40 Ways to Make

Your Data Center

More Efficient

an Server eBook
Contents…
40 Ways to Make Your
Data Center More Efficient

This content was adapted from ServerWatch.com. Contributor: Kenneth Hess.

2 10 Data Center Management Mistakes You Might Be Making

2
4 10 System Administrator Tasks Ripe for Automation

6 10 Free Server Tools Your Organization Needs

8 Uncover Your 10 Most Painful Performance Bottlenecks

4 6

8
 40 Ways to Make Your
Data Center More Efficient

10 Data Center Management Mistakes

You Might Be Making
By Kenneth Hess

F
or those who think (falsely) that they have 3. Design Flaws
the perfect data center, read on for some Design flaws of a standing data center are difficult to
enlightenment. Those who work in the overcome, but a redesign is less expensive than a fresh
data centers of their dreams might beg build. A 20-year-old data center still looks good, but it
to differ with your fantasy. Though you may not achieve doesn’t perform up to today’s greener standards. You’ll
desired perfection affordably, you can come close by also have to retrofit your electrical apparatus to handle
changing the way you handle certain aspects of your data blade systems. You’ll probably need to toss that old
center management. Managing cooling system as well, since
a collection of computer systems contemporary servers run cooler
is no easy task. But, through and more efficiently than their
better management and proper predecessors did.
planning that task might involve
popping fewer pain pills. Here 4. Limited Expandability
are the 10 major data center “640K of RAM ought to be
mistakes to avoid. enough for anybody.” How many
times have you heard that quote
1. Inadequate Virtualization that’s attributed to Bill Gates,
If you operate a data center circa 1981? Whether he said it
and haven’t caught on that is of little importance now. The
virtualization saves money, lesson to learn is that when you
you’re way behind the curve. build anything, pretend you’re
Virtualization saves valuable rack converting a Celsius temperature
space. It saves additional money to Fahrenheit: Double the amount
on cooling, power and service you think you need and add 32.
contracts for those non-existent Using the Celsius-to-Fahrenheit
systems. equation will allow for some expandability in your data
center. Two thousand square feet of floor space isn’t
2. Untapped Cloud Computing enough? Try 4,032 feet instead. Poor planning is no
Similar to virtualization, cloud computing requires that reason to run out of floor space or any other capacity.
you obtain a clue about its capability for your company or
your customers. Amazon.com offers flexible and scalable 5. Relaxed Security
plans that fit into an on-demand capacity scenario. Using Enter any data center and you’ll see card readers,
Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux Server Edition, for example, retina scanners, circle locks, weight scales or other high
you can create your own private cloud or leverage technology security systems in place. But, next to those
Amazon.com’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) dynamically. extreme security measures, you’ll see a key entry access

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 40 Ways to Make Your
Data Center More Efficient
door for security bypass. Physical security requires no
bypass. If there’s a bypass in place, consider your security
compromised.
6. Haphazard Server Management
To manage your server systems, do you need physical
access or can you manage them remotely? Every
contemporary server system comes with a maintenance
connection with which to manage that system remotely.
Use it. Enable it. For each person who enters a data
center, you can expect some amount of system failure.
Incorrectly labeled systems, incorrect locations, a misread
system name — the list goes on. Do yourself a favor:
Enable those remote access consoles when you provision
your physical systems.
7. Ill-fated Consolidation Efforts
One order of data center management business is to
minimize the number of systems on the floor or in the
racks. Server consolidation is the method by which this
effort is carried out. Consider a consolidation ratio of
2-to-1 or 3-to-1 unacceptable. Physical systems that
operate in the 5 percent to 20 percent utilized range can
easily consolidate onto a system with five, six or more of
its peers. Underutilized systems waste rack space, power
and money in the form of service contracts.
8. Overcooled/Undercooled Space
What temperature is your data center? You should find
out. If your data center operates below 70 degrees
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Fahrenheit, you’re wasting money. Servers need air flow
more than they need arctic temperatures. Take a stroll
through your data center. If it’s comfortable for you, it’s
comfortable for your servers. There’s no need to freeze
your data center employees or make them sweat.
9. Underpowered Facility
How many times have you heard that a particular
data center has floor space but no more power? You
hear it more than you should, if you hear it at all. An
underpowered facility is a victim of poor planning. (See
No. 4 above.) Virtualization can help give you back
some power. Server consolidation can also assist. But
those are short-term fixes for the greater problem of an
underpowered facility.
10. Rack Overcrowding
If you’ve ever attempted to work in a fully populated rack,
you probably wished you had miniature hands or extra
long fingers. It might seem inefficient to leave a bit of
space between systems, but those who have the job of
plugging and unplugging components for those systems
will thank you. Poor planning leads to rack overcrowding,
and it’s unnecessary. Virtualization, consolidation and
a more efficient arrangement will ease the problem.
Experiencing an outage because of accidentally
unplugging a server might convince you to leave a bit of
space between systems.
 40 Ways to Make Your
Data Center More Efficient

