Making Sense of the Next Generation Government Data Center and Migration to the Cloud
Mark Medovich, Director of Business Development, Next Generation Infrastructure, Juniper Networks, was the speaker at the session on The Vision and Benefits of the Next Generation Government Data Center at the April 28 conference. He spoke with DGI about the next generation.
DGI: What is the next generation data center?
MM: The next generation data exhibits the 5 essential characteristics of Cloud as defined by NIST:
- On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service's provider.
- Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).
- Resource pooling. The provider's computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.
- Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.
- Measured Service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.
DGI: Why do federal agencies need a next generation center?
MM: Federal agencies will lower cost and streamline processes, yielding greater efficiencies.
DGI: Does it make services easier to deliver?
MM: Initially, no. Eventually, yes.
DGI: Does it help users get the information they need?
MM: Yes.
DGI: I already have a data center. Why do I need to upgrade?
MM: Existing data centers cannot function at the great efficiencies of next generation data centers.
DGI: What are the benefits of a next generation data center?
MM:
- Lower energy cost per workload (per service delivered)
- Lower overall operations cost
- Streamlined operations
- Greater flexibility
DGI: How does the Next Generation Data Center lower costs, improve security and disaster recovery?
MM:
- Energy reduction. The Next Gen data center dynamically adapts lowers energy consumption by optimal usage of the resources when they are needed.
- Disaster recovery is a built in feature of next gen data center, wherein, applications are virtualized and can be hosted in multiple data centers. Should one location fail, a service can be hosted in another location.
- Data security improves via central management of digital assets. Important data is not resident on any access point (e.g. laptop). The data is only resident in a secure cloud.
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