Server Consolidation
Server Consolidation
A N A P P L I C AT I O N C E N T R I C V I E W O F
Server Consolidation and IT Optimization
Preface systems accelerated, so did the number of different
hardware platforms, operating systems/versions,
During the late eighties and on into the nineties, there development tools, application packages, and
was a concerted move of business functions away from databases, along with the need for an enlarged and
mainframe systems to smaller, more highly distributed diverse IT staff to develop, deploy and support these
mid-range organization/server environments. While systems.
the mainframe produced highly structured and
standardized applications, the time required to develop This continuous expansion of technology has caused
and deploy applications was perceived as a liability in a IT to become fragmented and inflexible, with
highly volatile, competitive, and rapidly-changing proliferating pockets of specialties and knowledge not
marketplace. For cost and competitive reasons, shared among the rest of IT. Because they were
organizations began to deploy most of their application purchased and dedicated to single business units or
workload on UNIX and other mid-range organization/ function, these systems also tended to be greatly
server systems. For the most part, this change was underutilized. Compounding the problem further was
made without strict adherence to standards because the belief that IT understood the business problem
strict standardization was considered a constraint on better than the business professional, which often
delivering and deploying applications rapidly. resulted in technology “solutions” that did not fully
meet business needs and applications that were out of
Therefore, the typical mid-tier development and step with business processes. Today IT simply cannot
deployment strategy allowed development teams and keep pace with business and this must change.
business units to select their own hardware, software,
development tools and products. The tendency was to This paper will explore how server consolidation and
purchase hardware for each application that was IT Optimization can significantly reduce cost and
developed. As the shift to UNIX and other mid-range complexity in the data center.
SERVER CONSOLIDATION & IT OPTIMIZATION
Who Needs to Optimize? 4. You are running more than seven operating systems
The rule of thumb is that one person can know
Consider an organization that has accumulated disparate two operating systems reasonably well. Any more
hardware, software, architectures, databases, and than that and you face a dilution of expertise.
redundant functionality. The infrastructure is becoming Once you get up to seven you are seriously
increasingly difficult to manage. Staff, license and stretched and vulnerable.
hardware/software maintenance, and support account for
an increasingly large portion of the IT budget. It has 5. You have difficulty controlling software licenses
become difficult to staff and maintain the resources Complex, dispersed environments = a tangle of
needed to support existing systems. software licenses. If you fail to comply, or forget to
buy them in the first place, you could face
In general any organization suffering from the following prosecution.
is a candidate for IT optimization:
6. You think it’s cheaper to buy new servers than to
• Higher than average IT costs do capacity planning
• A unnecessarily complex environment A classic warning sign. It’s nearly always cheaper to
• Low utilization of CPU resources plan properly than to buy new kit as a knee-jerk
• Low utilization of storage resources reaction to increased demand. If you think
• Weak systems management capabilities otherwise, you probably need to consider
• Weak asset management capabilities consolidation.
• Slow provisioning
• Inadequate service level agreements 7. You manage your infrastructure centrally, but
• No utility model your purchasing is decentralized
In short, you don’t control what’s being purchased,
IT optimization can deliver a computing model that but you are responsible for managing it when it
will reduce cost and improve quality and value by arrives. What seems like a good deal to the
simplifying your technical infrastructure. procurement department can mean your having to
hire another administrator.
Top 10 Reasons For Consolidation*
A few years back InfoWorld published a list of ten 8. Your utilization rates for more than half your
things that indicate whether an enterprise needs to servers are in single digits
consider consolidation. They are still valid today: Most of your servers are idle for 90% of the time,
but you are paying to administer and maintain
1. You start losing track of servers them 100% of the time.
Easily done if you have dozens or hundreds
dispersed over several locations. The flip side of 9. You are running out of physical space
this is knowing where a server is but not knowing This one is pretty hard to miss. When there’s no
what it does. more room for new hardware then some kind of
basic consolidation is difficult to resist.
2. You can’t scale
The complexity and rigidity of highly dispersed 10. Your server maintenance costs are rocketing
architectures works against scalability. There comes You may not have full visibility of these until the
a point where bolting on another server simply CEO tells you to cut overheads. Then the true cost
adds to your problems. of maintaining all those servers can come as a
shock.
3. You don’t have enough administrators
Someone has to look after all those servers. The *As identified by InfoWorld
more you have the more likely you are to run short
of skilled people to maintain them.
SERVER CONSOLIDATION & IT OPTIMIZATION
What Technologies Have Made When Possible, Reuse What You Have
Optimization Practical? Consolidation does not necessarily mean that you must
go out and purchase all new hardware. The business
New hardware technologies can simplify and improve the may have some large servers with 18 to 36 months left
IT environment. Here are a few things to consider. on the lease. These servers are good candidates to
consolidate on. The same applies to storage.
Technology Advancements
• Logical partitioning Struggling With The Choice
• Virtualization If you are considering new hardware, here are
• Blades questions to ask the hardware vendors:
• Business process/data abstraction: Web services
• Automated infrastructure management 1. What is your technology roadmap? Discuss OS,
• Self-healing infrastructure chipset, architecture, platforms, uptime,
performance, scalability, pervasive technology, and
What Size Box Should I Consolidate On? investment protection.
