Cloud Data Centers - Architectural Drivers

More and more data centers are moving to the cloud. It is estimated that over two-thirds of the data center traffic will be on the cloud by 2017. As per the Cisco Global Cloud Index 2013, Cloud Data Centers are seeing a 35% CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) while the Traditional Data Centers are seeing only a 12% CAGR.

So what are the key drivers for a Cloud Data Center?

• It should provide organizations with Mobility
• It should enable Cloud Management with Security
• It should enable Application Transformation
• And lastly, it should turn Information into Insights to help organizations succeed

Mobility is the key for a Cloud Data Center. Your data should be available wherever you are in any part of the world! It should be safe and secure without any compromise. Management of your data center assets should not turn your hair white. It should be easy to manage, provision, de-provision and backup.

Elaborating a little on Application Transformation - today's applications have attributes like Dynamic Instantiation & Removal, multi-cloud models including hybrid clouds, multiple nodes and have different types of infrastructure demands that were non-existent a few years ago. Today, Infrastructure needs to be application aware for Agile placements, it should identify physical, virtual, cloud integrations, it should be flexible enough for a dynamic shared resource pooling and should be able to manage application clusters.

An optimum data center should give the business an insight into all the critical components of the data center and how each component is helping drive the business. What is the value add of each component and its availability - should be clearly showcased to the business.

So what are the Best Practices for a Cloud Ready Infrastructure?

• Consolidate & document your data center assets
• Develop your data center metrics - Power Utility Efficiency, Operational metrics, People metrics
• Identify & document the data, storage & application network requirements
• Develop & plan your data center architecture - Policies, Automation opportunities, fabric for the implementation
• Plan for the upgrade of your network access & aggregation layers - 10G/40G/100G, unified fabric etc, upgrade of the x86 assets, virtualization & server requirements.
• Identify Day 1, Day 30, Day 60, Day 90 operational requirements
• Plan for how you will deal with Disaster Recovery 
• And finally, develop your cloud management road map!