The ROI of server consolidation
It might be a quick route to lowering your TCO, but server consolidation comes in various forms --and IT managers need to know the pros and cons before choosing a consolidation path.
There's a huge opportunity for IT budget savings by reducing IT labour requirements – primarily administration and support. In fact, more than 70% of the total cost of ownership (TCO) for typical datacentres is for labour or outsourced services.
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The high cost of labour, particularly performing mundane administrative and support tasks, is one of the key reasons why little of the IT budget is left for innovative projects that can help deliver competitive value.
That's where server consolidation enters the picture. It's one of the most effective ways to lower TCO of a company's datacentre. Typically performed using one of the four strategies highlighted here, server consolidation methods can be applied independently or simultaneously.
Physical consolidation
This means collecting servers distributed across multiple remote/branch offices and business units into a central datacentre.
Pros:
Physical consolidation can help the team reduce complexity and more easily standardize purchases, configurations and management best practices. Costs to implement physical consolidation are low, and consist of network enhancements to support the centralization, datacentre build-out to support the consolidation, and physically moving the servers. Ultimately, IT labour savings can reach 10%.
Cons:
Re-hosting
Pros:
Migrating the operating system to a newer version enhances availability, security, management features and performance, and provides better upgrade options.
Cons:
Logical consolidation
Pros:
Cons:
Workload optimization
Pros:
Cons:
| Application Portfolio Scenarios
|
Applications in the Portfolio
|
CPUs Needed During
|
CPUs Needed During Peak Operations
|
Percentage of Applications that Peak at same Time of Day
|
CPUs without Workload Optimization
(
|
CPUs with Workload Optimization
|
CPU's Saved
|
% CPUs Saved
|
| Single application
|
1
|
2
|
8
|
100%
|
8
|
8
|
|
0%
|
| Few small applications
|
5
|
0.5
|
2
|
50%
|
10
|
7
|
3
|
30%
|
| Many medium applications
|
10
|
2
|
8
|
50%
|
80
|
50
|
30
|
38%
|
| Few applications where 2 workloads peak at once
|
3
|
1
|
5
|
66%
|
15
|
11
|
4
|
27%
|
| Many small applications
|
10
|
0.25
|
0.75
|
40%
|
8
|
5
|
3
|
38%
|
| Few large applications
|
2
|
5
|
25
|
50%
|
50
|
30
|
20
|
40%
|
| Many applications, workloads peak at different times
|
10
|
2
|
6
|
25%
|
60
|
30
|
30
|
50%
|
Using workload analysis, standard and workload optimized environments show where the maximum consolidation savings could be achieved via workload optimization.
The ROI Analysis
The right consolidation decision takes careful analysis of current TCO, proposed consolidation options and architectures, required investments, and potential savings. Because the analysis is complex, internal IT teams should consult with independent analysts and performance benchmarking sites (such as www.spec.org and put vendors to task (with requisite scrutiny), to help propose and analyze current opportunities and various consolidation options. Comparing the solutions' TCO and service levels head-to-head with a TCO analysis tool can provide the team with visibility into potential savings, and provide justification needed to empower the business to make the right decision.
Tom Pisello is the founder and CEO of Orlando, Fla.-based Alinean, an ROI consultancy and software provider. He can be reached at tpisello@alinean.com. For more information and exclusive access to server TCO analysis tools and white papers, visit http://www.alinean.com.
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