Data Center Consolidation Strategy Notes
Data Center Consolidation Strategy Notes
Data Center Consolidation Strategy Notes
• Phase 1: Initiation
business case
approach and solution
project charter
migration methodology
project plan and schedule
Kick off
• Phase 2: Discovery
Collect Existing Documentation
Run Auto discovery
Distribute Questionnaires
Conduct Interviews
Direct Manual Inventory
Consolidate Existing Assets
Ensure Compliance
Confirm Continuity
• Phase 3: Planning
• Determine Disposition
• Plan Move Groups
• Design New Infrastructure
• Formulate Test Plans
• Develop Move Plans
• Mitigate Migrations Risks
• Prepare Target Location
• Phase 4: Execution
Execute Pilot Migration(s)
Run Backups
Execute Migration
Complete Post-Migration Testing
• Phase 5: Closeout
Decommission Assets
Decommission Space
Update Contracts & SLA Agreements
Conduct Debrief
Close Project
(Kenneth 2010)
Requirements:
1. Setup a program structure
a. Show project structure within program
b. Show organization, plan kick-off, name responsibles, calculate budget needs, create high
level business case
c. Plan data center consolidation of datacenter France (as a pilot) and consolidation of
data center from Paris to Berlin:
2. Create and show migration approach- migration approach should be more in detail. What
steps are needed from analyzing the data center until full migration done
Business Case
Construction Machinery FS is one of the world’s leading manufacturer of construction & mining
equipment, diesel & natural gas engines. It is a provider of leasing, insurance and logistics services. It
currently operates 28 data centers worldwide in 15 countries, which results in a high proportion (38.7%)
of total IT-Cost related to Data Centers. It plans to consolidate all its data centers to 2 locations, Berlin
and Singapore.
The starting phase will be the migration from Paris to Berlin, the success of which will determine the
strategy for the rest of the migrations.
Background Information
France, Brazil and Portugal still have major issues with the patch management
process.
Vulnerability Management MVM successor: No candidate in Proof of Concept has
been rated as technically sufficient (functional and architectural issues). Vendors
have been requested for improvement.
Germany and France both have low data center security
Business Demands
Market Trends
Competition
IT HQ Berlin DC
Development group DC Berlin to a highly available data center (active-active)
•Stabilization project Berlin in process until Q4/2016
•New building 2. DC in Berlin currently being planned, Go Live Q1/2019
Infrastructure Service
o E-Mail
o Storage
o Internet access
o Active Directory („phone book“)
o Vulnerability Scanner (for recognizing weak points)
Data centres, Hosting & network
o Area
o Hardware
o Network
o Energy
o Cooling
o Building security
Berlin Strengths
Considerably improved system stability (high priority incidents: -32% to previous year)
In April 2016 trainings for enterprise architects in Berlin were used by 18 attendees
from 16 countries.
