32Principles and Practices to Successfully Transition To
32 PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES TO SUCCESSFULLY TRANSITION TO U.S. DOD CLOUD COMPUTING DATA CENTERS Tra·di·tion·al • Da·ta • Cen·ters (trə-dĭsh′ə-nəl • dā′tə • sĕn′tərz′). Centralized capital-intensive information technology (IT) assets, which include land, security fences, buildings, power-space-and-cooling, networks, computers, storage devices, operating systems, middleware, databases, development tools, and monitoring systems. Oftentimes, traditional IT applications were assembled one computer, server, rack elevation, or server farm at a time. That is, a computer system with a microprocessor, memory, motherboard, disk drives, network interfaces, operation systems, and input-output devices such as display screens, printers, and portable or removable tape, disk, or solid-state media. Traditional physical computer systems ranged in size from small to extremely large or monolithic. For instance, a computer system may be a laptop, desktop computer, Unix workstation, small rack elevation, small server farm with multiple racks, a building with many server farms, or even a monolithic collection of buildings with multiple data centers or high-performance computing equipment for massively parallel processing applications. About 80% to 90% of IT data centers are in the small to medium-sized range that sit underneath desks, or in conference room corners, hallway closets, or small conference rooms. Typically, small to medium-sized IT data centers were engineered to host a single information system or small ecosystem of highly interrelated applications. Rack elevations allowed engineers to assemble their computer systems one high-performance component at a time for high-performance computing needs, multitasking and multi-user systems, reliability and fault-tolerance, or fast network delivery.
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