SERVER CONSOLIDATION AND

VIRTUALIZATION

Joanne M. Kossuth, Vice President for Operations and CIO,

Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
Definitions: Consolidation

• Implies combining workloads from separate

machines/applications into a smaller number
• Combine heterogeneous workloads from multiple
servers into a single larger server
• Multiple workloads may be combined under a
single OS, reducing OS images.
• Multiple applications such as email or databases
can be combined into a single system
• Centralized, physical, operational
Definitions: Virtualization

• Virtualization tools include:

• Partitions
• Virtual machines
• Resource management software
• All enable multiple workloads to run
simultaneously on larger servers
                                                                       
Approach

• Alternate approach to growing the data center

• Implications:
• Real estate
• Use less space
• Potential cost savings
• Requires fewer resources for renovations
• Allows for reclamation of space for other
institutional needs
Implications, Cont.

• Energy usage
• Improves efficiency
• Uses less electricity
• Requires less cooling equipment
• “Greener” approach
Implications, Cont.

• Flexibility and agility

• Increases responsiveness to customers
• Allows for increased development and test opportunities
• Simplification
• Standards
• Images
• Support
• Hardware utilization
• Increased utilization
• Better metrics
Implications, Cont.

• Costs
• Reduced TCO
• Reduced support
• Licensing?
• Disaster recovery/business continuity
• Increased opportunity
• Improved reliability and uptime
• Reduced recovery time
• Others?
Questions to Ask

• Licensing
• Life time costs
• Compatibility
• Shared storage requirements
• Network hardware requirements (GB?)
• Support
• Internal
• External
Planning the Project

• Understand your goals

• Assess the existing environment
• Work with vendor partners on potential designs
• Evaluations and assessment of vendor solutions
• Staff training
• Make sure to work with YOUR potential
configurations and software
Planning II

• Deployment plan
• Ongoing evaluation and support
• Don’t forget about backup planning
• Multiple front ends, one backend storage array?
• Standards
• Implications for user experiences
• Planning for change and next gen
Olin College Experience

• Goals
• Increase development and testing environments
• Reduce the total number of servers supported
• Improve agility
• Reallocate costs
• Streamline operations
Your Experiences

• Share your experiences

• Positive
• Negative
• Lessons learned?
Other Opportunities

• Network virtualization
• Storage virtualization
• Desk top virtualization
THANK YOU