In Depth

In Depth

Datacentre systems management

• HDD specs: Assess MTTF, AFR and UER to get the drives you need

  In part one of a two-part series, we look at key hard disk drive specs, including mean time to failure, annual failure rate and unrecoverable error rate, and how they relate to each other  Continue Reading

• Schneider Electric on why datacentre operators need to close the ‘sustainability gap’

  Datacentre operators sometimes have a hard time ensuring their actions match their words and pledges on sustainability matters, which could put the industry at risk of greenwashing accusations, Schneider Electric warns  Continue Reading

• Why the devil’s still in the detail in the race for energy efficiency

  Energy-efficiency credentials are surely a step in the right direction, but cloud and datacentre providers must look at the sustainability equation from all angles  Continue Reading

• Cloud bursting: Six key steps in planning and decision-making

  We explore the key stages in a cloud bursting project: assessing the data and workflows, variants in the mechanism, application suitability, having the right resources, and planning and testing  Continue Reading

• IT sustainability strategies: Why enterprises need to start with the datacentre when going green

  Enterprises are under pressure to curb their carbon emissions and become more environmentally friendly entities on multiple fronts, including in the datacentre  Continue Reading

• What cloud users need to know: Ensuring greater end point engagement for improved cloud delivery

  Although early-adopter worries about cloud may have dissipated, the end-user experience can still leave much to be desired  Continue Reading

• AIOps for storage: Potential huge benefits, but lots of lock-in

  Applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to storage can help to predict bottlenecks, diagnose I/O issues and recommend upgrades, but suppliers’ products are largely limited to their own hardware  Continue Reading

• How water conservation and management floats on cloud

  From the cloud comes our water supply – an essential building block and life support system increasingly underpinned by IT infrastructure  Continue Reading

• Icelandic datacentres may lead the way to green IT

  Iceland may soon become even more attractive to companies wanting to minimise their carbon footprint while using high-performance computing services  Continue Reading

• Looking ahead: How to create a multi-year datacentre capacity plan

  Datacentres and cloud providers without a crystal ball can make educated guesses on future requirements to right-size resources and infrastructure  Continue Reading

• Hydrogen’s promise: How fuel cells might power lower-carbon datacentres

  Could UK datacentre operators soon adopt emerging hydrogen technologies to reach expanding energy and emissions requirements?  Continue Reading

• Interview: LF Energy on using open source to ready energy systems for phasing out fossil fuels

  With the climate crisis putting increasing pressure on countries to decarbonise their economies, the founder of open source championing LF Energy talks about digitising power networks to be ready for renewables  Continue Reading

• A waste of energy: Dealing with idle servers in the datacentre

  Servers can be the slackers of the datacentre, consuming power without doing much work. Why not whip them into shape?  Continue Reading

• Datacentres and climate change: Operators accused of being all talk and no action on sustainability

  Datacentre operators talk a good fight when it comes to tackling climate change, but there is far more they should and could be doing to make their operations more sustainable, say experts  Continue Reading

• Cracking the code on blockchain and crypto: What might adoption mean for datacentres?

  A high share of datacentre customers look set to adopt blockchain technologies, including digital currencies, over the next few years  Continue Reading

• How to beat the heat: What can datacentre operators do to meet emissions targets?

  With new mandates around sustainability proliferating, datacentres must find ways to meet their environmental goals while remaining competitive and meeting customer service-level expectations  Continue Reading

• Sharp end of the edge: Managing micro-datacentres in a shared environment

  Ongoing diversification in datacentre types gives rise to management challenges for operators, prompting a rethink about how they run their sites  Continue Reading

• Evolving datacentre chipsets put cooling, power and software management techniques under microscope

  New processor designs that could revolutionise approaches to supporting higher power densities at the rack still look years away, it appears  Continue Reading

• Clouds gather over Chinese providers – but is there a silver lining?

  With the geopolitical outlook chillier than for some time, Computer Weekly explores the future prospects for UK-China approaches to technology and business  Continue Reading

• How can enterprises avoid datacentre supply chain issues affecting IT upgrades?

  With analysts predicting that the current datacentre component shortages could last for at least two years, CIOs are being advised to act now to prevent the situation affecting their IT upgrade plans  Continue Reading

• Riskier business: How Brexit could be changing downtime risk and resilience in the datacentre

  As the UK enters the final quarter of its first year from the Brexit transition period, the risk picture for local datacentres remains unclear  Continue Reading

• Could Iceland be the best place in the world for high-performance computing?

  Most of Iceland’s cheap, sustainable energy is currently used by aluminium smelters, but recognising the need to diversify, the Landsvirkjun power company now promotes other uses  Continue Reading

• Uninterruptible power in the datacentre: Choosing between sustainability and uptime

  With datacentres under heavier pressure to decarbonise, could even the lowly UPS play a larger role?  Continue Reading

• Hybrid IT: Making datacentre and cloud work better together in the enterprise

  Enterprises are increasingly trying to balance and manage IT assets in a variety of environments, but there are plenty of tools and technologies out there to make the job a lot easier  Continue Reading

• APAC datacentres gear up for the future

  Datacentre operators in the Asia-Pacific region are dabbling in advanced power and cooling solutions, along with machine learning and edge computing, to keep pace with growing demand for their services  Continue Reading

• Dublin in distress: Power supply issues threaten growth of Europe’s second-biggest datacentre hub

  Dublin’s standing as Europe’s second-biggest datacentre hub could be on potentially shaky ground as Ireland’s electricity infrastructure creaks under the pressure of so many power-hungry server farms plugging into the national grid  Continue Reading

• Post-pandemic IT: Are virtual datacentre tours here to stay?

  A physical tour of a datacentre has traditionally been a key marketing and selling tool for colocation operators, and the Covid-19 pandemic has forced many to provide virtual alternatives. But how do they compare?  Continue Reading

• Nautilus Data Technologies CEO on building waterborne datacentres in the name of sustainability

  James Connaughton, CEO of waterborne datacentre design champion Nautilus Data Technologies, sets out why the firm is convinced that water-cooled facilities are the answer to the tech industry’s sustainability woes  Continue Reading

• Investigating process and performance improvement in private cloud

  Continuous process improvement means, among other things, creating an environment that helps enterprises gauge performance as requirements change. However, the whole picture should be considered before deciding on an approach  Continue Reading

• Private cloud deployments: Beating the blind spots and bottlenecks

  Private cloud can be challenging to manage while meeting the ramped-up demands of data-driven enterprises  Continue Reading

• Gartner: How to turn old datacentres into critical IT assets

  IT infrastructure and operations leaders are increasingly focusing on new ideas and technologies alongside ways to deliver business value  Continue Reading

• The National Security and Investment Act: What datacentre operators and investors need to know

  The incoming National Security and Investment Act will give the UK government enhanced powers to pre-screen and intervene on datacentre M&A deals, prompting concerns it could dampen the sector's soaraway growth rates  Continue Reading

• NHS datacentre transformation projects continue apace during pandemic

  NHS trusts have continued to invest in their datacentre estates throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, but the nature of their upgrade projects continues to evolve  Continue Reading

• Prioritising workloads in a hyper-converged infrastructure migration

  A cost-effective approach to combining virtualisation and unified management probably means deploying it workload by workload, experts suggest  Continue Reading

• How long until cloud becomes the preferred environment to run HPC workloads?

  The high-performance computing market is growing, but enterprises that have already made large investments in on-premise HPC will need to weigh up whether a move to the cloud would be worth their while  Continue Reading

• Datacentre energy efficiency: Is the time now for a big switch-off?

  The clock is ticking on sustainable IT and energy use, and much more can be done to save energy, power and reduce emissions at a datacentre level. So why isn’t it happening?  Continue Reading

• Five hyper-converged infrastructure use cases to watch

  We look at workloads ripe for hyper-converged infrastructure deployment. These include virtual servers and desktops, SMEs/remote offices, Kubernetes, and analytics and machine learning  Continue Reading

• The end is nigh: Are datacentre operators prepared for a potential no-deal Brexit?