10 System Administrator Tasks

Ripe for Automation
By Kenneth Hess

A
system administrator who does everything
manually wastes not only her time but yours
as well. Tasks that a sys admin performs
repeatedly should be automated. Automation
through scripting, specialized software and system
scheduling frees her time, saves you money and prevents
mistakes due to human error. These 10 sys admin tasks
are prime targets for automation
and will help streamline your daily
operations.
1. Patching
The only time manual patching is
called for is when that stubborn
minority of systems will not take
patches by automated means.
Linux and Windows include tools
to perform automated updates,
but if you’d like more control
of which patches your systems
receive and when they receive
them, investigate HP’s Data Center
Automation Center (HPDCAC)
software (formerly Opsware). Much more than just
an automated patching application, HPDCAC moves
managing a complex infrastructure into a single, simple
interface. If you’re looking for a “patch only” solution,
check out Ecora’s Patch Manager for agentless patch
management.
2. User and Group Maintenance
You’ve probably used Active Directory, LDAP, NIS+ or
other user and group account management software, but
have you ever used one that really made you happy? The
reason you haven’t is that there’s not a lot of automation
built into them. Sure, you can create a user account,
remove a user account, and create groups and manage
groups, but when it comes down to real management,
you probably haven’t found the right tool. The one you
want might have to be the one you create yourself via
scripts.
In UNIX, it’s simple to create scripts to prompt you for the
accounts that you wish to remove, have the system copy
the user’s files to a new location,
change the permissions, search all
systems for any files owned by that
user, change permissions on those
files, or move them and complete
the process by removing the
user account from the directory
service. Check out some of the
add-on modules for your user
management tool of choice.
Microsoft, for example, offers its
Active Directory Resource Kit Book
and CD that includes utilities for
automation scripting.
3. Security Sweeps
You should perform regular, automated security sweeps
on your entire network to expose and fix any wire-borne
vulnerabilities. The frequency and intensity of the scans
depends on the complexity of your network. Through
scripting magic, you can set up scheduled scans, send
the output to a database, extract a post-scan report from
the database, and email it to yourself or create an HTML
version of the report suitable for online viewing. One
such tool, available for every modern operating system, is
Nmap. Nmap is a free network security scanner designed
to rapidly scan large networks and report vulnerabilities.
4. Disk Usage Scans
There is a constant turf war raging between users and sys

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 40 Ways to Make Your
Data Center More Efficient
admins, and it is one that the sys admin must ultimately
win. To that end, the sys admin has some tools to employ:
disk space quotas, disk partitions and disk space scans.
Scans are regular audits of disk space usage by user.
Offenders usually receive a warning or two before
personal contact from a sys admin. Typical remedies for
disk space gluttons are temporary account suspension,
removal of files, moving the files to a new location or an
extension of the user’s space quota. These automated
scans, when performed regularly (about once per week),
prevent harsh actions by the sys admin and keep users
apprised of their disk use.
5. Performance Monitoring
Taking an occasional performance snapshot is a good
method for a single point-in-time glance at system
performance. That singular peek is only a pixel in the
entire performance picture. You need something with
more depth and breadth that will provide you with
performance trends and predictive peaks and valleys.
Setting up such a system is easy with Orca. Orca compiles
performance data from disparate sources (UNIX,
Windows, Linux) and creates easy-to-read performance
graphs. Gathering of data, calculations, graph generation
and display are all part of the automated system.
6. File Transfers
Using command-line scripting power (Windows, UNIX
and Linux), you can perform automated file transfers
between hosts. There’s no need to do them interactively.
If you’re clever in your timing, you can set up elaborate
automated schemes that not only transfer your files but
also unzip, change permissions, move, copy and insert
information into a database. Use the secure versions
of your file transfer utilities (e.g., SSH, SFTP, SCP) to
ensure that anyone snooping doesn’t grab an important
password from your network stream.
7. Code Promotion
How you promote code from test to staging and into
production can have a profound effect on marketing
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campaigns and other time-specific events. Moving the
code from one environment to another manually is
cumbersome, error-prone and requires coordination
between developers and sys admins. Enable your
developers to promote code from one environment to
another using an automated code deployment system.
Some sys admins use RSYNC for automated code
deployment and it’s safe to use if coupled with SSH keys
to secure the transfers between hosts.
8. High-Level Administration
You can perform those housekeeping duties, service
restarts and maintenance notices through automation.
Set up your scripts to fire during low-use hours for
clearing temporary file dumps, restarting your favorite
services and sending out any maintenance or downtime
notices via email. You’ll find that automating these tasks
takes some of the pressure off of you to remember which
day it is and which list of things you need to do. There’s
no reason to keep a calendar of these; let the system
handle them.
9. Reboots
Yes, you can automate system restarts. Sitting around
waiting for systems to bounce back to life is a waste of
time. Automate the process during low-use hours. Don’t
worry, your automated monitoring system will notify you if
the system doesn’t come back online within a reasonable
amount of time.
10. Malware Scans
You can scan for spyware, malware, viruses and other
nasties using automated processes. Using scripts, you can
map or mount drives, scan your filesystems, disconnect
when finished with the scan, scrape the scan log for
positive hits, and send the results to a database or in an
email. You don’t need to manually perform these scans
when your system is perfectly happy and suited to do so
on its own.
 40 Ways to Make Your
Data Center More Efficient

