Data Center Power Play

The Government of British Columbia in Canada is now more than halfway through a major data center consolidation project.

British Columbia gives new meaning to the phrase "distributed computing." The province covers 95 million hectares and is larger than France and Germany combined. Across this vast space, some 19 separate ministries are responsible for providing services to the Provinces population of over 4 million people.

To help these ministries conduct their work more effectively, the government is currently consolidating an unspecified number of servers from 400 remote offices into 90 data centers, or regional network centers.

Although there is no specific figure for the number of servers involved, estimates suggest that more than 400 servers are being migrated. The majority of these servers are Windows-based, although the province also employs a number of machines running the Unix and Linux operating systems.

This is a real mix of hardware, with the Government using servers from a range of vendors, although Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) are the predominant suppliers.Bringing all this together may sound like an IT manager’s logistical nightmare, but the migration will enable the government to make more effective use of data, according to Martin Webb, the provincial government's manager of data network operations. “It’s important to have the data in the regional areas because the data is specific to that region,” says Webb.

So, how is the province linking up all these data centers? Well, the Government is moving away from Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) traffic and now relies mainly on pure IP. However, officials are looking into the possibility of using Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) VPN security technology and running VOIP as an application.

But major server migration schemes cannot be completed overnight, and the province is taking a long-term approach. Webb estimates that British Columbia is currently about two thirds of the way through the scheme, which began a year ago.

The province is not the only organization looking to consolidate its server infrastructure -- the BBC is currently planning to bring 800 geographically dispersed servers into data centers (see BBC Drifting Toward Data Centers).

And it's not just public organizations like the Beeb and the B.C. government that are moving towards data centers. Earlier this week, Australian airline Qantas announced a massive outsourcing deal with IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), which will involve the migration of at least 400 servers to a managed data denter in Sydney (see Qantas Opts to Outsource).So, why the rush to consolidate? Basically, bringing disparate servers into a data center makes it easier to roll out new technologies and manage the overall IT infrastructure. This is particularly relevant if your organization covers an area as large as British Columbia.

But there is more to this scheme than just data centers. Even while consolidating its servers, the Government is also moving away from mainframe-based applications. Webb explains, “A lot of it has to do with the development time for applications -- it is faster to turn up an application in the server environment.”

This gets back to one of the big discussion points among data center managers: the demise of mainframe skills. Data center users’ association AFCOM recently voiced its fears about the lack of skills in this area (see Mainframe Skills Shortage Looms).

Webb has also noticed that IT professionals tend to be better skilled in server-based application work. He says, “There are more people with the skill sets to create these applications. People aren’t concentrating on the mainframe technologies.”

Among the applications that British Columbia is migrating are customized solutions used by different government bodies, such as the Ministry of Human Resources’ case files application.However, the first applications to be moved from mainframes to servers, according to Webb, are primarily “the common stuff, like email and Windows.”

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum