infrastructure ,” he said . “ The scaling is linear and unlimited and it offers superior performance and resilience . Given that all of this is 100 % software-driven it also provides unlimited flexibility to add capabilities in the future .
With all of this in mind , without any doubt , hyper converged infrastructure should be the foundation for new data centres .”
Pereira explained that converged infrastructure on the other hand is just legacy infrastructure re-packaged by vendors to appear friendlier , but given that it is built out of the same legacy architecture used in older data centres , it comes with all the same limitations : difficult to build , operate , upgrade and scale .
According to Harb , Saudi Arabia has strong fibre connectivity in the Middle East that is connected to several parts of the world . “ Due to higher demand from Internet users to access fast Internet connections , Saudi Arabia is investing into expanding the instalment of fully functional 5G networks . To reduce latency and enable 5G networks to run fastest , cities are also investing in Edge Computing devices to process most the produced data at its origin , leading to a rapid growth in data centre investments .”
He added that CIOs in the MEA region , should further consider solar power as an important renewable energy . The availability of renewable energy to power data centres is increasing year-on-year ( YoY ) in the Saudi Arabian market .
With converged infrastructure being tipped the future of the data centre , Tufekci believes converged infrastructure comes with several benefits over traditional data centre infrastructure for organisations such as scalability , reduced time-to-production and reduced operational overheads . “ CI and HCI also reduce deployment risk and speed time to application deployment , bringing new services to market rapidly . Due to the numerous advantages of HCI , the technology is experiencing exponentially growth in the Middle East ,” she noted . “ Software-defined data centres are the key to optimise server infrastructure while delivering high-density data centre deployment , along with converged / hyper-converged infrastructure solutions and infrastructure management , monitoring and automation solutions , to allocate the required resources according to demand . Dockers and microservices must also be considered by CIOs .”
Data centre capacity planning
With the newest technologies addressing data centre capacity planning in the Middle East and what are the best data centre management tools available to CIOs in the region ?
According to Pereira , capacity planning is definitely a hard topic for any data centre manager and a problem that is perfect for the use of Artificial Intelligence ( AI ). “ It is hard to imagine this if the data centre is build out of a legacy architecture where disjoint systems from many different vendors that can hardly communicate between themselves to deliver the basic functions , but when you ’ re analysing a hyper-converged solution it is fairly easy to understand that all the information you need to make capacity planning is natively on that system ,” he said . “ Rather than providing that information to the users , Nutanix uses AI to perform automated optimisation , proactive remediation and operational automation . Relevant to the question of capacity planning are the capabilities around automated optimisation , where our Prism Pro solution delivers : capacity behaviour analytics , capacity optimisation and just in time just-in-time forecast .”
Challenges for enterprises
Harb observed that one of the major challenges that enterprises are facing now in the Middle East , is the marginal decrease in their capital expenditure . “ There are a variety of reasons relating to project delays as the focus on building in-house project management capabilities due to payment delays by clients and availability of funding ,” he said . “ Other reasons include increased cost of materials , labour and equipment ,
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