TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER. Accelerate UNIX-to-Linux Migration Programs with BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping

Transcription

1 TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER Accelerate UNIX-to-Linux Migration Programs with BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping

2 Table of Contents Who Should Read This Paper? 1 Current Economic Climate is Driving UNIX-to-Linux migration Programs 1 The Critical Success Factors Common To all UNIX to Linux migration Programs 1 Consequences of Poor Data Capture in During the Inventory Baseline Stage 3 data Needed for Project Success 4 Challenges of Achieving an Accurate Inventory Baseline within Challenging Project Timescale Constraints 5 Conclusions and recommendations 6 appendix: Stage 1 - Baseline Tollgate Checklist 7 appendix 2: BMC Atrium Discovery Examples 8

3 Who Should Read This Paper? This document is intended for IT professionals responsible for the planning and delivery of UNIX-to-Linux migration projects. This paper will help you set up your project for success, regardless of whether you are:»» A program manager responsible for success of migration as a whole»» A technologist responsible for the technical aspects of the migration»» A sponsor accountable for migration from a business perspective»» A stakeholder impacted by outcome of project BMC has played a key role in successful UNIX-to-Linux migrations. We will share insights that BMC has gained by helping numerous customers, as well as insights from some of those customers. This document will highlight key success factors and steps that will move your migration project forward expeditiously and cost effectively. The focus of this document is to provide a common approach and methodology to all successful UNIX-to-Linux migration projects. Current Economic Climate is Driving UNIX-to-Linux migration Programs Corporations are facing many challenges as a result of today s economy. Decreased revenues and intense competition are driving the need to reduce cost, adapt quickly to business needs, and rapidly mitigate risk. Along with the pressure to provide reliable IT services to the business and the customer, there are significant performance and economic drivers including space utilization, efficiency, technology lifecycle, virtualization, cloud solutions, and standardization motivating corporations to develop a migration strategy to reduce complexity, drive cost savings, and return measurable business value to the customer. One example of the this economic drive for efficiency is the OS/platform consolidation and simplification, with anticipated cost savings from the shift away from RISC-based UNIX systems to x86 server architectures, migrating off costly UNIX and mainframes onto Linux environments. When you add to these OS/platform migrations the ongoing need for hardware refresh and the programmatic need to assess and implement virtualization, it s clear to see that successful migration projects are increasingly critical to the vitality of the data center. The Critical Success Factors Common To all UNIX-to-Linux migration Programs A review of vendor best-practice UNIX-to-Linux migration methodologies reveals that projects tend to follow a standard order of steps, with the only differences being in scope and scale: Stage 1: Inventory Baseline Identify and capture a thorough inventory of the current state of servers and software in the target environment along with their interdependencies Stage 2: Evaluate Identify optimization opportunities and architect future state environment Stage 3: Prioritize Identify prime targets for migration and prioritize work streams based on risk/complexity Stage 4: Execute Perform, test, and deploy the migration organized by prioritized workstream 1

4 These projects begin with the inventory baseline step stage to develop the foundation of information needed upon which to base critical decisions in subsequent project stages, which will lead to optimal project outcomes in a timely and cost-effective manner. This is true whether migrating to a new server platform, within a data center, or across multiple data centers. The results of the baseline stage document an inventory of what is already in the datacenter at a level of detail that allows informed decision to be made about what needs to be changed and the impact it will have on other data center resources. For example:»» Identify in scope UNIX server candidates for the migration and provide an accurate inventory that includes configuration attributes»» Determine suitability/compatibility of existing hardware to support future state platforms and proactively plan for performance changes and develop models to adjust to meet business expectations»» Determine which software is nearing end of life, as these are good candidates for migration that can be incorporated into plans to reduce down time and increase effectiveness»» Determine versions of software to enable investigation of current support level on chosen Linux platform and coordinate migration activities and timeline accordingly»» Determine cohesive server groups based on applications, services, and workloads as it is typically not practical or sensible to migrate all servers at once. Hence a need to identify groups of related servers to move together.»» Prioritize migration workstreams based on risk, complexity, and the opportunity to obtain the greatest benefits in the shortest time. For example, backup services are low risk while custom applications are high risk.»» Plan migration with insight of server dependencies to proactively mitigate risk of downstream impact on business with minimal service interruption The inventory phase provides a starting point for a new deployment. A thor- ough inventory is critical to the success of the later steps. The inventory stage can be broken into five steps: hardware, OS, storage, stack, and function. Large data centers often do not have a reliable inventory of hardware and software in production. That is, they cannot easily answer the question: Exactly what needs to be migrated, and on what machines? This risk can be mitigated by spending ample time in the inventory phase. It is not enough to simply write down a list of all the servers; information must be collected about the applications that are running and all their dependencies. Before leaving the inventory phase, an organization should not only know what is running in their data center, but also how everything interacts. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Deployment Approach Novell 2

5 Consequences of Poor Data Capture During the Inventory Baseline Stage Many organizations have IT departments that have followed a path of irregular, organic growth resulting in a mixture of systems, platforms and applications that vary in complexity. By starting with a comprehensive inventory and audit of all hardware, software, applications, and licenses, and by leveraging an automated tool to reduce load on already stretched operation skills and resources, the migration process will enable critical-path decisions to be made with confidence. Manual configuration checks can take upwards of two hours per server and days to work out business application dependencies. This effort can place a significant load on already stretched operation skills and resources, and at best they are only 75 percent accurate and instantly out of date. This has the potential to negatively impact:»» Business reputation through unexpected or prolonged outages»» Project timescales due to resolving and adjusting for unexpected issues»» Project costs by additional resource requirements. Using an IT discovery and application dependency mapping tool takes the guesswork, risk, and cost out of the data center projects making it faster, easier, and more accurate. Without an optimal planning and inventory baseline stage, you put a successful migration at risk, which means possibly not meeting the business needs of the organization and stakeholders. Without a solid mapping of assets and dependencies, the risk of an outage could be far greater than the migration target, exposing the organization to financial risks and reputation risks. The project plan may not allow for appropriately schedule activities, responsibilities, and timelines, and you could experience budget overruns and still not have adequate resources to successfully complete the project. 3

6 Data Needed for Project Success The inventory baseline phase provides a starting point for a new deployment, and a thorough inventory is critical to the success of all steps to follow. The inventory baseline phase can be broken into five steps: hardware, OS, storage, stack software, and function. For each step, the following details must be collected: Hardware STEP»» Manufacturer»» Model»» Architecture (32/64 bit)»» CPU type (e.g., x86, AMD64, EM64T, IA64, PPC, PA-RISC)»» Number of CPUs»» Number of cores»» RAM»» Rack Size (RU)»» Power capacity / