Along with technological advancement, data centers undergo modernization as well. There has been a transition away from traditional enterprise data centers to more cutting-edge automated facilities as a result of the Internet of Things (IoT), ever increasing data demands, and continuously faster cloud adoption.
Automation has enabled data center operators to improve performance, reduce costs, and enhance security, while also enabling them to adapt quickly to changing business needs.
As a data center design and management specialist for more than two decades, Dharmendra Upadhyay, currently a data center design specialist in Rakuten Japan, said that because of automation in data centers, there are things which were transformed in terms of operations and maintenance; everything can be managed and maintained well in time.
Data Center Operations Prior to Automation
Data center operations before automation were heavily reliant on manual processes and human intervention. IT professionals were responsible for performing a wide range of tasks manually, which made data center operations time-consuming, complex, and prone to human error.
“In previous days, we had to make an entire maintenance schedule, everything on papers circulate to the teams, teams going and checking the things. Hence, there were lots of risks and there were lots of outages because of missing out things,” said Upadhay.
Operating a data center without automation was a labor-intensive and time-consuming process. It required a significant amount of manual labor and expertise, and left little room for scaling quickly to meet changing business needs.
Evolution of Data Center Automation
The use of automation in data center operations has been evolving for several decades. In the 1990s and early 2000s, data centers relied on basic automation tools such as scripts and batch files to help automate repetitive tasks. These tools were often used to perform routine tasks such as backups, data archiving, and system maintenance.
However, the real breakthrough in data center automation came with the rise of virtualization in the mid-2000s. Virtualization technology enabled data center operators to abstract the underlying hardware and create virtual machines that could be managed and provisioned programmatically.
This enabled IT teams to automate the process of creating and provisioning virtual machines, which reduced the time and effort required to manage infrastructure resources.
Today, data centers are highly automated environments that rely on a wide range of automation tools and technologies to manage infrastructure resources, monitor system performance, detect and resolve issues, and optimize energy efficiency.
Automation Adds Magic to the Operations
Automation has transformed data center operation in numerous ways, making it faster, more efficient, and more reliable. Since everything could be managed and provisioned programmatically, everything will be well in time as well.
“We only have to schedule our machines and everything will be taken care of by all programs and all. So definitely, there is a great revolution because of automation.” said Upadhay.
According to him, it is very difficult for the operations team to check the activities manually because there are a lot of day to day activities especially in hyperscale data centers.
Daily operator has to go and check details, parameters and everything, whether they are in line or not, but due to automations everything will instantly get on the screen. Thus, there is really a tremendous change due to automation and businesses also grow and profit more because of automations.
“Automations adds magic to the operations. If we talk about automation, it really makes our life easier. However, my thought is that behind the scenes, behind automation, there is a human mind who creates the magic, because humans have programmed everything,” said Upadhay.