Some companies are using as little as 4% of their server
capacity because of the way hardware has been bought piecemeal to
run new applications. Julia Vowler explains how consolidating your
ITkit can deliver savings of up to 30%
With the economic downturn still biting, the prime directive in
corporate IT is to cut costs. One of the most popular ways of doing
this is IT consolidation. This can mean reducing the number of
servers, sharing software or a variety of different activities, but
all can contribute to reducing an IT department's annual
spend.
Although consolidation can apply across the whole corporate IT
infrastructure, one area that attracts the most attention is
Windows servers. Windows servers have proliferated over the years,
so much so that it is not uncommon for an organisation not to know
how many servers it has. Often new applications can mean new boxes
and server purchases can be easily funded from depart-mental
budgets, bypassing IT.
"Taking an asset inventory can be a shock to the system," said Ian
Brown, research director at Gartner. "Finding you have a lot more
servers than you thought is by no means unusual. They can come in
the backdoor."
When times are hard, there is a reluctance to tolerate low
utilisation rates, which result in unused "white space". This is
common on all servers. "One user with a large Unix server found he
was only using between 4% and 8% of the resource," said
Brown.
Andy Gallagher, managing consultant at benchmarking specialist
Compass, said, "Unix utilisation is usually under 20%."
Similar low percentages also apply in the Wintel world. Andy
Jordan, marketing manager at Unisys, said, "Utilisation for Wintel
is about 5% to 15%, which is a negative return on
investment."
Gallagher said, "If you get more than 10% utilisation on Wintel you
are doing well."
IBM e-consultant Peter Norris said typical white space levels of
93%-95% on Wintel compares with less than 2% on mainframes.
Therefore it can be compelling to believe that more utilisation can
be had from fewer boxes by running multiple applications from each
box. However, the technical ability to do that with Wintel was
limited until only recently. Now, third-party suppliers are
releasing the right tools for the job.
Even Microsoft is getting in on the act by buying up software and
making Windows 2000 more capable of supporting more applications on
a single system, according to Phil McLean, product marketing
manager at Hewlett-Packard.
It is now feasible to bunch applications on one server via
partitioning - the "rational" consolidation identified by Gartner
(see box). "Three types of partitioning are possible," said Jordan.
"A hard partition [one or more dedicated processors], which runs
its own instance of the operating system; a software partition
which runs multiple instances of the OS which are hosted under one
master OS, and a soft partition, where one instance of the OS runs
multiple applications. This last example is called co-hosting and
gives the greatest level of compaction."
It is also possible to combine several tiers of consolidation where
large Unix multiprocessors are divided into several, smaller hard
partitions. Each partition has its own copy of the OS and can run
multiple applications.
But application consolidation cannot be done blindly. It is more
than just a question of soaking up white space with anything to
hand. As well as sizing the applications, understanding their
demands and identifying any cumulative peaks when they run
together, the criticality of the applications to be consolidated
also needs to be assessed. "It is potentially problematical," said
McLean. "You do not want to risk e-mail servers going down."
Not all applications work well together," said Brown. "Some can be
badly behaved. Suppliers are not always keen for users to run
multiple applications on a single instance because they do not want
to accept responsibility if there is a problem.
"For example, Microsoft Exchange Server tries to grab resources,
whereas SQL Server gives them up when it does not need them. If two
applications are sharing dynamic link libraries, one may need a
different version which Windows is not friendly with."
You should filter out applications that make direct calls on the OS
kernel. "If the applications are not well-written, they could make
an illegal call and cause the operating system to hang," said
Jordan. If other applications are using the same instance of the
operating system, they will hang too. Home-grown and older
applications are the most likely culprits.
"The database also has to be the same," said Gallagher. "If you are
running big Oracle and Sybase applications on the same server, I
can guarantee they will generate internal resource conflict."
Matthew Keep, server product manager at Sun Microsystems, said, "It
is easy to underestimate the complexity of each operating
environment: how predictable the application load is, how often the
applications are taken down and backed up, or how often they are
patched or scheduled for downtime. You need to profile your
applications in more ways than just the required
performance."
In the silo world of distributed applications, there can be
hundreds of copies of the same data. Consolidating data can lead to
issues of availability and ownership.
Storage also has to be considered. Server utilisation can be more
efficient if shared storage is moved to storage area networks.
Server consolidation will almost inevitably go hand-in-hand with
the adoption of San and network-attached storage instead of
direct-attached storage.
Network infrastructure is also likely to be affected by server and
storage architectures. "You could need more bandwidth in a
consolidated environment," said McLean. Gallagher said, "A
'like-for-like' consolidation to reduce white space should more
than pay for itself." But the amount of white space you get rid of
is not directly related to the cost that can be saved - especially
when Moore's Law remorselessly eats into the cost of
processing.
"The typical IT budget breaks down into 10% on hardware, 10% on
facilities and networking, 30% on software and 50% on people," said
Norris. Consolidation can help reduce costs in all areas.
