Andy Rhodes of Dell delivers an afternoon presentation
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In one of the final afternoon sessions on Wednesday, Andy Rhodes of Dell presented five lessons the largest clouds can teach us about running more efficient hosting environments.
Dell, he says, has had experiences working with companies like Microsoft and like Facebook, with huge implementations, and has reached some ideas it feels can be implemented by hosting providers.
Rhodes says for IT companies, unlike the IT departments of companies doing other things, IT is the main function, and they think of data centers as their factories.
IT companies were using server hardware built for enterprise implementations, which were built for redundancy, which requires a lot of extra components. The big cloud providers wanted custom infrastructure.
The first lesson they learned was that your total cost of ownership should be your own model, rather than something given to you buy a vendor. You should get input from everyone you can, but you should build your own model and be careful to ensure that every cost gets in there.
The second lesson is do not let the status quo hold you back. Everything is changing constantly in the technology world, and the companies that settle for the way they’ve done things in the past are finding it impossible to keep up. Things like microservers and modular data centers are providing all kinds of new opportunities for how a hosting environment can be built.
You have to keep looking at new form factors, because efficiency is a key factor in profitability for hosting providers.
And this lesson applies to services as well. You can challenge your suppliers to adapt their services for your business.
Lesson three was that the most expensive server or storage node is the one that isn’t used. That is, those that sit idle for weeks before being deployed.
Rhodes talks about an operation Dell built when working with these big clouds for racking servers as they were being delivered.
For hosting providers, you could really think about whether racking servers is core to their business, or whether they could outsource that.
Also in this lesson is the idea that accurately forecasting capacity needs is critically important.
Lesson four was “don’t let bad code dictate architecture.”
The example here was if you write code that requires hardware redundancy, you’re forcing yourself to over-provision for things, which translates directly into a cost.
His advice is to buy base elements and innovate around your strengths. There is plenty of good commercial cloud code out there, and you should think hard about what you can buy and where you need to innovate.
The last lesson is, don’t just say “cloud.” You should talk to your customers about real pain points and how to solve them. There is going to be a diminishing return on the word cloud, real soon.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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