10 Free Server Tools Your Organization Needs

By Kenneth Hess

T
his list of 10 free, essential tools is an 3. Nagios
amalgam of tools for all sizes of companies Nagios is an enterprise infrastructure monitoring suite.
and networks. The range of tools covered It’s free, mature and commercially supported. It has
here are generally cross-platform (i.e., they grown from a niche software project to a major force in
run on multiple OSes) but all are extremely useful to the contemporary network management. It’s used by such
system administrator, network administrator and first- high-profile companies as Citrix, ADP, Domino’s Pizza,
level support personnel. While all of these tools are free Wells Fargo, Ericsson and the U.S. Army.
to download and use in your network without payment
of any kind to their developers or maintainers, not all are 4. Wireshark
open source. The 10 essential If you run a network of any
tools listed here, in no particular size or topology, Wireshark is
order, are from various sources a must-have application. It is
and represent the very best in a network packet capture and
tools currently used in large and analysis program that assists you
small enterprises alike. with your ongoing quest for a
trouble-free network. Wireshark
1. PSTools won’t prevent network problems,
PSTools is a suite of useful but it does allow you to analyze
command-line Windows tools those problems in real time and
that IT professionals consider possibly avoid failure.
essential to survival in a
Windows-infested network. It 5. Apache
provides automation tools that The Apache project isn’t just a
have no rival. There is no greater web server. The project, officially
free toolset for Windows available known as the Apache Software
anywhere. Microsoft provides this Foundation (ASF), consists of
suite free of charge. If it’s not part almost 100 different projects
of your Windows diagnostic and automation arsenal, stop under the Apache umbrella. Yes, the famous and wildly
reading and download it now. Be sure to come back and popular HTTP server, Apache, is the project’s namesake
finish the list. (You can multitask, can’t you?) and mainstay, but it isn’t the only nymph in the forest.

2. SharEnum
ShareEnum is an obscure but very useful tool. ShareEnum
shows you all file shares on your network. Even better, it
shows you their associated security information. This very
small (94K) tool might become one of the most valuable
and useful security tools that you possess. It is another
free tool from Microsoft.
6. IP Plan
IP Plan is a little-known project that has potential in any
size environment. It’s not a DNS service, but it is a Web-
based, IP tracking application. The reasoning behind a
tool like IP Plan is that DNS tracks systems that are in use.
But to whom do you go when an IP address conflict, and

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 40 Ways to Make Your
Data Center More Efficient
how do you know which IP addresses are free to use? You
won’t — unless you have a tool like IP Plan. It’s easy to
use and free. What more could you want?
7. Eclipse
Eclipse is an Integrated Development Environment
(IDE), which you can use to create applications with
almost any computer programming language. Eclipse
has wide language support, but it is historically viewed
as a Java development tool. You can develop Windows
applications in this very complete IDE as well as
applications for every current operating system.
8. KVM
Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM), now owned and supported
by Red Hat, is a free, full virtualization solution. Full
virtualization means hardware abstraction enables you
to use almost any OS in a virtual machine. Each virtual
machine has its own display, network, disk and BIOS, and
it functions like a physical system. You install an OS into
a virtual machine just as you would to a physical system.
Yes, even Windows.
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9. OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org (OO.o) is the free equivalent of
Microsoft’s popular office suite. OO.o sports a word
processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, database
and more. It is compatible with Microsoft Office and can
use or export in almost every imaginable file format.
OpenOffice.org is not only easy on the wallet (free), but
it’s also the darling of IBM, which has created its own
derivative: Lotus Smartsuite.
10. Webmin
Webmin, for the uninitiated, is the ultimate lazy system
administrator tool. It’s a Web-based interface to
your UNIX or Linux system that covers almost every
configurable aspect of the system and any add-on
program you can ponder. You can’t rely on it for 100
percent of your system administration tasks, but you can
probably use it for 99 percent of them.
 40 Ways to Make Your
Data Center More Efficient