Modernized hardware by extensive investments (additional 16 m EUR extra investments –80%
already used)
Extensive improvement of technical building equipment in realization
Inventory hardware, patch management und hardening of server addressed
Professional approach for service provision –e.g. by transforming the delivery capacities to
global partners with precise SLA and penalty regulations
Established IT operations on several locations -Singapore operating since 02/2015
Improved IT security and compliance –undertook extensive audits, more than 30 IT security-and
compliance actions currently implemented
Berlin Weakness
Approve technology roadmap (draft for infrastructure level available)
Improve processes for cooperation of HQ-IT and subsidiaries
Problem Identification
Objectives
Target is a homogeneous appropriate level for compliance and IT-security
–Complex implementation in all 28 data centers
First consolidate services (quick win), then applications
Definition homogeneous target infrastructure
Porting or replacement of applications (new development or using portfolio
applications) to target infrastructure
Synergy from homogeneous technology
If necessary investment for porting of applications or using of portfolio applications
Hardware should be homogenous (but not to France)
Software -> Standard and high maintainable / Service -> high availabilty and easy to
obtain / Hardware -> Standard and high maintainable
Back up & Recovery: Standard for all this processes is very high in financial services
sector. Backup/Restore should be done within few minutes and data versions should be
saved for 7 years, most important for disaster recovery are two active-active
datacenters, Operation management should be able to maintain all services for all
countries but there are no special
Requirements
Success Factors
Deep audit
Dedicated project resources
Using of portfolio application if porting not possible
Current Capacity
Country Regi Complianc numb numbe numb Total IT Total number number number amount of used
on e/IT er of r of FTE er of Costs Earning of of IDP of server storage (Tbyte)
security DCs overall IT FTE (Mio. €) Assets applicati applicati
Status (incl. ons ons
deposits)
•multiple redundant
components (no Single-Point-
of-Failure)
Intro
Since the mid 90’s, data consolidation and data integration became critical to address the business need for cheaper cost,
shorter time to the market as well as better business decision and control. (Chan 2009)
Data consolidation in China asks for low-cost, high performance database systems with high scalability,
availability and reliability on very large database volume.
Forrester 2007 research has shown that in excess of 70 percent of enterprise IT budgets is devoted
to maintaining existing infrastructure. Organizations need to accelerate innovation and reduce
operating expenses to increase their competitiveness or maintain their current market position,
CIOs are under pressure to identify and adopt best practices to lower their IT operating expenses
and redirect the savings in support of new investments. (Allaire, P. and et al. 2010)
In an average server environment, 30% of the servers are “dead” only consuming energy, without being properly utilized. Their
utilization ratio is only 5 to 10 percent.
Server consolidation through virtualization increases the utilization ratio up to 50% saving huge amount of energy.
Energy costs are the most expensive part of a data center’s operating budget, often representing more
than 50% of the budget (Sulaiman, 2016).
Business Challenge/As-Is
Aging data center assets across multiple global locations
Goal of replacing 15 percent of data center assets annually throughout a very large data center infrastructure
footprint
Need to see detailed information on asset location, age, dependencies, power requirements and connections globally
on one screen
Using an in-house, proprietary database to manage data center assets
Technology refresh cycle missed due to in ability to accurately track assets
Increased warranty and power costs as inefficient, aged assets with higher failure rates stayed in current data centers
longer
Data centers struggled to keep pace with a growing infrastructure’s inherent demands. They lacked an
adequate power capacity, raised floor space, and the density reinforcement to accommodate new
systems.
Chances for system failure grew along with increased support responsibilities as each data center rapidly
approached operations capacity.
Lease expirations at smaller data centers
An inability to rationalize real estate portfolios
Retrofi ts/upgrades of existing data centers proving non-viable
Cost estimates that exceeded build options
A high risk of disruption to existing production operations
Tactical hardening environments possible to support transition to new centers
Space maximized by approximately 245,000 square feet of Tier 4 raised
data center fl oor space, expandable to 290,000 square feet
Improved foundation for control and fl exibility of our client’s infrastructures
Addressed existing data center end-of-life and disaster recovery
Consolidated environment with all systems in non-strategic centers migrated to new Strategic Data
Centers
Fault-tolerant functionality with no impact to critical business systems, applications or customer
Significantly improved system availability (less than six minutes of downtime per year)
Ensured 100 percent technology refresh for mainframe systems
An environment with redundant (mirror-image) system
Components that allow concurrent maintenance activity with no disruption to critical business systems
and applications
Enhanced information security to detect and prevent system outages and minimize risk for to business
and customers
Consolidation Objectives
Identifying underutilized assets that could be consolidated
Ability to view all data centers worldwide
Map best placement of new resources
Capability to see usage statistics to consolidate under-utilized assets
Reduce server and storage tech refresh time by 35 percent
$6.1 million in annual savings due to faster refresh cycle
Reduction in maintenance, warranty, power and cooling costs by deploying newer, more efficient equipment more
quickly
Delayed construction of new data center through asset consolidation
Reduced asset failure, downtime and risk due to newer assets
power and cooling costs decrease by $2.45 million
It is important to determine the type of servers, their current status whether idle or busy, how much it
will cost to implement server consolidation, the type of technology needed to achieve the service levels
required and finally meet the security/privacy objectives. (Uddin, Rahman 2010)
Improve overall efficiency of the system
During our on-going physical surveys of data centers, it was discovered that several
regions use multiple rooms to house servers and related IT equipment. When the
servers were consolidated into a single room, a return of approximately 1200
square feet of space was realized. At another regional location, the server room
was filled with equipment, boxes, obsolete equipment, and cables sitting on the
vented, air conditioning raised floor. These were removed or otherwise excessed.
