Hosted by AT&T and powered by AT&T ICDS.

Data Center

Data Center Consolidation and Relocation Planning

As a business evolves, so does its IT domain and associated need to continuously refresh and change its computing facilities. Corporations also evolve inorganically, through mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. In many cases, these corporations end up with a plethora of data centers and an unbalanced capital and operational cost structure. With an increased emphasis on cost reduction and simplification of the IT operating model, companies are looking to downsize, consolidate, and optimize their data center assets. AT&T Consulting can assist in this process by evaluating the strategic vision to consolidate and supporting that vision with a pragmatic plan for consolidation and relocation. Key program activities include the validation of corporate vision and strategy, determination of key sourcing strategies (in-source, outsource, co-source), establishment of target state requirements and architecture, analysis of migration strategies, and the development of customized consolidation recommendations and/or relocation plans for data center transformation.

Data Center Facility Assessment

The Data Center is comprised of both IT infrastructure and facility infrastructure (cooling, power, physical). A synergistic equilibrium between the two must be maintained to ensure continuity of critical services. The business demands of adding more and more equipment to the data center floor not only impacts the physical space occupied, but can also overburden MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing) systems. This is manifested by maxed out power distribution and poor heat exchange, or “hot spots”. AT&T Consulting understands these challenges and leverages state of the art power and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling technologies. This allows us to evaluate the current data center facility infrastructure and the impacts of IT, as well as taking into account future growth projections. Key activities within the program include the evaluation of the current data center facility and existing IT infrastructure from an IT and MEP impact analysis perspective, collection of IT asset and MEP configurations, modeling of current and projected CFD, and the development of facility recommendations with cost benefit analysis for improvement and optimization.

Data Center Network Architecture and Engineering

The Data Center network architecture is a key component of the Service Oriented Infrastructure. How the network infrastructure is designed and implemented plays a key role in what level of service availability and survivability the IT resources can offer. In many cases, the network is grown organically with little consideration for future growth or physical/logical separation requirements. As the application services infrastructure expands, it becomes more of a challenge to maintain and purposefully plan for performance and availability of the network. The AT&T Consulting Data Center Network Architecture and Engineering program focuses its attention on this most vital underpinning of the Service Oriented Infrastructure – the network. Additionally, it is paramount to understand not only the data center WAN and LAN infrastructure, but also the remote site WAN infrastructure in order to match expected application performance and availability characteristics on an end-to-end basis. AT&T Consulting follows a standard, proven approach that includes the following activities: identification of touch points within the current environment, creation of configuration standards, development of test plans (network and end user), development of integration and migration plans and process for turnover to the operational environment. As-built documentation and knowledge transfer are key deliverables. Design areas of focus are LAN Architectures (IP Routing Architecture, Layer 2 Switching), WAN Architectures (MPLS VPN, IPSEC VPN, and traditional VPN), WLAN Architectures, Optical Architectures (DWDM, SONET), Content Delivery Architectures, IPv6 and QoS Architectures.

Virtual Infrastructure

Many companies have already embraced the movement towards a virtualized server and desktop environment. The benefits of this migration extend beyond reduced footprint -- the data center itself benefits both physically (minimizing facility MEP impacts) and operationally (minimizing administrative and operational complexity). The virtual infrastructure provides additional flexibility by assisting in quicker time to market for application services, as well as providing greater risk management controls during data center server and application consolidation and migration activities. AT&T Consulting has an extensive history of Virtual Infrastructure services, including the development of numerous white papers and authoring books on the subject. Our approach to the virtual infrastructure considers the lifecycle from planning, architecture, integration and into the operations of virtual server and desktop infrastructure. Our work scope can encompass business case development, server virtualization assessments, server and desktop virtualization pilots and proofs of concept, full scale planning, design and migration services, and server and application consolidation and rationalization.

Data Center Migration

Data Center migration can be a very daunting task for even the most seasoned IT organization. Successful migrations require extensive planning, program governance and preparation to minimize risks and service continuity impacts. A focus on planning limits the risk of potential rework and back-outs and is a principal tenet of our Data Center Migration program. This program helps our customers manage the logistics, leadership and technical resource coordination, application service performance and availability profiling and baselines, application service migration, physical equipment moves, and testing and acceptance processes and procedures that are key activities in any large scale migration. AT&T Consulting leverages our migration methodology and program governance approach, which are a culmination of extensive best practices to meet even the most demanding of schedules and move complexity.

Data Center Optimization

The corporate Data Center can be viewed as one of the most complex and costly of ecosystems within IT. It houses the collective intelligence and competitive differentiation of the company and may be its most prized asset. How well the data center provides critical IT services is the measure of its ability to adapt to the new -- and rationalize the old -- in terms of technologies and operating practices. Those ever expanding technologies and new operating practices represent a real challenge as many organizations struggle with diminishing floor space, cooling and power; at the same time attempting to expand the number of new IT services just to keep pace with business demands. The AT&T Consulting Data Center Optimization program focuses on all aspects of this computing ecosystem (IT and Facility) in a universal context. Our program is executed in a fit for purpose orientation, meaning that we can evaluate the entire Data Center ecosystem or specific parts of it. The primary goal is to provide an assessment of existing facility and IT infrastructures and identify opportunities for optimization of each. Additionally, existing vulnerabilities relating to service and business continuity are evaluated. Key activities and outputs include: assessment of current IT and facility (MEP) infrastructures, identification of vulnerabilities and optimization opportunities, establishment of target state requirements and architecture, analysis of gaps between current and target state operating capabilities, and a customized step based recommendations deliverable that defines the data center optimization and transformation action plans.