A Technical Manager's Perspective

Server Consolidation Project

We are working on a Server Consolidation Project at work and I thought that this would be a good place to share our strategies, challenges and accomplishments. I will touch base on how we see Server Consolidation and outline a couple of our strategies.

Overview
Server Consolidation is an approach to effectively use computer resources in order to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership and reduce the total number of servers required to support our applications. Two technologies are frequently associated with Server Consolidation, Server Virtualization and the adoption of Blade Server Technology.

We are looking to gain experience with both the Blade Hardware, and VMware software environments, and then incorporate them into our support mix. Both technologies show great promise to deliver better system utilization from our Intel based servers, however we need to gain some real world experiences with this technology to best determine which applications work best on blade and which applications are better suited to the VM virtual environment.

Virtualization
Server Virtualization is the masking of server resources (physical servers, processors, memory, and disk capacity) from the users by transforming these resources into virtual resources which can be pooled and moved around to better meet the computing needs of an organization.

There are a number of Virtualization Products available for the Intel market: VMware, and Microsoft Virtual Server. We have invested time demoing VMware and Microsoft Virtual Server, and have selected VMware and the VMware ESX server as our Virtualization Product.

VMware ESX Server is virtual infrastructure software for partitioning, consolidating and managing servers in mission-critical environments. ESX is suited for enterprise data centers and helps to minimize the total cost of ownership of computing infrastructure by increasing resource utilization, and improving the system provisioning and system management process.

The ESX product appeared more stable and mature, and has been identified as the “best virtualization software for consolidating windows servers that handle mission critical workloads” by the Gartner Group. The Gartner Group predicts that by 2008, 90% of all virtual-machine deployments will be on Hypervisor’s or virtual products that directly interface with the Hardware, like the VMware ESX server, as opposed to the Microsoft Virtual Server product that is installed as an application on top of a Microsoft Operating System (MS Server 2003).

Blade Technology
Blade Technology is a redundant server chassis with thin modular servers known as Blades. Each Blade is a computer server incorporated into a modular server card with individual CPU, memory and disk resources. Most of the major vendors offer a Blade Configuration, and we have chosen the IBM BladeCenter product.

Our initial testing strategy will be to :

• Merging low cpu and low memory usage applications onto virtual servers
• Move high cpu and high memory usage applications onto blade servers

Industry Notes
The value proposition for server consolidation (blade and virtualization) is increased utilization, saving on power, space, server maintenance and easing the complexities associated with deploying many servers.

There are a few concerns associated with server consolidation. Companies implementing Blade technologies need to consider the power and cooling impacts on the data center, especially with over populated racks. Also, there are few hardware standards associated with blades today, which means that we could run into a compatibility issue in the future should Blade Infrastructure Technology change as it matures.

Also, Gartner points out that “the Blade format and Virtualization do not necessarily go hand and hand” for server consolidation. Consolidating and virtualizing on Blade servers (with 2 CPU’s), can leave companies with management of a large number of physical servers. Instead, Gartner identifies servers with large amounts of memory and 4 or 8 CPU’s as the ideal platforms for Virtualization. You will still have a large number of Virtual servers to manage, however they will all be located on one physical server.

At the same time, as we speak with others using Virtualization today, we have identified a trend where most large scale Production installations are on larger 4 CPU and 8 CPU servers each with 16, 32, or 64 gig of RAM. The trend makes us take a cautious look at adopting Virtualization within our Blade Consfiguration.

Summary
The Blade and Virtual tools available today are a compelling strategy in the adoption of Server Consolidation. These tools will help us to be more cost effective in our server purchases, server utilization, and server support strategies. In the long term, Server Consolidation will help us with decreased server expenditures and lower the overall cost of server maintenance. There are also a number of softer infrastructure costs that will be saved surrounding Data Center Footprint, cabling and deployment.

The adoption of these new tools provides us with more options when deploying new applications or expanding current applications, however our challenge will be to come up to speed quickly, manage the deployment effectively and mainstream these tools as soon as possible

Technorati Tags: System Administration, Virtulization

System and Network Administrator's Tasks

In late 2005, Kevin Devin and George Starcher from www.kevindevin.com and "In the Trenches", recorded a podcast called "How to be a good SysAdmin". In their podcast they identified and reviewed a list of "Top 10 System Admin Truths" that came from a blog entry written by Evan Erwin over at misterorange.com.

