PROJECT PROPOSAL

PROJECT TITLE IMPLEMENTATION OF SERVER AND DATABASE

CONSOLIDATION

RATIONALE

In the previous years, we paid a little attention on the growth of data rather
focusing on Information System development, database application to store the
data and servers to run them. This has resulted in costly business challenges
such as following:

a. Higher administrative cost in terms of maintenance.

b. Creation of islands of storage to serve each individual database
applications often resulting in underutilization and/or over provisioning
of storages resources for each application.
c. Difficulty in sharing data
d. Scaling capacity means downtime
e. Difficulties with backup

OBJECTIVES

The server and database consolidation project aims to:

a. Consolidate existing databases and infrastructure to lower costs.

b. Reduce complexity and simplify IT infrastructure.
c. Increase productivity of IT personnel.

CURRENT SETUP (Direct Attach Storage)

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LAN

Ethernet Switch

TEAMS FMS E-gazete TM-Online PAS IPDL-TM

AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT

• Centralized management of databases.

• High availability
• Better storage utilization
• Growth on demand without downtime.
• Simplify backup and business continuity

PROPOSED SET-UP

There are four strategies in server consolidation as follows:

Physical consolidation

This means collecting servers distributed across multiple remote/branch

offices and business units into a central data center.

Pros:

The team can improve configuration control by restricting server access, and
strengthening business resilience through the superior data center infrastructure
and security. It can also eliminate the cost of moves, add-ons, and changes
(MACs), as well as break-fix maintenance and support by eliminating travel time
and expenses.

Physical consolidation can help the team reduce complexity and more easily
standardize purchases, configurations and management best practices. Costs to
implement physical consolidation are low, and consist of network enhancements
to support the centralization, data center build-out to support the consolidation,
and physically moving the servers. Ultimately, IT labor savings can reach 10%.

Cons:

The risks are performance degradations due to poor network planning and
business resilience risks by having all of the server assets in "one basket,"
particularly if the data center does not have adequate recovery plans.

Re-hosting

Porting from older legacy platforms and operating systems to newer solutions
often results in consolidation, as fewer new high-performance systems are
typically needed to support the workload.

Pros:
Depending on the age of a legacy system, expensive support and maintenance
contracts can be eliminated. Since the number of administrators and support
labor is usually correlated to the number of individual servers, having fewer
servers generates proportional administration and support labor savings.

Migrating the operating system to a newer version enhances availability, security,

management features and performance, and provides better upgrade options.

Cons:

If the proposed system for re-hosting is not compatible with the prior systems, the
application may require porting to another platform, custom code rewrites,
procedures and data migration. Porting costs are often underestimated.

Logical consolidation

Individual servers are often configured into individual server "islands" with 40% or
more headroom to allow for changes in workload and growth. Using logical
consolidation, hard partitions can be established for the operating system,
application, processors and memory requirements so that these individual server
"islands" are pooled onto a single server or cluster. That way, fewer servers are
needed because headroom is reduced and the applications are hosted on a
single cluster. The team can change the partitions to allocate more resources as
needed for workload changes, as opposed to managing moves, adds and
changes physically on multiple "islands" of individual servers.

Pros:

Logical consolidation on a shared server can save 40% or more of overhead

headroom, and a proportional decrease in server assets. This can lead to a
similar reduction in administration and support.

Cons:

Logical consolidation requires manually managing the hard partitions, made

difficult in a dynamic environment where workloads change frequently. This
process can be difficult and can introduce management burden and complexity.
Many business units will not support logical consolidation where they must share
servers, and will need to be "sold" on the business merits of consolidation and
assured that service levels will hold steady or increase.

Workload optimization

The server operating system (such as with HP-UX11i's virtualization features) or

third-party utilities (such as EMC's VMWare) can be configured to intelligently
manage server resource allocation based on workload demands. Partitions can
 be established based on demand and schedule rules, and the system takes care
of the rest, allocating computing power to automatically meet needs.

Pros:

Fewer CPUs, and in turn, fewer servers are needed to support multi-application
workloads. For multi-application portfolios, this approach maximizes asset
utilization and consolidation, reducing software licensing requirements, facilities
costs and labor -- saving at leat 40 % based on the application profiles. Typically,
fewer, smaller applications that peak at different times drive the highest
consolidation. Because the system manages workloads and partitions,
administration and support are minimized.

Cons:

Establishing workload optimization configuration and rules will take some time
and can be complex, requiring professional services assistance. As with logical
consolidation, business unit apprehensions and business resilience best
practices apply.

CPUs without
CPUs Workload
Needed CPUs Percentage ofOptimization
Application During Needed Applications that CPUs with
Portfolio Applications inNormal During PeakPeak at same(Islands Workload CPU's % CPUs
Scenarios the Portfolio Operations Operations Time of Day Scenario) Optimization Saved Saved
Single
application 1 2 8 100% 8 8 0 0%
Few small
applications 5 0.5 2 50% 10 7 3 30%
Many medium
applications 10 2 8 50% 80 50 30 38%
Few
applications
where 2
workloads peak
at once 3 1 5 66% 15 11 4 27%
Many small
applications 10 0.25 0.75 40% 8 5 3 38%
Few large
applications 2 5 25 50% 50 30 20 40%
Many
applications,
workloads peak
at different
times 10 2 6 25% 60 30 30 50%
Using workload analysis, standard and workload optimized environments show
where the maximum consolidation savings could be achieved via workload
optimization.

The ROI Analysis

The right consolidation decision takes careful analysis of current TCO, proposed
consolidation options and architectures, required investments, and potential
savings. Because the analysis is complex, internal IT teams should consult with
independent analysts and performance benchmarking sites (such as
www.spec.org and put vendors to task (with requisite scrutiny), to help propose
and analyze current opportunities and various consolidation options. Comparing
the solutions' TCO and service levels head-to-head with a TCO analysis tool can
provide the team with visibility into potential savings, and provide justification
needed to empower the business to make the right decision.