  Datacentre operations are resilient and forward-thinking by nature, yet pitfalls and cost impacts are looming large with a potential no-deal Brexit on the horizon  Continue Reading

• How intelligent workload management tools can help IT admins cut through cloud complexity

  IT administrators have to manage an increasingly complex and varied range of application types and IT environments, and intelligent workload management tools offer a helping hand with that  Continue Reading

• Storage analytics: How AI helps storage management

  We look at storage analytics products that measure key metrics in storage hardware, single-vendor and multi-vendor tools, and how AI-based storage management and AIOps is emerging  Continue Reading

• Getting physical with datacentre security

  Whether it is natural disasters, terrorism or break-ins, datacentres will be vulnerable to a range of risks unless they are physically secured. Here’s how you can improve the physical security of your datacentre  Continue Reading

• A Dell of a deal: What a VMware spin-off could mean for datacentre operators

  Analysts doubt that Dell would be fool enough to entirely divest itself of VMware, which continues to offer massive value to the enterprise. And how would a change affect the datacentre?  Continue Reading

• APAC hybrid cloud adoption still cloudy

  Although there are clear benefits of hybrid cloud, enterprises in Asia-Pacific aren’t making the most of them due to a lack of holistic understanding, strategic frameworks and skillsets  Continue Reading

• Keeping the lights on: Managing datacentre engineers through Covid-19

  The coronavirus pandemic has seen datacentre engineers reclassified as “essential workers”, but how are their employers ensuring they can continue to do their work in a safe and secure way?  Continue Reading

• The Billion-Year Archive project: A post-apocalyptic disaster recovery plan

  The Arch Mission Foundation’s Nova Spivack opens up about its Billion-Year Archive project, which aims to provide the Earth with an apocalypse-level disaster recovery plan  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains post-Covid-19

  Fears about hardware shortages, staff absenteeism and how to keep sites up and running with social distancing have dogged the datacentre sector since the start of the pandemic, so how is the sector faring?  Continue Reading

• Datacentre liquid cooling: What needs to happen for it to become commonplace in colocation?

  As demand for increasingly dense racks and compute-heavy workloads increases within datacentres, could this lead to a wholesale shift in preference from air-to-liquid-based cooling systems? If so, at what cost to the environment?  Continue Reading

• Edge computing environments: what you need to know

  An edge case in business sits at the limits of what's viable, and edge computing requirements suggest a similar struggle  Continue Reading

• The AWS bucket list: Keep your cloud secure

  Misconfigured cloud installations risk billions of records being exposed, damaging organisations’ finances and reputations. Paying attention to securing AWS storage buckets is a simple matter  Continue Reading

• Lean, mean and green: The datacentres of the future

  Working out how to develop more efficient datacentres in an increasingly resource-hungry world is not easy, but it is possible  Continue Reading

• Cache vs tier: What’s the difference between cache and storage?

  We look at the key distinctions between cache and tiers of storage, and where the line has become blurred with fast flash, 3D Xpoint and storage class memory technologies  Continue Reading

• Datacentres operators must move away from diesel backup generators to give back to grid

  While the diesel backup generators used by datacentre operators have a limited environmental impact, using them for extended periods of time to power sites to feed energy back into the grid is not a sustainable solution to growing electricity demand  Continue Reading

• How AI and data analytics are driving composable infrastructure adoption in datacentres

  As enterprises continue to grapple with how to make sense of their big data stores, organisations are having to rethink how they kit out their datacentres, with composable infrastructure leading the way  Continue Reading

• Mixing it up: Cloud and datacentre in the new world of IT

  Cloud computing has long been tipped as the technology that will displace enterprise datacentres in CIOs’ affections, but that is not quite how the story is playing out  Continue Reading

• Processors re-imagined: Will cloud and AI lead mean all change in the datacentre?

  We look at the changes cloud-native platforms and artificial intelligence could bring about in the datacentre.  Continue Reading

• From consumer to prosumer: Reducing the datacentre industry’s reliance on the national grid

  With the government ramping up plans to go net zero on carbon emissions by 2050, where does the datacentre industry stand – and how can it become more sustainable over the coming years?  Continue Reading

• Amazon, AWS and antitrust: How tough could US lawmakers be on the tech titan?

  How Amazon conducts its business is coming under close scrutiny from US lawmakers, both from an online retail and cloud perspective, and this is why  Continue Reading

• Outsourcing PKI to the cloud: What enterprises need to know

  Moving public key infrastructure deployments to the cloud can bring a lot of benefits to IT leaders and their wider organisations, but first they need to make sure doing so is right for them  Continue Reading

• Taking business transformation and disruption to the Extreme

  Supporting business transformation and disruption seem to be on every supplier’s lips these days, but not many can say they are where they are today precisely because of their own business transformation and disruption. Extreme Networks can  Continue Reading

• Locking down the datacentre: A security checklist for IT administrators

  As datacentres become increasingy decentralised and the security threats they face increase in number and complexity, IT admins are at risk of becoming overwhelmed as they strive to keep on top of their server farm estates  Continue Reading