The vents that were then cleared of obstruction now permit the air conditioning
equipment to operate at between 4 and 12 degrees cooler. GSA plans to survey
and apply these lessons learned throughout its data centers and regional
infrastructure centers (RICs). RICS house infrastructure switches as well as print
and file servers, but house no application servers. Similar planned strategies
based on Lessons Learned include:
Rearranging ventilated floor tile to the center of floor to optimize air flow to the
server racks to achieve more efficient cooling.
GSA OCIO is actively pursuing virtualization through use of VMware and has secured
licensing to support hundreds of virtual servers. The VMware hypervisor also offers
flexibility to manage the diverse servers and operating systems present across GSA
OCIO responsibilities. FAS plans to pursue virtualization strategies in coordination with
their hardware refresh cycles, primarily via use of VMware to create multiple logical
devices on a single physical server. FAS plans to consolidate servers for all of its core
applications. By 2013, 50% of FAS’s contractor-operated data centers are expected to
be virtualized.
A long-term GSA goal is to acquire high-end blade servers to support GSA’s
centralization and consolidation efforts. PBS is pursuing virtualization for local and
regional applications using VMware and Egenera BladeFrame technology for
enterprise applications. PBS has purchased hardware that will enable
virtualization of the majority of its Windows (Egenera) and Solaris (M9000) servers
over the next three years.
GSA is standardizing and applying cross-agency green IT best practices and measuring
its progress against a capability maturity model performance plan, the Green IT Plan. For
the past three years, GSA has successfully implemented our enterprise Green Power
Settings for all infrastructure workstations. Approximate utility savings for this effort
exceeds $3M. In addition, through the use of a service desk contract, GSA has
consolidated the infrastructure helpdesk into an enterprise service desk meeting our initial
ITIL goals and saving initially over $43M in contract fees over a five-year period.
GSA has installed advanced energy meters in the Chantilly Data Center and will
install advanced energy meters in the two remaining agency-operated data centers
in CY 2011 and will begin monitoring on a minute-by-minute interval basis.
Advanced metering provides real-time energy consumption data that allows for
adjustment to reduce peak energy demand and helps to identify and correct sub-
optimal energy performance.
GSA will apply greener and more energy-efficient tactics when procuring,
operating, maintaining, and disposing of data center infrastructure, including:
microprocessors, servers, storage devices, network equipment, power distribution
and cooling equipment, and facilities. For example, GSA will procure energy
efficient hardware using the Energy Star EPEAT-registry. When assets are to be
retired, GSA will dispose of IT assets through GSAXcess, which promotes re-use
by marketing surplus or excess government property to other Federal agencies
and schools and other non-profits, through the Computers for Learning Program.
The OCIO will also enforce green IT SLAs with co-location, outsourcing and cloud
service providers. Furthermore, GSA will establish a policy and process to require
third-party recipients of excessed equipment to follow R2 guidelines when they are
finished with donated government equipment.
