With ever-increasing IT demands to keep pace with the exponential growth of data throughput and the fast-rising need for data storage, agencies are struggling to deploy the servers and storage hardware needed to meet the demands of the data center.

The growth in data center hardware requirements brings with it a steady increase in the amount of power needed. Higher density, achieved through miniaturization, has also contributed to increased power and cooling requirements for the physical data center space.

This paper will explain how several of the data management technologies that IT administrators have used for years in their server and storage environments are also proving to be compelling tools for getting more out of hardware. These include:

• Clustering
• Storage tiering
• Thin provisioning
• Data deduplication
• Virtualization
• Storage resource management
• Power management
• Efficient data center design