• Cutting the cord: Negotiating cloud contracts with problematic customers

  How accountable should cloud firms be for the actions of the customers that use their platforms, and how much thought should they give to aligning themselves with problematic brands before hosting them?  Continue Reading

• Finding a fix for the IT industry's recruitment woes: A datacentre perspective

  The datacentre industry is in the midst of a well-documented skills crisis, caused by a mix of sector-specific challenges and some more generalised ones  Continue Reading

• Financial services and cloud: Delivering digital transformation in a highly regulated industry

  The financial services community has gone from being one of the least likely sectors to adopt cloud to becoming one of its keenest users, as regulator attitudes to using the technology have become more accommodating  Continue Reading

• Unpicking the datacentre industry’s complicated relationship with climate change

  The energy usage habits of datacentres often see the sector labelled as a contributor to climate change, but the situation is far more nuanced than that, it seems  Continue Reading

• Log management: Helping IT admins to achieve infrastructure-wide visibility

  When properly configured and deployed, log management tools can unearth a veritable treasure trove of data that IT administrators can use to triage and diagnose problems in enterprise IT infrastructures  Continue Reading

• Evolution in action: The changing face of the datacentre

  The role datacentres play in the wider enterprise IT landscape is changing, fuelling the demand for a mix of different types of facilities that are capable of meeting the growing variety of enterprise data-processing requirements  Continue Reading

• Hybrid cloud: Weighing up what to run in the cloud and on-premise

  The hybrid cloud model promises a lot, but enterprises really need to take their time when working out what applications and workloads to run where – or they will find themselves on a hiding to nothing  Continue Reading

• Enterprise HPC: Why HPE is buying Cray

  HPE’s decision to acquire supercomputing pioneer Cray for $1.3bn serves to highlight the growing importance of high-performance computing (HPC) deployments in the enterprise market  Continue Reading

• Blackout after Brexit: UK datacentres brace for post-EU power supply and cost changes

  As the uncertainty over how the UK intends to extricate itself from the European Union rumbles on, datacentre operators are weighing up how Brexit might affect the availability and cost of the power they need to run their facilities in future  Continue Reading

• Keeping cloud costs in check: What enterprises need to know

  Organisations should not be rushed into moving to the cloud, because doing so could result in mistakes that are costly to put right  Continue Reading

• EMIS Group CIO: Breaking down NHS patient data silos by going all-in on AWS

  EMIS Group CIO Pete Malcolm is in the throes of a sizeable revamp of the healthcare provider's flagship software system for GPs that will see it go all-in on AWS, while addressing the government's push to make NHS data systems more open and ...  Continue Reading

• Choosing the right kind of hybrid cloud management

  We look at the various factors businesses should consider when looking to solve their cloud management problems  Continue Reading

• Interview: OVH CEO on offering a European alternative to the US public cloud giants

  Six months into his tenure as OVH’s CEO, Michel Paulin sets out the work the firm is doing to stand out from the public cloud crowd through its local knowledge of the European data protection landscape and its open source credentials  Continue Reading

• Intel Cascade Lake vs AMD Rome: Who will rule the datacentre roost in 2019?

  Intel and AMD are both making a renewed push into the enterprise datacentre market in 2019, with both set to release new processors. We take a look at what they have to offer  Continue Reading

• IT administrator 2.0: Adapting to life in the automation age

  As the use of automation becomes increasingly pervasive in enterprise IT environments, systems administrators need to adapt and update their skills to remain relevant  Continue Reading

• The importance of adopting an evergreen IT strategy

  Today's modern IT systems are potentially tomorrow's legacy technology problems, without an "evergreening strategy" in place  Continue Reading

• GlaxoSmithKline R&D CDO on combining Hadoop and Docker to boost drug discovery efforts

  Mark Ramsey, chief digital officer of research and development at GSK, describes how banking on big data, containers and on-premise technologies is speeding up the company’s efforts to uncover new drugs and improve the hit rate of its clinical trials  Continue Reading

• Infrastructure patching at scale: What you need to know

  Embarking on an enterprise-wide patching exercise can be a daunting process for IT departments, but there are few things that can be done to make it less fraught and ensure effectiveness  Continue Reading

• Dividing lines: EU bid to curb server energy use has the European datacentre community split

