While there is always an increased enterprise demand for IT services, the current economic challenges facing most industries require data center managers to deliver better results with fewer resources. CIOs are expected to achieve 10 – 20 percent overall cost efficiencies in providing infrastructure services, and within the data center, the server environment provides great cost-saving opportunities. During a recent client engagement, TPI helped quickly achieve a 10 percent reduction in the client’s server population. The savings resulting from this action alone funded the resources to analyze the next steps in the cost reduction process.
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When considering server optimization holistically, companies often look at virtualization as the primary cost-cutting solution. Although virtualization can be one route to consolidating physical servers, other opportunities exist to further reduce costs. We recommend clients start by focusing on server elimination. After identifying servers that run old and infrequently used applications, you can quickly shut them down to provide immediate benefits. These servers do not require consolidation or virtualization since they are simply removed from the environment.
The commoditization of hardware, combined with technology advances in server deployment, has fueled an explosion in server growth. However, as companies have continued to purchase server equipment and software, older servers have frequently remained behind and have never been completely decommissioned.
To find these stranded servers, companies need to look beyond server utilization and examine network traffic or users’ access logs. If usage statistics are not available, investigate the service desk for incident or change management logs for activities on the servers in question.
Virtualization enables the migration of server instances (operating systems) to a consolidated hardware platform, which requires investment in new hardware. While virtualization has its place, application stacking — the migration of multiple applications to a single operating system (OS) — provides additional savings opportunity.
Combining applications and consolidating OS instances are two techniques to reduce OS overhead, software licensing, and system administration costs. To identify candidates for application stacking, look for applications or legacy servers running the same OS and other software release levels. Software standards should be in place to maximize the impact of a common platform that enables combining today’s servers and future applications. In addition to setting standards, providing a single development platform enables applications to grow in a shared environment.
Another significant opportunity is to consolidate test and development platforms. Why not use one server to host multiple test applications? Operating a consolidated environment requires stronger change management processes, tools for resources measurement, and increased technical skills. With these investments, a company can be in a better position to provide more efficient operations at a lower operating cost.
Whether your data center is viewed as a strategic asset, as a cost center, or as a combination of both, the fact remains that businesses in today’s economic climate must continue to find ways to drive down costs. The proliferation of servers throughout enterprise data centers makes consolidation and/or elimination an excellent way to optimize your environments by reducing the data center environmental footprint and lowering capital and operating costs.
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BY Terri Hart-Sears, Sr Advisor & Peter Doane, Dir, TPI
Source：EMQUS.com
Terri Hart-Sears, Senior Advisor, and Peter Doane, Director, advise clients on behalf of TPI’s CIO Services group and are subject matter experts on optimization. For more information, call Terri at +1 248 231 3331, or e-mail peter.doane@tpi.net.
© 2008 Boston Hannah International.
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