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Evolving options for on-premises data centers

Ever since cloud computing became a realistic option for large operations, it has dominated the data center conversation. Efforts to consolidate data centers and cut the related operations and maintenance costs have pointed to cloud as a potential option. There are, however, instances when using on-premises computing can be beneficial and necessary. And the terminology in the space has so much overlap that agencies operating an on-prem site often call it a cloud.

So what, exactly, defines a data center? Cameron Chehreh, Dell Federal CTO, said the federal government will often call a couple of servers in a closet a data center, but that skews the more commercial definition: A centralized location that houses an organization's computing, storage and applications. David McClure, chief strategist at Veris Group, said a simple definition is a big building full of servers.

A cloud, meanwhile, might be described as someone elses servers. There's significantly more to it than that, but it is a remote data center that is usually managed by someone other than the organization or agency storing its data there. This is the space filled by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google and many others. I think of cloud as locationless computing, McClure said. It is on demand, as needed and priced according to use.

Blurring the lines further is private cloud, which can mean a few different things. If you put three cloud specialists in the room you may get twelve separate answers on what a private cloud is, Chehreh said. Christian Heiter, CTO of engineering at Hitachi Data Systems Federal, agreed with the lack of agreement on what exactly private cloud is. This is where the definition gets a little fuzzier -- it's a term of art, he said.

The glib definition is that private cloud is just a data center with a fancy name to make it sound like whoever is building it is hip to the trends. McClure, however, said that isnt necessarily accurate. For an on-premises data center to truly be considered a private cloud, it must implement modern technologies like virtualization and scalability, he said. A private cloud could also be a remote data center with a single tenant.

The Army, for example, has recently begun working with IBM to build a consolidated private cloud solution at Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Ala. IBM is building and will manage the facility, but it will be an on-premises facility devoted to the Army's needs. The first phase of the project aims to put 38 applications into the cloud and meet the Defense Information Systems Agencys Impact Level 5 -- the highest security level for unclassified data.

McClure was working in the federal government during the Obama administration when the first push to cloud began. Federal officials, including then-federal CIO Vivek Kundra, recognized the opportunity to lower operations and maintenance costs by consolidating on-premises data centers and moving some operations to the cloud. Yet a decade later, were still in the crawl-walk phase of cloud computing, McClure said.

Efforts are being made to make the switch, though, and Dave Powner, director of information management and technology resources issues at Government Accountability Office, is a longstanding proponent of that effort. It is really contingent on how well agencies can optimize what they have, Powner said about the move to cloud.

In Powner's view, however, that optimization has been fairly limited. An Office of Management and Budget memo said the average government server is utilized at just 9-12 percent of its capacity. That was really the impetus to start this data center consolidation effort, he said. The goal is to get that number up to 65 percent.

A 2014 GAO report on the governments consolidation efforts estimated that the Treasury Department avoided more than $577 million in costs through consolidation between 2011 and 2013. Other agencies have also seen tens of millions in savings, the report said.

Some agencies have made big strides, he said. The Departments of Agriculture, Treasury and Justice; the General Services Administration; and NASA have all closed 50 percent of their data centers. The Defense Department has not yet hit 50 percent, but it has closed 700 facilities, Powner said.

I think there is more of an acceptance that you can meet some of the security requirements through cloud offerings, Powner said, attributing that shift to the examples set by early adopters, which have allowed others to see implementations that actually work.

Yet while cloud promises cost savings and flexibility, the future of a government without data centers is nowhere in sight. I dont necessarily see everything moving to cloud," said Sophia Vargas, an infrastructure analyst at Forrester. "I think it's kind of stuck -- potentially for a long time -- in more of a hybrid, multistate.

That seems to be the consensus. At least for the foreseeable future, hybrid solutions will define the data center, and the inner workings of those data centers are changing accordingly.

How hybrid helps

Vargas colleague Richard Fichera, Forrester's vice president and principal analyst of infrastructure, said the simple definition of a hybrid data center is exactly what is sounds like: using both enterprise and cloud solutions for data storage. Using a local data center and one or more cloud services can provide a best-of-both-worlds scenario that can reduce cost and lead to the consolidation that Powner seeks.

People are starting to find balance, Chehreh said. There is nothing but a bright future for hybrid moving forward.

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Evolving options for on-premises data centers - GCN.com