The myriad advantages of deploying Linux on
today’s commodity-based X86 servers — superior
flexibility, scalability and cost-effectiveness — remains a
driving factor in the success of open architecture designs in the
data center. But those efficiencies are but one part of the overall
data center equation, and highest ROI can only be achieved with
careful attention to the post-purchase operations of those
systems.
The operational challenges of today’s data centers have become a gloomy issue for IT managers and CIOs around the globe. As hundreds of thousands of Linux- based x86 servers are deployed to keep pace with ever-growing business computing needs, data center managers are faced with increasing operational costs, namely power, cooling, and maintenance. Today, a data center spends just 30 percent of its budget on capital expenditures, while a whopping 70 percent is consumed by operational expenses.
The natural shift away from antiquated RISC/proprietary, Unix- based servers and the movement toward high performance, open architecture, open source solutions has enabled countless data centers to proportionally reduce capital expenditures while increasing overall system performance. But while the price/performance ratio has improved, the cost to operate and maintain all those servers has spiraled out of control.
Linux continues to take hold as a strategic operational advantage in the data center, largely due to key benefits such as administrator skill portability, vendor diversity, and the wide range of supported hardware providers. The myriad advantages of deploying Linux on today’s commodity-based X86 servers — superior flexibility, scalability and cost-effectiveness — remains a driving factor in the success of open architecture designs in the data center. But those efficiencies are but one part of the overall data center equation and highest ROI can only be achieved with careful attention to the post-purchase operations of those systems.
According to industry analysts, power and cooling have become a leading operational expense for the data…
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