Co-location alone cuts down on site costs and reduces the
geographical duplication of skill sets.
"The major drive behind consolidation is to reduce the number of
software licences and the range of software," said Graham
Titterington, principle analyst at Ovum. "If there is less of a
variety of software, there is a higher possibility of negotiating a
better discount."
Portfolio rationalisation - reducing hardware and software versions
and suppliers - is mostly happening within platforms, but
cross-platform consolidation is also a possibility. "Some customers
are moving from Wintel to Unix and others move from proprietary
Unix to Linux," said McLean.
Norris said, "We have an insurance company with 1,100 NT4 servers.
Of these, 300 could become virtual blades on mainframe Linux, doing
work such as e-mail and file and print, and another 400 could go to
Linux on Intel." According to Norris, consolidating to mainframes
lets users take advantage of a more mature management
environment.
But consolidation is not simply about reducing costs, crucial
though that is. It is also about putting corporate IT in order and
making it simpler and easier to manage.
"Almost everyone involved in consolidation projects is looking to
be more efficient, irrespective of whether times are tight," said
McLean.
Keep said, "The real reason for consolidation is to improve service
levels and deliver business agility - to optimise the IT
infrastructure while IT is under a little less pressure in terms of
new projects."
Inevitably, consolidation is a move towards the re-centralisation
of IT. This runs counter to the devolution that gave IT budgets and
purchasing power back to the departments. While the recession might
hand the IT department carte blanche to grab back control of
corporate IT, cultural issues will affect the success or failure of
consolidation.
"You have got to get executive sponsorship," said Keep. "We have
worked with organisations where it is absent and it created
problems. You must look at the cultural impact of sharing
systems."
There is also a cultural impact. Consolidation moves corporate IT
towards a datacentre culture, which is historically alien for Unix
and, especially, Wintel professionals. Norris said, "Platform teams
are defending their empires and are unwilling to face
change."
However, a consolidation project can join these disparate fiefdoms.
"You should end up with the best of both worlds," said Jordan. "The
orderly, disciplined, process-driven mindset of the datacentre,
plus the creative, fast-cycle mindset of Wintel."
Unless platform expertise is pooled, intelligent judgements about
which platforms are most suitable for certain applications cannot
be made. It is also vital to accommodate the future when
consolidating. "Do not just consider your headroom now," said
McLean. "Look at what you will need two or three years down the
line. It could take nine to 12 months to consolidate."
Brown said, "Consolidation should be on the agenda of IT
departments if for no other reason than getting asset management in
order and standardising software stacks."
However, Titterington warned, "Be careful about making changes to
your IT architecture - what you have now, works."
All the same, the drive to consolidate is compelling. Gallagher
believes that by applying consolidation across the board, from
co-location to software asset management, a business can save 30%
on running costs. And in the current gloomy economic climate, that
is a persuasive percentage.
Logical, physical or rational
Gartner lists the following types of consolidation:
Logical
This process ensures all software and middleware are the same
version and that standard processes are in place to acquire
them.
Physical
There can be two types of physical consolidation. Large-scale
reduces the number of datacentres from several dozen to half a
dozen. Small-scale can bring servers in branches or departments
back to the centre, moving to rack-mounted servers rather than
towers.
Rational
This is where workloads are placed on fewer servers and multiple
applications run on bigger servers by hardware or software
partitioning.
Six steps to consolidate your IT
Asset inventory
Count what you have, where it is, what versions are running, how
long the licences are valid for and when software and hardware
upgrades are due.
Capacity planning
How much capacity do you need, irrespective of its location? Allow
enough room for growth. Ensure network capacity is included.
Risk management
The risk profile of a consolidated organisation will change and
this must be identified, assessed and agreed to. Not all
applications can co-exist without endangering the performance and
availability, and co-location can erode disaster recovery
resilience.
Political management
Centralisation of IT can turn into a political situation and
business buy-in must be sought. Both the IT department and other
business departments may resist consolidation.
Standardisation
Hardware and software portfolios have to be simplified. If
end-users must have non-standard software, ensure they can
accommodate the extra support costs incurred.
Future planning
Consolidation is a major task and it will take time. Ensure that
any type of growth during the project has been allowed for and
anticipate demands beyond the life of the project.
Costs and savings
- How does consolidation save money?
- If hardware is used to the extent of the "white space", spare
boxes can be disposed of
- Fewer boxes means less floorspace
- Maintenance costs can be reduced and free boxes can be kept as
spares
- Standardising on software can enable a firm to ask for higher
discounts
- San and Nas architectures can enable more efficient sharing of
disc space
- The number of skills needed to run different systems is
reduced.
What could cost more?
- Upgrade costs for all applications
- Training end-users for upgraded applications
- Networking requirements could increase
- Cross-training IT staff on consolidated platforms
- Bringing in external expertise to devise and conduct the
consolidation project
- Software licences could be priced for a more powerful
box
- Losing the local end-users who unofficially tended the boxes
can mean increasing central support.