Our most successful customers embrace the concept of rebuilding their data center from scratch at any time. They often call this “data center repaving.” However, it isn’t as hard as it sounds to repave a data center.
What Does It Mean to Repave a Data Center?
Repaving a data center means rebuilding or re-deploying servers instead of manually patching or updating existing systems. It’s like wiping a computer and reinstalling everything fresh to ensure security and consistency.
This approach helps eliminate hidden vulnerabilities, configuration drift, and software conflicts.
Why Repave Your Data Center?
- Eliminates ransomware and hidden threats
- Speeds up disaster recovery
- Aligns with automation best practices
- Lowers infrastructure costs
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 IT 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 for Repaving
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 for Data Centers 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 yourself, or schedule a demo with the RackN team?
Data Center Repaving FAQs
- What does it mean to repave a data center?
Repaving a data center means rebuilding servers and systems instead of updating or patching them in place. This ensures consistency, security, and reliability across the entire data center infrastructure. - Why do companies repave their data centers?
Organizations repave data centers in order to remove hidden security threats, update outdated configurations, and reduce software drift. It helps maintain a stable, predictable environment. - What are the benefits of repaving a data center?
Repaving improves system security and speeds up recovery after incidents. Data centers often find that successful repaving reduces downtime and simplifies maintenance as well. - Is data center repaving the same as data center patching or updating?
Data center patching updates existing systems that are already in place, while data center repaving wipes systems clean and rebuilds them from a trusted image. Repaving is a more thorough and secure process designed to clear any lingering issues from past configurations.