  An EU-backed push to curb European datacentre energy use has proven to be a divisive issue, as debate rages over the usefulness of using idle energy to determine the overall efficiency of servers  Continue Reading

• Streamline infrastructure management through robotic automation

  Robotic automation is changing the infrastructure management game, helping IT departments make fewer mistakes and boost their productivity  Continue Reading

• Guinness World Records bets on Office 365 and AWS to boost business expansion

  Rob Howe, director of IT at Guinness World Records, opens up about how cloud is supporting the organisation’s ongoing push to diversify its business  Continue Reading

• Let automation take away the tedium

  Computer Weekly looks at how far the suppliers of systems management tools and associated products have progressed with automation  Continue Reading

• DevOps done right: How to break down the IT department silos without alienating developers

  Enterprise DevOps adoption rests on securing buy-in at all levels of the company, but developer support is not a given, particularly when it means taking on responsibilities outside their traditional roles  Continue Reading

• Mergers and acquisitions: Bringing together separate IT departments

  Bringing together the assets of two separate companies can be a fraught business, particularly when it comes to merging IT departments  Continue Reading

• Data recovery disasters: Kroll Ontrack on how it helps enterprises bounce back

  Data recovery expert Kroll Ontrack provides a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges enterprises and consumers face getting their files and information back when disaster strikes  Continue Reading

• Keeping cloud costs in check: Why good governance is key

  Without proper checks and controls in place, it is all too easy for the cost of using cloud to spiral out of control in enterprises, but it doesn't have to be  Continue Reading

• Serverless computing: What it is and why it matters

  Enterprises might be forgiven for thinking serverless computing is just the latest in a long line of hyped technology concepts, but there is serious substance to it  Continue Reading

• Intel vs AMD: Server rivals battling it out for edge datacentre supremacy

  Chipmakers Intel and AMD are targeting edge computing environments with their latest embedded chips. What do each firm's propositions have to offer?  Continue Reading

• The EURECA moment: Counting the cost of running the UK’s public sector datacentres

  The EU-backed EURECA project has spent the past 36 months assessing the state of public sector datacentres across Europe, and is revealing what it found  Continue Reading

• Cloud management platforms: What you need to know to make multi-cloud happen

  Deploying a cloud management platform can make adopting a multi-cloud approach to consuming IT resources easier, but choosing one that is the right fit for your enterprise can be a challenge for CIOs  Continue Reading

• The multi-cloud myth: Why workload portability is still a pipe dream

  While IT providers are fond of suggesting moving workloads between clouds is as easy as dragging and dropping apps between environments, the reality can be far more complex  Continue Reading

• CIO interview: How River Island is using cloud to fend off its fast fashion competitors

  River Island's CIO, Doug Gardner, discusses how embracing cloud, online and mobile devices is driving sales in its high street stores  Continue Reading

• How cloud, IoT and mobile devices are driving demand for edge datacentres

  The demand for edge datacentres and computing resources is steadily rising, but what's driving the trend?  Continue Reading

• Datacentre cooling upgrades: Helping operators decide where best to invest

  Upgrading a datacentre cooling system is an expensive undertaking, but should operators stick with what they've always done or try something new?  Continue Reading

• Overcoming the scale-up challenge of enterprise DevOps adoption

  CIOs and IT leaders share their advice on what enterprises can do to accelerate the spread of DevOps within their organisations  Continue Reading

• [email protected]: Storage – From punched cards to flash and the cloud

  Since the launch of Computer Weekly in 1966, we have moved from a world of punched cards and paper tape to one where flash and the cloud have revolutionised data storage  Continue Reading

• Datacentre heat reuse: Why aren’t more operators doing it?

  With the datacentre industry’s sustainability habits coming under increasingly close scrutiny, we find out why operators are not rushing to reuse their waste heat  Continue Reading

• Microsoft’s underwater datacentre: The pros and cons of running subsea facilities

  Underwater datacentres can help providers save on land costs and cooling, but at what cost to the environment?  Continue Reading

• Interview: James Bamford on surveillance, Snowden and technology companies

  Investigative journalist and documentary maker James Bamford was among the first to uncover the secrets of the US National Security Agency and its global surveillance  Continue Reading

• EU Data Protection Regulation: What the EC legislation means for cloud providers

  With the European Commission's data protection rules set to drop before 2016, take a look at what the changes mean for the cloud and datacentre community  Continue Reading