• What infrastructure resource management (IRM) is
• Why IRM is an important part of a virtual data center
• How IRM differs from data and information life-cycle management
• Data protection options for virtualized environments

Leveraging various tools, technologies, and techniques to address various pain points and business challenges is key to enabling a green and virtual data center. Best practices, people, processes, and procedures combine with technology tools, hardware, software, networks, services, and facilities to enable a virtual data center. The importance of this chapter is to understand how all these elements coupled with existing and emerging technologies can be applied to improve IT service delivery in a cost-effective and energy-efficient manner. All of this together allows the data center to meet service-level requirements while sustaining business growth.

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