If you've wondered why the U.S. Government has so many data centers, ok I know no one has ever asked.
The U.S. Government has an odd defintion of what is a data center, which
ends up with a lot of things no rational person would call a data center.
If you call every room with even one server a "data center," you'll end up with tens of thousands of rooms now data centers. With this defintiion, I probably have two data centers in my home. Its important because Inspectors General auditors will go around and count things, because that's what they do, and write reports about insane numbers of data centers.
"For the purposes of this memorandum, rooms with at least one server, providing services (whether in a production, test, stage, development, or any other environment), are considered data centers. However, rooms containing only routing equipment, switches, security devices (such as firewalls), or other telecommunications components shall not be considered data centers."
There's also a case to be made that governmental organizations really oughtn't to have servers just lying around in random rooms, and that those rooms are de facto government data centers, whether those who're responsible for said rooms/servers know it or not . . .
because .... at least:
o safe handling of media is important (did the janitor just walk off
with backup tapes/ disks/etc?)
o 'a machine under your desk' is not a production operation.
(if you think it is, please stop, think again and move that
service to conditioned power/cooling/ethernet)
I'm sure there are other reasons, but honestly those 2 are great starters...
because .... at least:
o safe handling of media is important (did the janitor just walk off
with backup tapes/ disks/etc?)
o 'a machine under your desk' is not a production operation.
(if you think it is, please stop, think again and move that
service to conditioned power/cooling/ethernet)
I'm sure there are other reasons, but honestly those 2 are great starters...
The alternative may be:
- issue RFT for hosting / colocation facilities + high speed resilient
connectivity between colo and local network + associated equipment to
make this work, or
- building out enterprise-grade comms room in local office
This can be hard for public sector bodies to do and depending on the
value of the data hosting or the amount of kit that needed to be hosted,
it may also not be easy to justify.
Note that I an not answering in any sort of "official" capacity....but I will instead ask this for your consideration: Do servers in "test, stage, development, or any other environment" really need to have the same environmental, power and connectivity requirements that "production" servers have? And should a dev lab containing a couple of servers and a few developers really be called a "datacenter"?
-Mark Ganzer
SSC-PAC San Diego Code 82700
Office/Voice mail: 619-553-1186 NOC: 619-553-5881
If that is the goal, don't call it data center optimization. That is server optimization.
When you say "data center" to an ordinary, average person or reporter; they think of big buildings filled with racks of computers. Not a lonely server sitting in a test lab or under someone's desk.
Even worse, the new OMB data center definition wants says "(whether in a production, test, stage, development, or any other environment)".
In the non-government world, you want to keep test, staging and development separate from your "production." So your testing lab
is now a "data center," and you must consolidate your "data centers"
together.
If you are optimizing servers, not data centers, then you probably
want to consolidate your production servers in a data center. But
there will still be lots of servers not in data centers, like the
server in the parking garage that controls the gates or the server
in the building that controls HVAC. Its not smart to consolidate your
HVAC servers and your credit card servers, as some companies have
found out.
The U.S. government definition of data center is a bit like defining
a warehouse as any room containing a single ream of paper. Yes, warehouses are used to store reams of paper; but that doesn't make
every place containing a ream of paper a warehouse.
This is a great way to create a mess of rules. Need a server for running an app locally to a site? You need XYZ standards that make no sense for your deploy and increase the cost by 10 times.
Our server guys always try to set standards, then they run into a deploy where the needs are simple, but the standards make it significantly uneconomical.
I can confirm this. I was working at NASA when the last "data call" was put
out. We had a room with a flight simulator in it, powered by an SGI
Onyx2. The conversation with the auditor went like this:
Auditor *points at Onyx2* "Is that machine shared?"
Me: "Well yeah, the whole group uses it to..."
Auditor: *aside, to colleague* "OK, mark this room down too."
And our flight simulator lab became a data center.
Note that I an not answering in any sort of "official" capacity....but
I will instead ask this for your consideration: Do servers in "test,
stage, development, or any other environment" really need to have the
same environmental, power and connectivity requirements that
"production" servers have?
Depends on the process. If you can push to production without pushing
to stage first, then stage and production need the same service level.
I understand why cloud vendors want 100% of government IT dollars. But
requiring all test and development to be done solely in cloud data centers... there is your 100%
I really don't care about AWS sales (customer, but not investor or employee). But...
If it's not highly loaded, cloud is cheaper.
If it's not in a well run datacenter / machine room, cloud is FAR more reliable.
The cost of blowing up hardware in less than well run machine rooms / datacenters can be immense. At a now defunct cell provider, we lost a badly maintained machine room to fire, only about 24 racks, $2.1 million damage. And nearly burned down the Frys Palo Alto building. And that's just the worst catastrophe; had more losses than that in smaller clusters / onsies.
