Our most successful customers embrace the concept of rebuilding their data center from scratch at any time. They often call this “repaving” their data center. However, it isn’t as hard as it sounds to repave a data center.
Why Repave Your Data Center?
A persistent IT operations myth is once the software is installed, the job is finished. Sure, it is critical to get the software installation and the build-out of the interconnected architecture pieces right the first time.
As a matter of fact, successful software implementation is just beginning. Immutable infrastructure, automation, and fully autonomous controls are best practices for all modern data centers. Moreover, preparing for disaster recovery has always been an operations best practice. Rebuilding data centers from scratch is a natural fit for DR plans.
In the era of ransomware attacks, repaving is the most essential new capability for infrastructure teams.
These days, an organization may want a better deal on their infrastructure space and data center costs. In that case, the ability to rebuild a data center on less expensive servers or data center space could save money.
Repaving data centers is to protect your organization from ransomware or other hard-to-detect cyber attacks. As a result the ability to rapidly reset and replace infrastructure on demand is the ultimate defense.
IT Ops become Innovation Leaders Instead of Blockers
Repaving data centers is a liberating experience for operators. They can build or create clones of their data centers in multiple locations confidently, knowing their work is repeatable. And this work helps them feel secure because they know they can build new data centers in a matter of days.
Additionally, repaving data centers empowers IT Ops to provide distributed infrastructure management. They can manage multiple data centers or clouds, or provide portability between different clouds.
Repaving data centers is critical for managing edge sites. Edge sites are made of thousands of smaller data centers. For that reason it is impractical to rely on the type of human touch and intervention that current infrastructures require.
Planning Considerations
Repaving data centers is a process that will automatically integrate every component necessary to bring a system online. Every single component needs to be factored into your rebuild process. Also, it is important to consider bare metal servers, networking, the network topology, storage systems, and your organization’s security protocols.
It’s also important to think through the minute details of every component. You must verify the systems you build match the required specifications down to the check sums and keys of the servers. This is how you will ensure the systems haven’t been tampered with or corrupted.
It’s OK to Start Small
Repaving data centers doesn’t have to be an all-in proposition. A good place to start is immutable boot provisioning. Immutable boot provisioning is not only more secure than mutable servers, it’s also faster. Digital Rebar is able to provide out-of-the-box immutable boot provisioning for your data center.
However, this should just be the starting place. You should plan to go further than immutable boot provisioning if you want to repave your entire data center.
Real Talk
The more we see customers repaving data centers, the more we see them enjoying dramatic economic benefits. Additionally they enjoy new found technical freedoms .
You could experience this as well! Why not try Digital Rebar out for yourself?
