NAB outlines data centre consolidation strategy

National Australia Bank (NAB) has confirmed that it will be consolidating 30 small data centres -- or computer rooms -- around Australia into a new Melbourne data centre, according to a new white paper.

The National Australia Bank Carbon Neutral Whitepaper reports that the bank is undertaking the consolidation to reduce IT costs and its carbon footprint.

In addition, it is implementing IBM’s private cloud model called Infrastructure on Demand for use in the new facility.

Read: NAB:Tech investment paying off

The bank signed a long-term lease with Digital Realty Trust in Q4, 2011, to take space in the vendor’s new data centre facility in Melbourne.

According to the whitepaper, the facility will be ready to run a pilot of IBM's Infrastructure on Demand platform by July 2013. It is targeted to have fully migrated functionality by September 2014.

According to NAB’s senior manager for Data Centre Transformation, Tim Palmer, the migration of the 30 smaller facilities to the new data centre will involve consolidation of 2000 servers.

“Ultimately, as we go through this migration, our standard principle is that everything is virtual, by default. We want to minimise as much as possible bringing any old technology over to the new facility,” he wrote in the whitepaper.

Palmer added that Infrastructure on Demand will allow data centre capacity to be delivered in line with actual business demand.

“Business projects can focus on delivering business functionality, whilst technology can focus on delivering an efficient underlying platform with minimal unused capacity.”

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU, or take part in the Computerworld conversation on LinkedIn: Computerworld Australia

• Bookmark this page
• Share this article
  •  
  • facebook
  • slashdot
  • digg
  • Reddit
  • stumbleupon
  • linkedin
  • twitter
• Got more on this story? Email TechWorld
• Follow TechWorld on twitter

• Share
  Share this article1

  •  google+
  • facebookfacebook
  • slashdotslashdot
  • diggdigg
  • RedditReddit
  • stumbleuponstumbleupon
  • linkedinlinkedin
  • twittertwitter
• print
• email
• Bookmark