Where does it say test/dev has to be done solely in a cloud data
center? This bit
For the purposes of this memorandum, rooms with at least one
server, providing
services (whether in a production, test, stage, development, or any other
environment), are considered data centers.
seems to be more about trying to close the self-reporting loophole -
ie 'these aren't the droids you're looking for.' for example - https://github.com/WhiteHouse/datacenters/issues/9
Sigh, read any Inspector General report for how memorandums are implemented by auditors. If the memorandum says "or any other environment" the IG's will treat that as no exceptions.
So IG's will "close the reporting loophole" by reporting that their are 100,000 "data centers" if a room contains even a single server.
Auditors like counting things, they don't like interpretations. Inspector Generals are uber-auditors.
uhmmm.. yes - that's my point. No more of the "Whut? That box over
there?? Oh no, that's not a server, it's an _appliance_"
foot-dragging / circumvention of the cloud first policy.
I doubt anyone really believes that having a server in the room makes
it a data center. But if you're the Federal CIO pushing the cloud
first policy, this seems like a great bureaucratic maneuver to get the
decision making away from the techies that like redundant servers in
multiple locations, their managers who's job rating depends on
providing reliable services and even the agency CIOs. Check the
reporting section of the memo where it says "each agency head shall
annually publish a Data Center Consolidation and Optimization
Strategic Plan". I dunno, but I'm guessing agency heads are
political appointees that aren't going to spend much, if any, time
listening to techies whine about how important their servers are & why
they can't be consolidated, virtualized or outsourced.
If your goal is to consolidate servers, call it a server consolidation initiative.
You are correct political appointees won't understand why techies are
perplexed by calling everything a data center. Just remember that
when you read the stories in the Washington Post about how many
data centers the government has...
I doubt anyone really believes that having a server in the room makes
it a data center. But if you're the Federal CIO pushing the cloud
first policy, this seems like a great bureaucratic maneuver to get the
decision making away from the techies that like redundant servers in
multiple locations, their managers who's job rating depends on
providing reliable services and even the agency CIOs. Check the
reporting section of the memo where it says "each agency head shall
annually publish a Data Center Consolidation and Optimization
Strategic Plan". I dunno, but I'm guessing agency heads are
political appointees that aren't going to spend much, if any, time
listening to techies whine about how important their servers are & why
they can't be consolidated, virtualized or outsourced.
If your goal is to consolidate servers, call it a server consolidation
initiative.
He did, didn't he? "... consolidate inefficient infrastructure,
optimize existing facilities, achieve cost savings, and transition to
more efficient infrastructure". But other than the ability to
embarrass people[1] - ie. make the reports public, how much actual
ability to effect change does he really have?
You are correct political appointees won't understand why techies are
perplexed by calling everything a data center. Just remember that
when you read the stories in the Washington Post about how many
data centers the government has...
Yes, *sigh*, another what kind of people _do_ we have running the govt
story. Altho, looking on the bright side, it could have been much
worse than a final summing up of "With the current closing having been
reported to have saved over $2.5 billion it is clear that inroads are
being made, but ... one has to wonder exactly how effective the
initiative will be at achieving a more effective and efficient use of
government monies in providing technology services."
For example, one of the first things I did was take the picture of
every CIO in the federal government. We set up an IT dashboard online,
and I put their pictures right next to the IT projects they were
responsible for. You could see on this IT dashboard whether that
project was on schedule or not. The President actually looked at the
IT dashboard, so we took a picture of that and put it online. Moments
later, I started getting many phone calls from CIOs who said, "For the
first time, my cabinet secretary is asking me why this project is red
or green or yellow." One agency ended up halting 45 IT projects
immediately. It was just the act of shining light and making sure you
focus on execution, not only policy.
That's an inaccurate cost savings though most likely; it probably doesn't
take into account the impacts of the consolidation on other items. As a
personal example, we're in the middle of upgrading my site from an OC-3 to
an OC-12, because we're running routinely at 95+% utilization on the OC-3
with 4,000+ seats at the site. The reason we're running that high is
because several years ago, they "consolidated" our file storage, so instead
of file storage (and, actually, dot1x authentication though that's
relatively minor) being local, everyone has to hit a datacenter some 500+
miles away over that OC-3 every time they have to access a file share. And
since they're supposed to save everything to their personal share drive
instead of the actual machine they're sitting at, the results are
predictable.
So how much is it going to cost for the OC-12 over the OC-3 annually? Is
that difference higher or lower than the cost to run a couple of storage
servers on-site? I don't know the math personally, but I do know that if we
had storage (and RADIUS auth and hell, even a shell server) on site, we
wouldn't be needing to upgrade to an OC-12.