The demands on data centers have never been greater. Data volumes are doubling every year, information and applications must be protected and available at all times, and there is no window for downtime.

At the same time, IT budgets and staff levels remain flat -even as IT must operate in an environment of nearly unmanageable complexity. Multiple server platforms, storage devices, virtual machines, databases and applications are in place. And each has its own proprietary tools. It is little wonder, then, that as much as 70 percent of IT budgets are often spent just to keep this existing environment going.

Data center managers, in turn, are challenged to find a way to do the impossible. They must not only meet but exceed increasing demands and service level expectations while driving down operational costs and devoting more resources to activities that will enhance business value.

Consequently, a growing number of businesses are looking to data center standardization as a way to transform IT from a cost center to a service organization. Traditionally, such a transformation has not been without a great deal of risk as it typically obviates the ability to leverage an existing heterogeneous environment while also restricting agility.

Not anymore. New technologies are now available that enable organizations to standardize on a consistent software infrastructure across heterogeneous application, database, server, and storage platforms.

With these tools, enterprises can replace the dozens of different tools they have historically struggled with and leverage technologies that share a common integration platform to finally master complexity and take back control of their data centers.

Tools of the Trade

It used to be that data centers had little choice but to use equipment from a variety of different storage and server hardware vendors that enabled organizations to manage specific platforms. This, of course, resulted in a proliferation of inconsistent tools and approaches - and a manageability challenge that grew more difficult with every addition.

Making the transition to a more streamlined, standardized data center requires technologies that leverage a single infrastructure software platform and address organizations' most pressing needs while also getting them on a solid path to the future. These technologies enable enterprises to protect their infrastructure, standardize their data centers, and enable IT service management process, including capacity management, configuration management, security management, availability management, and IT service continuity management.

One such tool is storage management technology, complete with centralized multi-host management capabilities across all major operating systems and support for all major storage hardware devices. A comprehensive storage management toolset transforms the management of storage infrastructure by providing end-to-end visibility across multi-platform server and storage environments as well as new levels of control over host and storage network management. Furthermore, it offers increased mobility of data across servers and storage and enhanced availability of mission-critical applications.

Enterprise data protection technologies are another component of a data center standardization toolset. With these tools, administrators can efficiently manage hundreds of even thousands of backup jobs and policies from a central browser-based console. Support for business-level reporting gives senior IT managers the in-depth analysis, trending data, and compliance data they require. Technologies are also available to protect remote office data without the need for tape drives, tape media, or skilled IT staff at the remote site.

Application performance management also plays a critical role in enabling standardization across the data center. With it, organizations can ensure that their application environment is performing optimally through all levels of the infrastructure-from the client to the storage. A comprehensive set of end-to-end performance management tools allows IT managers to proactively monitor, analyze, and fine-tune their applications to drive improved application performance and availability. The inclusion of performance problem identification capabilities as well as root cause analysis, proactive management of J2EE platforms, and management of portal servers helps make sure that mission-critical applications perform with the fewest interruptions and with high availability.

Rounding out a data center standardization toolset are advanced server management and clustering technologies. These tools give enterprises the ability to not only discover in detail what is running on all servers in the data center but also to actively manage and administer those servers and ensure that the applications running on those servers remain available.

Configurations and dependencies among servers and applications are identified and changes are made in real-time - while also enabling administrators to compare current configurations to established standards to ensure internal and external compliance. Provisioning tools lower labor costs and reduce error rates by automating many routine server management tasks, including deploying patches and rolling out new software packages. And clustering capabilities monitor the status of applications and enable them to be moved to another server in the event of planned or unplanned outages.

Used together, these tools can dramatically improve an organization's ability to effectively manage their data centers and meet or exceed service levels.

Proactive control

IT environments are likely to continue to include a diversity of operating systems, applications, databases, storage platforms, and more. After all, what organization does not prefer to work with the solutions they consider best-in-class?

But all this diversity has come with a price: complexity. And some organizations have reached the breaking point, where costs have skyrocketed while service levels declined.

Clearly, the time has arrived for a new approach to managing the data center infrastructure.

Fortunately, so has the toolset. What's more, their wide platform support signals the end to storage hardware agendas, server hardware agendas, database agendas, and application agendas.

With these tools, organizations can do rather than simply view. Passive monitoring is replaced with actionable management.

What's more, this toolset enables organizations to replace the scores of point tools they traditionally relied on to manage individual parts of the infrastructure and, instead, actually simplify overall data center operations.

Reduced cost and complexity, improved manageability and control, and enhanced information and application protection are finally within reach for even the most diverse data centers. With these tools in place, organizations can regain control of their data centers while keeping costs low and service levels high. ENS