A Roadmap for Consolidation

CHALLENGES

• Determining technology approaches — should applications be stacked on a single server or virtualized?
• Identifying areas of low utilization and opportunities for highest ROI
• Identifying consolidation candidates
• Ensuring application performance is maintained after consolidating
• Developing a business case for consolidation that is supported by business units
• Reducing risk and maximizing results

GOAL: BUILD A CONSOLIDATION STRATEGY

There are five key steps when planning a consolidation strategy. Considerations for each step are outlined below.

1.Identify current server utilization and application characteristics to uncover consolidation candidates

• What method do you use to characterize the business work being done on your servers?
• Can you easily determine whether you have over-capacity and where it is?
• Do you have measurement tools in place to identify consolidation candidates?
• Have you identified which servers are good candidates for consolidation?

How Vityl Can Help:

Vityl Capacity Management gives you quick access to data on server utilization and workloads so you can increase the accuracy and speed of your consolidation projects. Unlike other vendors, Vityl doesn’t put your consolidation at risk by simply measuring the aggregate workload of your server environment. Instead, we measure the workloads of each server to provide the most accurate picture of utilization. We also help you determine which applications are optimal candidates for stacking. This information comes to you in a user-friendly format within hours, rather than the days or weeks required by competitive approaches. As a result, you can identify your Tier 1 and Tier 2 consolidation candidates quickly and confidently.

2.Determine optimal servers/applications for consolidation and develop a plan for consolidation

Questions to consider:

• How do you predict how various server application configurations will perform?
• Are you comfortable with the accuracy and speed of this process?

How Vityl Can Help:

Once you’re identified likely candidates for consolidation, Vityl can help you qualify them. Our capacity planning software allows you to model and experiment with different application-server configurations to see how they will perform in a shared environment. This data will show you the utilization, performance and headroom you can expect with each configuration, as well as the potential cost savings through reduced software licensing, facilities costs, and labor costs. With this information, you can determine the optimal server configurations to support your multi-tiered workloads.

3.Validate Consolidation strategy

Questions to consider

• What process will you use to validate your consolidation strategy?
• Do you have a test lab or do you outsource?
• Are you comfortable with the accuracy and speed of your validation process?

How Vityl Can Help:

Vityl Capacity Management models and validates your consolidation plan under real-world scenarios in a virtual test bed that mimics your existing server environment. This eliminates the need for expensive, complex, and resource-intensive validation in a mirrored production environment. Using Vityl’s analytical models you can evaluate how combined applications will interact and compete for resources using different configurations. You can stress test workloads to ensure that service levels will not be compromised. The Vityl approach reduces risk, reduces costs and reduces time to completion. Our software can deliver results in less than an hour, compared with the week (or longer) typically required by other methods.

4.Tracking consolidation performance

Questions to consider:

• What method will you use to evaluate whether the objectives of your consolidation project were met?

How Vityl Can Help:

Vityl’s performance and capacity management components can be utilized as post-consolidation tracking mechanisms to provide meaningful data to evaluate whether your objectives were met. You can analyze performance in a number of areas, including overall system activity, system activity by workload, process data, disk activity, and network and TCP statistics. Key performance indicators are available for any period of time. Near real-time and historical performance reports can be easily accessed via the Web.

5.Ongoing consolidation management support

Questions to consider:

• How will you monitor your consolidated environment over time?
• How will you provision into the consolidated environment you’ve created?

How Vityl Can Help:

Fortra recognizes that consolidation is an ongoing process and helps you continually re-evaluate your server environment as you add new applications and new workloads. Our performance management software and automated reporting provide the feedback you need to continue to provision successfully into your consolidated environment. This ensures that your initial consolidation efforts continue to deliver the desired ROI as you grow the business.