You should consolidate on the largest server practical 2. Do you support logical-partitioning capability on
simply to reduce the number of physical servers. Most UNIX and Intel? How does your system
major vendors offer some facility for setting up partitioning technology allocate the resources?
partitions or domains to run multiple OS images on 3. Open architecture/Linux direction
their large servers. However there are other things to 4. Philosophy and direction for autonomic
consider. For example, you may decide that lines of computing (self-healing, self-diagnosing, self-
business (LOB) cannot share the same physical configuring systems along with uptime and
hardware. So if the workload for a line of business only reliability figures planned and unplanned outages.
requires a six CPU box you wouldn’t necessarily want 5. Capacity on demand/utility model capability
to install a 32-way for that LOB, even though all other
LOBs may need larger systems. You could need a
combination of sizes, which may lead you to
establishing a standard set of configurations. For
example, you may standardize on 8-way and 16-way
servers and then combine them to meet more rigorous
needs. Also price may lead you to use an 8-way over a
32-way, because proportionally the 8-way is less
expensive. However an 8-way would need to be
significantly less to overcome the space, power and
load balancing capabilities of a larger box.
SERVER CONSOLIDATION & IT OPTIMIZATION
Types Of IT Optimization
Physical Consolidation
Physical consolidation is the
Benefits
consolidation of applications from
• Reduce staff
a large number of servers to a • Optimize staff utilization
fewer number of servers. • Decrease facilities cost
• Lower utilities cost
• Simplifies network
Homogeneous Consolidation
• Few servers to manage
(Like To Like) • Reduction of software licenses costs
Homogeneous consolidation is • Increases CPU utilization
the process of consolidating
workload from many servers to
fewer servers of the same type of
platform. For example, moving
the workload off 30 Sun Solaris
servers to a few Sun Solaris Physical consolidation on like architectures
servers, and at the enterprise level,
doing the same within all the
platforms. Taking this approach
will significantly reduce server and logical count. In many cases source code recompiling will not be necessary.
However, expect to recompile approximately 30% of your applications for product and compiler upgrade
requirements. For example, objects, PL/SQL and embedded SQL will need to be recompiled when upgrading
from Oracle 7.x.x to Oracle 8 or 9. Oracle 7.x.x will not be available for new hardware technologies.
Chicago Benefits
• Staff need reduction
• Staff utilization optimized
• Reduce facilities cost
• Lower utilities cost
• Simplified network
Los Angeles
SERVER CONSOLIDATION & IT OPTIMIZATION
Logical Consolidation
Logical consolidation takes advantage of the logical partitioning capabilities available from most hardware vendors.
Logical partitioning provides maximizing the use of platforms resources.
Oracle production servers running Peoplesoft
Peoplesoft
W2KW2KNT
Peoplesoft -The Web (Presentation) layer for Peoplesoft runs on 2 Windows 2000 servers and has been consolidated
into a single partition on an Intel Web Server. The application layer runs on 2 UNIX machines and has been
consolidated into a Domain on a UNIX Application Server. The Oracle Database layer runs on 4 UNIX machines and has
been consolidated into a UNIX Database Server. W2K
Online Services -The Web (Presentation) layer for Online Services runs on 3 Windows 2000 servers and has been
consolidated into a single partition on an Intel Web Server. The application layer runs on 3 UNIX machines and has
been consolidated into a Domain on a UNIX Application Server. The Oracle Database layer runs on 3 UNIX machines
and has been consolidated into a UNIX Database Server.
Intranet Services -The Web (Presentation) layer for Intranet Services runs on 4 Windows NT servers and has been
consolidated into a single partition on an Intel Web Server. The application layer runs on 2 UNIX machines and has
been consolidated into a Domain on a UNIX Application Server. The Oracle Database layer runs on 4 UNIX machines
and has been consolidated into a UNIX Database Server.
SERVER CONSOLIDATION & IT OPTIMIZATION
Application Rationalization
And Legacy Transformation
Benefits Fewer servers Fewer servers Fewer servers Fewer servers Fewer servers Fewer servers Fewer servers
Reduce Reduced Reduced Fewer platform Fewer platform Fewer platform Fewer platform
staff count licenses cost licenses cost types types types types
Reduce Reduce Reduced Reduced Reduced Reduced
staff count staff count licenses cost licenses cost licenses cost licenses cost
Less complexity Reduce Reduce Reduce Reduce
(fewer versions staff count staff count staff count staff count
to support)
Reduce staff skill Reduce staff skill Reduce staff skill Reduce staff skill
set requirements set requirements set requirements set requirements
Less complexity Less complexity Less complexity
(fewer versions (fewer versions (fewer versions
to support) to support) to support)
Fewer software Fewer software
products/costs products/costs
Reduce dependency
on legacy systems
Savings 8% SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE ===============================================➨
SERVER CONSOLIDATION & IT OPTIMIZATION
Buy-In From IT And The Lines Of Business A Partner With The Intellectual Capital
A consolidation requires collaboration between the Work with a partner that can provide the differentiated
lines of business and IT. After all, one the most skills coupled with experience, methodology and tools
significant results of a consolidation is the realignment necessary for the project success.
of the two.
• Technology Adoption
- Implemented only when mature and stable
- New technology adopted in selected groups if so
desired
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