Virtualization Automation – A Proper Virtual World

Death of a Datacenter, Well Sort Of

December 29th, 2009

What is kind of year was 2009 anyways?

Death of a datacenter, well sort, maybe the space in a realistic assessment is more of an oversized server room not a datacenter in the proper sense. I realize I need to explain this. Picture this… an office in the darkest corner of a large building, where one entire wall of the office is glass, looking out into a large file server area. A server site that supported thousands of people for almost 15 years, but now this server room is empty, just a bunch of holes in the raised floor that stretches before you. You remember laying down many of those raised floor tiles, and the server racks over them,. The growth of the site, as rows of racks grew over time. You remember the technology growing more powerful, the scale of capacity growing. But about 6 years ago, just as this file server room had been online for 8 years, 8 of the 18 years of a career in IT, virtualization appears.

Little by little, the number of physical servers does decline here and there, but the total volume of computational capacity increases, so the few empty racks, once full, don’t stand out. After all, there is work to be done. Warp speed. The minor changes in the number of staff or the changes in how the environment managed, the staff reductions in the on-site team are not that obvious. The newest technology, even with virtualization, has not changed the support model in extreme overt manner. Like a ship in dry dock, refits and upgrades of all types and sizes seem endless and ever more complex.

Computing is changing, the computing sites are changing. Remote device control, HP iLO, Dell RAC, IBM RSA, etc., blades, and other forms of topless or headless systems, is growing alone side virtualization, so now the number of cabinets that are empty are obvious and maybe just a bit unnerving. The staffing level has declined, the roles have changed, the command-center thousands of miles away or the command-center in our building is controlling more sites and locations than ever before. Doing more with less is not just a concept or slogan any more.

The years have passed all of the above has changed the concept of dedicated file server sites, of datacenters, of the IT industry. You realize that the number of days you transport into the office for the first time is fewer than the number of days you work from a remote site or location each week. Moreover, management, the command at the top, is encouraging this behavior, rather than blocking or debating its value. But the file server room is still there, darker, quieter than ever, but still doing its computational job. The systems are fewer of course, but they are so powerful, so significant in impact, but in such a small form factor, it is almost science fiction. The upgrades and changes have not touch the heart and soul of the site, the form and function change, but not the purpose.

Now you stand in that same office again, facing the entire wall that is nothing but glass, and you see a large empty room before you, has it been that long? How many worlds, virtual worlds, visited? You turn to look at the office and it is empty as well. Sure there is still a desk, a chair, maybe a bookshelf unit. But the soul of the office is gone, the energy of the late nights, early mornings, of echoes of laughter where practical jokes abounded are just ghosts of times past, none of the original team remains but you, the crew that saved your ass countless times is long gone. You remember when the kids, on bring your children to work day each year would walk through the massive columns of computing power, listening to the hum of the fans, the vibration of the equipment, the click of the disks in the arrays, the soft beeps or the rare click of keys in the distance. If you close your eyes, and let your imagination expand just a bit, you could see yourself in the engine room of starship, and the office, was the engineering operational center of the ship. After all the bridge was the command-center many floors above right?

But the reality is the engine room of this ship is empty now; warp coils and power relays gone, the heating/cooling system, the magnetic containment system, the atmosphere controls and fire suppression system gone. The core is gone. The ship is decommissioned, silent, just like the bridge, ah, I mean the command-center that was taken offline, sometime ago. You take off your badge, cough, your communication link, and place it on the control console, which has nothing on it but a layer of dust, dead, lifeless. No one said this would last forever, no one expected it would, but somehow it is sad that now it has come to the end. The perception is that the end of an era is among of you. Without thinking about it, you snap your heals together, straighten your back, and your arm seems to move on its own, and before you act to do otherwise, you salute the glass wall facing where the core once existed. You pause for a moment longer, remembering friends lost and long gone. You think the words… Warp Speed.

Reality comes back, so you straighten your uniform, and pick up your travel pack. Time has passed faster than you realized, you notice you are running late. The sadness that dominated your thoughts a few moments before, as you rush out of the room is gone; a new unique aspect of your career is beginning. You hear the hiss of the pressure doors close for the last time as you leave. You know you will never return to this ship again. The soul of the ship is now gone, she is now a cold dead hull, nothing but structural elements, components and resources to be recycled soon. You think to yourself you need to hurry now, that the last working transporter is on deck 12, and if Turbolift 4 is already offline, it is going to be a long climb from the engineering deck to deck 12.

As you run down the passage way on deck 12, yelling to the decommissioning crew in the way to make a hole, approaching the lift, you notice the designation on the wall next to the lift says… Elevator 4. You blink twice, shaking your head, but it still says… Elevator 4. Just a building, and file server room, after all? Not a ship? What was I thinking!

Entry Filed under: A Proper Virtual World