I have been thinking about this, and came up with my own list of System/Network Admin truths. I struggled with the word truths, and instead of refering to my list as System and Network Admin truths, I see this list as a list of tasks or responsibilities that if maintained on a daily basis, will help System and Network Administrators to reduce downtime and ensure that they are better prepared to deal with issues when they occur.

Top 10 System and Network Administrator Tasks

1. Backups are a requirement and are crucial to your success
• Eventually all hardware will fail, so be prepared
• You need to create a backup strategy and backup all application data

2. Monitoring Tools
• Monitoring tools are different in all companies, however you need to invest in them and make them a requirement.
• The Gartner Group estimates that system/network managers can manage about 30 servers per admin, we all know that this number varies depending on experience and maturity of the technology. Monitoring tools help this tremendously.
• Monitor all applications, servers, and network connectivity
• Establish performance baselines to help troubleshoot performance related problems.

3. Maintain Service Contracts with all vendors
• Maintenance contracts should be required for all production environments. That includes contracts for both hardware support and software support.

4. Maintain Version Control
• Version control is essential when troubleshooting issues. Vendors often fall back on the old line “We fixed that in the latest release, please upgrade to the latest release”, so STAY CURRENT on all software products.

5. Consistent Hardware Builds and Software Installations
• Create a strategy that includes redundancy in all hardware builds
• Consistency helps with maintenance and troubleshooting.
• Document your builds and installations

6. Documentation
• Develop some standards surrounding documentation
• Organize all of your documents and store them in a central place that can be accessed by all admins.
• Document the backup process, document your monitoring process, document your vendors contact information, document your builds and installations, in the end, you will be glad that you did.

7. Communication
• Communication comes in many forms, memos, email, IM, voice mail, process and build documentation are all forms of communication.
• Be consistent with your communication, and always re-read your emails before sending.
• When there is a problem at 2:00am and you get paged, send a note to the group after resolving the issue, the little notes after problem resolutions go along way to teamwork and documentation.

8. Teamwork
• Teamwork is a subject that will not fit into four or five bullets, however it is critical to all IT operations.
• Teamwork is about coming together, sharing together, working together, and succeeding together, especially in adversity.
• Great teams and handle and work through the most difficult situations.

9. Training and Schooling
• Go back to school, work toward a degree, this will extend your career
• If you already completed a degree program or if you are not interested in an undergraduate or graduate degree, then look into Technical Certificates.
• If you are not interested in either a degree or certificate then do your best to stay current with Technology changes.

10. Stay Current with Technology
• A motivated individual looking to learn and grow, has many resources available on the Internet,
• Read the Trade Rags, visit the Tech Web sites, Read Blogs, listen to podcasts, go to conferences.

Finally, I hope that helps, please feel free to leave comments or questions.

Technorati Tags: System Administration, Network Administration

Podcasting and MP3 Players

I am sure that many folks who come across my blog would be interested in Podcasts, however many folks do not own a MP3 Player, which restricts listening to music and podcasts to sitting in front of your computer.

My recommendation to everyone, would be to start investigating the MP3 players. CNET.com is a great place to go and compare MP3 players on the market today. You have the Apple iPOD which is the Cadillac of MP3 Players, however you have many other great MP3 players on the market.

You should also look at Music Managers and Media Players for your computer like iTunes and Media Player. There are also a number of free Music Managers available on the Internet, however ITunes and Media Player are the best in my opinion. I have a 30 Gig IPOD and use iTunes every day

If you go back in time to 1990, most folks did not know how to use email. By 1995, many folks were introduced to email, however only used it at work. By 2000, many folks an email address for both home and work. Many folks that did not know how to use a computer and email in 2000 are now online everyday, reading email, investigating purchasing decisions and purchasing products over the internet.

Podcasting, is where email was in 1995. It's just getting introduced. Most technical folks understand it and know how to use it and take advantage of it, however most non-technical folks do not know what it is. Listening to Podcasts is like listening to the radio, however you are dialed into what you what to listen to, and you can listen when it is convenient to you.

There are many Free Podcasts available on almost every subject from Arts and Entertainment to Technology. You can start listening today without an MP3 player by downloading iTunes. Once you download iTunes, go to the Music Store tab and selecting Podcasts. You do not need an MP3 player to start downloading to your PC. You can download what you are interested in and listen on your computer. You will be amazed at the content available today.

The MP3 player allows you the freedom to take it with you, to become better informed in many areas. I understand that its and additional purchase decision, however I would ask that you start looking into it now.

Technorati Tags: Podcast, Mp3