One final component that is often overlooked in infrastructure deployments is the adaptiveness of colocation facilities. The bastion of private cloud deployments, these crucial facilities are designed with redundancy and security firmly in mind, and operated by highly-trained specialists. While the tendency is to view data centres as nothing more than secure rooms with power and cooling piped in, the reality is that they must evolve with the changing needs of enterprise IT.
For a start, many older data centres may not have sufficient power density and cooling to work efficiently with power-hungry HCI hardware. This can manifest in different ways, including long lead times as special cooling hardware are hastily installed, or prices that are disproportionate with the additional space requested. Moreover, leases for them are often rigid, multi-year contracts that offer little leeway for the fluid nature of modern IT deployments.
Thankfully, the situation is fast changing. Major data centre operators such as Singtel have evolved their offerings to align with the today’s adaptive infrastructure. Aside from more flexible lease terms, enterprises can also request for customisations to better support their unique needs. Elsewhere, software-defined network (SDN) network connectivity is available to the rack, with self-provisioned bandwidth that can be dialled up and down from a web console.
The result is an adaptive data centre that enterprises can use to establish their future-proof deployment.