Uncover Your 10 Most Painful Performance

Bottlenecks
By Kenneth Hess

W
hen you hear the words, “performance other system flaws that manifest themselves as memory
bottleneck,” the typical hot spots that come issues. The key to solving memory performance problems
to mind are CPU, Memory, Disk and Network. is to find the root cause of the symptom before adding
Those are good places to start looking for more RAM.
bottlenecks but they aren’t the only places performance
problems can hide. This list targets six other potential 3. Storage
leads for your investigation into the elusive performance Disk speed, RAID type, storage type and controller
breakdown. Sometimes just knowing where to look technology all combine to produce what’s known as
might prevent your own personal disk I/O. Disk I/O is a common
breakdown. source of performance angst
Note that listed items are in no for system administrators
particular order. and users alike. There are
practical and physical limits to
1. CPU performance even when using
The CPU is the brain of the the best contemporary disk
computer where calculations and technology. Use best practices
instruction operations occur. when combining and separating
CPUs can handle millions of workloads on disks. As attractive
calculations and instructions, as leveraged storage is, local
but performance suffers when disks are still faster than the
the numbers of these operations fastest SAN.
exceeds capacity. CPUs that
sustain greater than 75-percent- 4. Network
busy numbers will slow the entire The network is a commonly
system. CPUs need some room blamed source of performance
for activity “bursts” where loads can reach 100 percent bottlenecks, but it is rarely
for short periods of time. CPU load is a common source found to be so. Unless there is a network component
of performance bottlenecks. hardware failure, such as a damaged switch port, bad
cable, jabbering network card or router configuration
2. Memory problem, you should look elsewhere for your “network”
continued
The rule of thumb on memory is “add more.” When performance bottleneck. A perceived slowness on the
performance problems point to memory, the general network usually points to one of the list’s other nine
consensus to solve the problem, is to add more. This entries.
practice is effective only in the short term, however.
Performance bottlenecks that point to memory are often 5. Applications
the result of poorly designed software (memory leaks) or Although no application developer wants to hear it,

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 40 Ways to Make Your
Data Center More Efficient
poorly coded applications masquerade themselves as
hardware problems. The fickle finger of guilt points to
applications when an otherwise quiescent system suffers
greatly when the application is on and shows no signs
of difficulty when the application is off. It’s an ongoing
battle between system administrators and developers
when performance issue occur. Each wants to allege the
other’s guilt. A word to the wise after many hundreds of
hours of chasing hardware performance bottlenecks: It’s
the application.
6. Malware
Viruses, Trojan horses and spyware account for a large
percentage of perceived performance bottlenecks. Users
notoriously complain about the network, the application
or their computer when nasties raise their ugly heads.
Those performance killers can reside on one or more
server systems, the user’s workstation, or a combination
of the two. Malware infections are so common that you
must employ multiple defenses against them. Antivirus,
antispyware, local firewalls, network firewalls and a
regular patching regimen will help protect systems and
prevent resultant bottlenecks.
7. Workload
Smart workload management can help prevent
performance problems associated with poorly balanced
workloads or ill-conceived load balancing schemes.
Adding another system to a suffering cluster relieves the
pressure, but this is easier to do in a virtual environment
than in a physical one. The best advice here is to measure
capacity and performance of all systems and heed the
numbers reported to you. Move workloads, add systems
and keep a watchful eye on performance.
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8. Failing or Outdated Hardware
The older the hardware, the more likely it is to fail.
Some hardware components fail with a single final
breath, while others linger on with random complaints
and untraceable glitches. Hardware that causes system
reboots, disappearance of data or performance
bottlenecks frustrate system administrators because of
its unpredictable nature. The best way to prevent such
tragedies is to keep hardware fresh, use redundant
hardware and monitor your systems carefully.
9. Filesystem
Did you know that your filesystem choice can have
a profound impact on performance? It can. Some
filesystems, JFS for example, uses very little CPU. XFS
has very high scalability and high performance. NTFS is a
recoverable file system with high performance. The new
EXT4 filesystem supports very large files efficiently. Each
filesystem has a purpose, and using the incorrect one for
an application can have disastrous results. Consider your
filesystem choices wisely and select the best one for the
job. There is no one size fits all filesystem.
10. Technology
The technology you select for your infrastructure plays
an important role in performance. For example, if
you dedicate your services to a virtual infrastructure
technology, you might have performance problems
not experienced on equivalent physical systems.
Alternatively, there are some workloads that thrive
on virtual technology. LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL,
PHP) workloads, for example, perform at and greater
than native speeds on KVM. However, container-type
virtualization (OpenVZ, Parallels, Solaris Zones) boasts
native performance ratings for any workload.