Virtualization is a technique that allows a single server to be used for multiple software
applications, users, or functions. Virtualization technology allows a single, multi-purpose
server to replace several single-purpose servers, which reduces capital spending on new
servers and operating spending on hardware license fees, space, power, and cooling
costs. GSA continues its server virtualization initiative to further reduce overall energy
consumption and significant energy cost savings. Additional benefits from virtualization in
combination with data center consolidation include reduced maintenance and operations
costs of servers and facilities as well as improved automation for server management and
provisioning.
> Big Bang: Migration is done in one single operation. It is usually undertaken over the weekend. This is preferred for low data
volumes.
> Phased: Data is moved to the target system in a phased manner. For new customers, records are created directly in the
target system.
> Parallel run: Transactions are posted on both the source and target system until the migration is executed fully.
Reconciliation is done at the end of each day until all the data is migrated.
Energy costs have dramatically increased in recent years and are to become a major factor in
the total cost of ownership of data centers (Filani et al., 2008; Orgerie et al., 2014). Therefore,
achieving energy efficiency in IT operations is a crucial task for enterprises in order to save
running costs. In some cases, 40-50% of the total data center operational budget is spent on
energy costs for IT components (Filani et al., 2008). Although energy efficiency of hardware has
been improved in recent years, at the same time, the energy consumption of data centers has
increased by 56% from 2005 to 2010 (Koomey, 2011; Splieth et al., 2015). This is mainly caused
by low average utilization levels of hardware resources in enterprise application environments
(Beloglazov and Buyya, 2010; Mi et al., 2010), since existing consolidation potential is not
exploited for the continuously growing number of servers. This growth, in turn, is caused by low
utilization rates due to a provisioning practice that is based on peak demands (Rolia et al.,
2003). The average utilization of data center servers was estimated by the Gartner Group in
2005 to be less than 20% (Speitkamp and Bichler, 2010). According to a newer Gartner report
from 2011, servers even run at average utilization levels less than 15% (Gartner, 2011). An
analysis of data collected from more than 5,000 production servers by (Beloglazov and Buyya,
2010) showed a capacity usage of usually 10-50% for a six-monthmeasurement period
(Beloglazov and Buyya, 2010). A case study that we performed preparatory (see Section 2) to
the work presented in this paper confirmed these observations and showed an average CPU
utilization of 33% across four enterprise data centers, comprising 206 physical servers and 311
business applications. Such low utilization rates adversely affect energy consumption, since
even idle servers, depending on their type and architecture, can consume up to 70% of their
peak power
(Beloglazov and Buyya, 2010). Thus, shutting down idle servers is beneficial for the total energy
efficiency, aiming at load concentration instead of load balancing (Petrucci et al., 2011). In
addition to that, cooling infrastructure is more effective with fewer servers, because effects of
overheating can be avoided (Beloglazov and Buyya, 2010). Thus, the consolidation of workloads
can achieve higher energy
savings (Xu and Fortes, 2010) by eliminating unused hardware resources, enabling IT service
providers to produce services more efficiently. However, the performance of IT systems must
not be degraded significantly (Beloglazov and Buyya, 2010) in order to support business
processes effectively. Therefore, IT Service Management (ITSM) frameworks such as ITIL and
ISO 20000 embed the task of balancing performance and operational costs into the capacity
management process. (Müller, H., Bosse, S., Turowski, K. 2016)
Stages
1. Business planning—Establish the objectives and planned end-state
2. Discovery mapping—Identify the numerous physical locations, technologies, organizations, services, people and
processes that will be impacted by the project
3. Dependency mapping—Chart the interdependencies and rippling impacts among these many elements
4. Execution planning—Acquire the different IT skills, hardware and other resources necessary to address the
issues and requirements identified in the mapping phase
5. Execution—Migrate servers and applications to the new data centers. (Newstrom 2004)
Critical to the success of this strategy is an organizational change management approach that helps guide
consolidation activities through every phase to ensure clear communication and stakeholder commitment.
