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One of the things many of the banks in the city are facing is problems with data center space. That they’re reaching capacity, bringing on new facilities, with that in mind, is virtualization the next platform, the tool of choice to carry out wintel/linux server moves?

That I can take my Compaq DL360, virtualize it on to my DL585/my blade farm in data center 1 (DC1), then send it over the LAN, and either have a virtual infrastructure in the new data center (DC4) bringing me all the associated benefits. The reason for mentioning this is that the cost of moving a server financially as well as a service delivery standpoint can be very significant, it might only be a two hour journey in the back of a van, but its’ the move part that might take much longer from an outage standpoint. That stop application, shut down server, stop monitoring, unrack server, package it, courier it, then unpack it, rack it, patch it, switch it on, enable monitoring, test, all the hidden bits. Not to mention the cost of having some vendor approved engineers to deal with any hardware failures, do consider those Compaq 6500s, the 5000s, ensuring that you can adequately plan and respond to these is important.

So let’s use the technology as a server move enabler right? The cost of moving the server estate can be horrific, from the courier cost, the insurance, the internal/external engineers time as well as everything else, and the risk particularly to the legacy systems can be a problem, for example, say it’s £750 to move a Compaq Proliant 6500, surely from a risk/benefit analysis we’re better virtualizing it/replacing it than moving it?

Granted I know most places wouldn’t the capex (initial capital cost being the problem), but it’s nice to dream..

I’ll take the DL360, virtualize it one weekend on to my ESX host, then over the weekend when it’s not in use, send it to the new data center on to my new ESX servers. Moving our existing server estate, our existing storage, networks and everything else moves the problems with us, we don’t get to build data centers that often, so effectively and efficiently handling the space allocation, the move is just as important as co-ordinating the down time.

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