Full-Day Tutorials

This highly-interactive tutorial will offer data center managers the unique opportunity to learn what data center strategy is best for their organization – from building or buying your data center to purchasing cloud or managed hosting services or colocating your infrastructure. Data center industry expert Randy Ortiz will: outline the pros and cons of building, buying or a hybrid approach; explain the growing range of IT infrastructure services that data center managers have available to them today; and discuss how to determine one or multiple scenarios that will work for you. Attendees will collaborate with peers and Ortiz using their own laptops and a worksheet-based tool that will allow them to generate multiple, customized scenarios based on the needs of their individual company. Attendees will leave the tutorial with a concrete understanding of the data center strategy and services that make the most sense for their specific situation.

Virtualization, for all its benefits, put goggles on data center managers. Organizations lack visibility into the impact of the deployment of high-density servers on the physical infrastructure, which prevents them from predicting the demand on physical systems at any given time. Consequently, they must build in buffers of capacity to preserve availability, rendering them unable to utilize the full capacity of their infrastructure equipment. Fortunately, tools that will lower the cost and complexity of data center management while promoting higher levels of performance and availability are on the horizon. These systems provide both IT and facilities teams with a comprehensive view of the data center in terms of computing and networking gear, their placement and virtual machine loading, localized (rack-level) power and heat issues, as well as facility-wide energy and cooling realities.

This tutorial provides the insight needed to take full advantage of everything Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) has to offer for your data center. Learn how new DCIM paradigms are enabling the holistic management of the data center and discover actionable strategies and ready-to-implement techniques for optimizing availability, capacity and efficiency. Topics will include strategies for identifying unexposed threats and enhancing availability; asset management processes for understanding the relationships between assets in the data center to better manage change; and how to delay capital expenditure and improve efficiency by freeing up capacity within existing data center assets.

Presented by:
AFCOM’s Data Center Institute

Hurricanes, fires, disgruntled employees, hackers, terrorism, earthquakes and power outages can all bring data center operations to a halt. In today’s world, there is no telling what may arise. Being prepared for all types of disasters—from small business disruptions to a massive shut down of your data center facility —will help ensure your company’s continued success. AFCOM’s Data Center Institute (DCI) recently published a paper entitled, How to Stay in Business: A Data Center Institute Report on Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity. This in-depth report provides data center and facilities managers with information, tips and resources for building, maintaining and testing a disaster recovery plan.

This tutorial, given by DCI board members Donna Manley, IT Senior Director, University of Pennsylvania; Tom Roberts, Manager, Data Center Facilities, Trinity Information Services; Tim Hazzard, President, Methode Electronics-Data Solutions Group; and Jack Story, CTO, Infocrossing, A Wipro Company will provide attendees with real world information on how to prepare for any type of disaster. Ms. Manley will discuss how she survived an extended full blown power outage over a holiday weekend, including details about the disaster recovery (DR) plan she had in place before the incident, lessons learned, and the changes she implemented to her DR plan when all was said and done. Mr. Roberts will talk about how Trinity Information Services’ DR plans were developed, including when and how they are updated and the testing process he and his staff go through. He will also provide an easy-to-use chart depicting the process and dependencies you need to understand during the recovery process. Finally, Mr. Hazzard and Mr. Story will provide an overview of the technologies and resources available when it comes to disaster recovery, including the use of data center PODs, the Cloud, how to choose a site when building a DR center and more. Don’t miss this informative, interactive session!