1. Business planning—Establishing the business objectives and technology goals. This includes assessing the
agency’s or department’s business requirements for data processing, storage and back-up, continuity of
operations, future expansion, etc. Such planning also identifies the new organizational structures and processes
that will be needed to support the consolidated data centers.
2. Discovery mapping—Identifying the numerous facilities, technologies, organizations, services, people and
processes that will be impacted by the project. This includes understanding the business requirements for IT
services and the impact of the transition on mission-critical services.
3. Dependency mapping—Charting the interdependencies and rippling impacts among these many elements.
Some applications depend on other applications or infrastructure. Similarly, infrastructure may depend on certain
applications to function. All of the interdependencies must be mapped to create a transition schedule that
provides minimal disruption and ensures that mission-critical services are delivered as needed. Conducting due
diligence on service outages is a crucial but often overlooked planning activity.
4. Execution planning—Acquiring the different skills, hardware and other resources that will be necessary to
address all issues and requirements identified by the mapping phase. Expertise in virtualization technologies is
critical, as is expertise in capacity planning, performance management and data security. In addition, agencies and
departments may also need help with transferring data to the new data centers and, in some instances, physically
moving servers.
5. Execution—Carrying out the plan using effective organizational change management principles and practices to
gain buy-in and commitment throughout the organization. Often overlooked is the importance of scheduling dress
rehearsals or dry runs before the actual consolidation. These can provide valuable lessons and help agencies and
departments uncover and resolve unanticipated problems before embarking on the real data center consolidation.
Study life-cycle costing and reduce the expenditures of data center operations;
Shift IT investments to more efficient computing platforms and technologies;
Increase overall IT physical posture by moving servers to secure facilities;
Achieve optimal virtualization and utilization levels (servers, storage, workstations);
Establish and implement standardized data center processes and best practices;
Plan for data center business resiliency (disaster recovery/COOP); and
Promote the use of Green IT to reduce overall energy consumption.
Change Management
1. Assess change—Identifying the key business issues regarding the agency’s or department’s readiness and
capability for change. Often cultural and bureaucratic processes supporting earlier practices must be relinquished;
thus, it is important to identify the new relationships and processes, so plans can be made to facilitate the
transition and reinforce new behaviors.
2. Align executives—Ensuring agreement among program, agency and/or department heads about the vision and
goals of the project. Often leaders from different agencies have differing—and even incompatible—ideas about
what they want to achieve. Aligning leaders requires agreement on the scope, nature and magnitude of change, on
how to define and measure success, and on how leadership will work together to achieve consolidation’s goals.
Data center consolidation projects cannot succeed without executive alignment across the enterprise.
3. Translate and communicate—Establishing the strategy for communicating the planned changes, including
training and strategies to keep both leaders and stakeholders aligned. Leaders must communicate a consistent
message—tailored to each stakeholder group and repeated as often as needed—regarding what the changes will
be, how they will impact each stakeholder group and how they will be carried out. The latter point is crucial
because organizations often become misaligned on how to carry out agreed-upon changes.
4. Execute plans—Coordinating the execution of strategies for consolidating data centers and transitioning to new
work processes while simultaneously performing day-to-day functions that support operations and mission
activities. Change management workshops can help managers handle resistance and lead their teams through the
transition stages.
5. Evaluate—Assessing the project’s progress and performance against the success model. Change is a dynamic
process. Agencies and departments must remain flexible and open to course correction throughout the transition,
using metrics, feedback from stakeholders and lessons learned to amend and improve the execution plan.
(Newstrom 2004)
Documentation Required
Money Figures
The composite organization analysis points to risk-adjusted total benefits of $1.62 million over three years
versus costs of approximately $250,000 per year, adding up to a risk-adjusted net present value (NPV) of
$737,944.
Increased incremental profits and accelerated time to market due the faster rollout of new
technology.
Decreased cost due to network outage avoidance – Cisco’s strategic guidance stopped incidents
that used to occur monthly prior to Cisco’s arrival and strategic guidance.
