'Lack of visibility, a major concern'

BANGALORE, INDIA: Today a CIO is seen as a business-enabler and not just a technology man. With unprecedented business growth and IT being the key driver for it, expectations from a CIO are increasing.

Nagendra Venkaswamy, MD, India and SAARC, Juniper Networks, says, "There is a major lack of visibility into IT electricity and facilities costs. CIOs are expected reduce costs, but at the same time improve productivity. Data centre consolidation and cost optimisation are on the top of the list of a CIO." 

"On one hand when total IT electricity consumption is increasing, electricity costs are skyrocketing globally. Government is pressurizing business houses to reduce power consumption. Whereas, energy efficiency of IT equipment is improving very slowly in today's scenario," he adds.

"Inorder to meet the productivity requirements, one has to implement high-performance network, monitor energy usage across entire IT infrastructure, specify energy requirements of all equipment and design energy-efficient and sustainable network infrastructure," he avers.

To meet the green challenge: 

How IT can contribute to the environmental agenda across and beyond the business is a major concern today.

Here are a few steps towards green IT:

Enable reuse of hardware: Divert landfill: Protect investment and extend the life of the infrastructure and design for recycling and reuse and reclamation of the same.

Space, energy and cooling savings: Deploy right-sized solutions (not forced to over-engineer), use integrated solutions that minimize the number of devices deployed and maximize energy efficiencies 

Enable anytime, anywhere secure remote access: Reduce commute pollution and eliminate operational costs associated with very small offices. 

Diagram shows the operational expenses allocation in data centres.

Data centre consolidation

Today the corporate world has recognized the importance of data centre consolidation that paves way towards cost optimisation.

"We at Juniper believe in drawing energy efficiently and minimizing heat generation without compromising the user experience," Venkaswamy says.

Product lifecycle – Extend the life-period of a network and maximize reuse and minimize waste.

Efficient design – Achieve engineering prowess, thus deliver space, energy and cooling savings.

Enable anytime, anywhere access – Reducing travel pollution and maximize productivity.

How to improve energy efficiency but reduce operational expenses:

Reduce server energy use: Purchase low power servers; install blade servers; virtualise servers and turn-off unused machines

Reduce client PC energy use: Purchase low power PCs and reduce power during standby mode

Improve data centre operations: Efficient rack usage; A/C strategy; monitor energy usage and enable standby mode

Reduce network energy use: Purchase low power network devices; integrated devices in the branch; consolidate data centre architecture; virtualise F/W and routers and enable MPLS network

Virtualisation and security concerns

Virtualisation is the need of the hour, but one cannot negate the fact that security concerns are on rise in the present scenario.

“An important feature of a robust Unified Threat Management (UTM) device is the ability to virtualise. Virtualisation technologies incorporated in UTM devices enable administrators to assign different "virtual" UTM devices to different network segments or user groups,” Nagendra Venkaswamy notes.

“The entire system can then be managed through a single interface. This important feature helps administrators cope with different types of access requirements, compartmentalising user groups and traffic types with their own security policies, in a safe and simple manner.“

“Virtualization essentially simulates having multiple devices on the network, without the overhead and complexity of physically doing so,” he opines.

Some of the virtualisation technologies include:

Security Zones: They represent logical sections of the network, segmented into logical areas. Security zones can be assigned to a physical interface, or the entire appliance can be assigned to a virtual system. In this latter arrangement, multiple zones share a single physical interface to lower ownership costs by effectively increasing interface densities.

Virtual Systems: This is an additional level of partitioning that creates multiple independent virtual environments. Each of the virtual environments has its own set of users, firewalls, VPNs, security policies, and management interfaces. By allowing administrators to quickly segment networks into multiple secure environments managed through a single appliance, virtual systems enable network operators to build multi-customer solution with fewer physical firewalls and reduced administrative efforts. This reduces both capital and operational expenses.

Virtual Routers: This feature enables administrators to partition a single device, which will then function as multiple physical routers. Each virtual router can support its own domains, ensuring that no routing information (and risk of traffic confusion) is exchanged with domains established on other virtual routers.

Virtual LANs: They are a logical, rather than physical, division of a sub-network that enables administrators to identify and segment traffic at a granular level. Security policies can specify how traffic is routed from each VLAN to a security zone, virtual system or physical interface. This makes it easy for administrators to identify and organize traffic from multiple departments and define what resources each can access.