Blade Watch

I’ve been reading a lot about data center efficiency and speaking with data center managers, in fact I had one telling me over the phone about how project managers, “just don’t understand the power and space constraints we have, that we’re asked to install more in the data center but still maintain resilience..” the magic N+ value. Interestingly the issue is not the data center when you ask for more information about how IT works, what the supply conditions are, how the billing and process works, about how we provision and deploy servers.  As we move towards virtualization this is less so as we move to commoditized platforms which deliver virtual machines to the end user.

Anyway, I asked the following:

• Who defines which servers you buy – the client does with the project manager and the unix/windows boys
• How do you charge to host a server  – oh it’s a fixed cost per device/server it’s £450 a year
• How defines when a server is decommissioned – the customer logs a request to decommission a server when they are ready
• What is your oldest x86 device – A Compaq Proliant 4500
• How much virtualization do you have – we have it, but it’s not been signed off for use by the business, so only IT use it.

So if we look at these key questions and answers above, the barriers to success are not in the data center, they are in the operations. There is no doubt the data center might be better configured, it might be optimized for air flow, have more power or cooling installed, but that wont fix the actual process and policy issues and regardless of how much you invest in your data center, if you don’t start with the demand/supply issues, you’re going to continue investing or eating data centers.

Key steps to take:

• Define rules for server age – any server over 4 years old to be decommissioned/virtualized or migrated to new hardware – there will be exceptions to the rule based on business/application compability of course, but the commodity stuff should be replaced with more efficient systems.
• Charge per watt and space in the data center – you want to install a 12u bad boy server that needs many megawatt that’s fine, you pay more than Mike who needs a DL380 G6.
• IT to define standards and consolidate server platforms/types – we will always have application specific requirements, but for the commodity kit, can we not standardize models, configurations agree a set of standards, that Janet always buys ML370s and not DL380’s is admirable for Janet, but not for our operating costs, drivers, firmware and support etc.
• IT to establish workshops and meetings to discuss data center capacity issues – to involve the client in the standards get the buy in and support at the top level.
• To look at virtualization of the infrastructure and the application – is there a reason we have so many physical servers? How do we get buy in and investment to deliver value?
• To look at consolidation of the applications with a viewpoint of moving to shared infrastructure particularly on those quick wins, Citrix or web, reducing the number of individual departmental specific Citrix and Web servers which might not all be busy or nearing 50% capacity most of the time.

Key though to the discussion is onboarding IT (both the support and application/development teams) to the discussion, establish where we are, where we want to go and work on the basis that we need to be more efficient in the way we code, deploy and configure the infrastructure. Illustrate the performance per watt discussion,  will that extra 300MHz at 45 more watt deliver 300MHz or 45w worth of performance per processor?

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