CONTAINERISED DATA CENTRES
such as containers brings that final piece of the puzzle back
to the development teams; meaning that the skills required
in maintaining a containerised infrastructure extends beyond
that of traditional enterprise skills.
Where the traditional enterprise developer or operator is
used to applying highly specialised skills with a narrow focus,
they may struggle to flex their capability to build and develop
a containerised architecture. Containerisation needs a radical
change in mentality from managing machin es to operating
clusters of clusters. To get the most value, organisations must
change the way they think about building applications.
With the shift in demand for DevOps IT skills and the rise of
containerisation in data centres, the familiarity of traditional
practices are starting to fade. Companies are looking
for leaner and more flexible practices to allow for digital
transformation, and data centres are integral to this.
Containerisation vs virtual machines
Despite industry scepticism, containerisation is increasingly
gaining recognition from organisations across all major
industries as an exciting method of OS virtualisation, which
is an alternative to virtual machines. When implemented
correctly, containers enable organisations to fit approximately
four to six times more virtual servers on hardware than
standard virtualised estates permit. Containers offer a more
agile and efficient environment for operating data centres.
Across all industries, digital transformation is on the
business agenda with a keen desire, and need, to grow a
company globally. Therefore, speed is everything and by
having a scalable and adaptable platform with systems
offering flexibility when they have to change or adjust
applications is essential. When operating containers within
data centres, they are kept as resource efficient and slimmed
down as possible. More containers can therefore be packed
onto the same server, making it considerably faster with
containers able to start up in seconds rather than minutes.
Containers can be just a fraction of the size of virtual
machines, existing between the operating system and the
service or application. Therefore, multiple containers can be
deployed on the same operating system, running separately
with no overlap of information from other containers.
A digital transformation
Companies are adopting containers incredibly quickly, and
industry leaders are containerising everything from their
data centres to their software platforms. Coats, a 250-year-
old international thread manufacturer, recently announced
the launch of its customer web portal on a container-based
platform, marking them the challenger to industry sceptics
who define container solutions as simply ‘hype’.
The decision to use containers came from Coats’
requirements for an adaptable, scalable and easily
manageable platform that would adhere to the strict
regulations of international trading. The platform will help
further the company’s commitment to digitally transform
its services. For companies where Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO) is severely monitored, this advantage of application
upgrades and changes is vital, especially when, like Coats,
they are committed to digitally transform their services
without the added costs legacy systems can bring.
Even though a containerised approach towards the
construction and deployment of data centres can result in
rapid deployment as well as lower operating and capital
costs, it isn’t a magic fix for all. Though both legacy and
new applications can operate in containers, for some older,
monolithic applications favoured by traditional enterprises,
containerisation isn’t necessarily suitable. In these
scenarios some applications may need to be rebuilt form
scratch in order to be containerised.
Similarly, with the shift in IT skills, those organisations
reliant on monolithic applications must ensure their in-
house infrastructure is ready for containerisation before
any commitment can be made. As Steve Sams, vice-
president of Site & Facilities, IBM’s Global Technology
Services Division puts it, “the real inhibitor is skills in the
marketplace, not people’s desire to buy this.”
Organisations like Coats are working with agile,
cloud-first consultancies to revolutionise the perception
of container solutions. Containers can no longer be
dismissed so readily, and with the growing investment
into containerisation, coupled with the shift in demand for
IT skills, enterprises of all sizes will soon seek to reap the
benefits. n
Challenging the Edge:
The “Data Centre in a Box” concept enables
equipment to be deployed in non-traditional
Data Centre environments.
IT INFRASTRUCTURE
TS-IT rack platform
Demand-orientated climate control
System monitoring
Intelligent power rails
SOFTWARE & SERVICES
www.networkseuropemagazine.com
33