Improved business and/or operational implementation success, reducing the costs of
amelioration.
This analysis translates to benefits of $523,625 in Year 1, $787,333 in Year 2, and repeat benefits of over $300,000
each year thereafter. Numerous qualitative benefits were also identified, such as transfer of knowledge and access
to industry-specific best practices from Cisco to the internal IT team, resulting in improved customer confidence in
their own strategic planning capabilities. (Tarbi 2013)
(Tarbi 2013)
Ref: Oracle
(IBM 2007)
(Server Central 2010)
Reference
Daim, T. Justice, J. Krampits, M., Letts, M., Subramanian, G., Thirumalai, M. (2009). “Data center metrics - An
energy efficiency model for information technology managers”, Management of Environmental Quality, Vol.20
No.6,
Cognizant 20-20 Insights. (2016). A Path to Efficient Data Migration in Core Banking.
Oracle. (2010). Put Your Data First or Your Migration Will Come Last. Retrieved from:
www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/data-integration/enterprise-data-quality/overview/index.html
I. Sulaiman. 2016. Scoping Indonesia’s Data Center Growth to Meet High Energy Demands and Off-set Emission Growth of
New Digital Economy. Presentation to Energy Efficiency Accelerator Project—Update Meeting. Jakarta. 29 July.
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Ian Storkey (2011): Operational Risk Management and Business Continuity Planning for Modern State
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Energy costs have dramatically increased in recent years and are to become a major factor in
the total cost of ownership of data centers (Filani et al., 2008; Orgerie et al., 2014). Therefore,
achieving energy efficiency in IT operations is a crucial task for enterprises in order to save
running costs. In some cases, 40-50% of the total data center operational budget is spent on
energy costs for IT components (Filani et al., 2008). Although energy efficiency of hardware has
been improved in recent years, at the same time, the energy consumption of data centers has
increased by 56% from 2005 to 2010 (Koomey, 2011; Splieth et al., 2015). This is mainly caused
by low average utilization levels of hardware resources in enterprise application environments
(Beloglazov and Buyya, 2010; Mi et al., 2010), since existing consolidation potential is not
exploited for the continuously growing number of servers. This growth, in turn, is caused by low
utilization rates due to a provisioning practice that is based on peak demands (Rolia et al.,
2003). The average utilization of data center servers was estimated by the Gartner Group in
2005 to be less than 20% (Speitkamp and Bichler, 2010). According to a newer Gartner report
from 2011, servers even run at average utilization levels less than 15% (Gartner, 2011). An
analysis of data collected from more than 5,000 production servers by (Beloglazov and Buyya,
2010) showed a capacity usage of usually 10-50% for a six-monthmeasurement period
(Beloglazov and Buyya, 2010). A case study that we performed preparatory (see Section 2) to
the work presented in this paper confirmed these observations and showed an average CPU
utilization of 33% across four enterprise data centers, comprising 206 physical servers and 311
business applications. Such low utilization rates adversely affect energy consumption, since
even idle servers, depending on their type and architecture, can consume up to 70% of their
peak power
(Beloglazov and Buyya, 2010). Thus, shutting down idle servers is beneficial for the total energy
efficiency, aiming at load concentration instead of load balancing (Petrucci et al., 2011). In
addition to that, cooling infrastructure is more effective with fewer servers, because effects of
overheating can be avoided (Beloglazov and Buyya, 2010). Thus, the consolidation of workloads
can achieve higher energy
savings (Xu and Fortes, 2010) by eliminating unused hardware resources, enabling IT service
providers to produce services more efficiently. However, the performance of IT systems must
not be degraded significantly (Beloglazov and Buyya, 2010) in order to support business
processes effectively. Therefore, IT Service Management (ITSM) frameworks such as ITIL and
ISO 20000 embed the task of balancing performance and operational costs into the capacity
management process. (Müller, H., Bosse, S., Turowski, K. 2016)
Frameworks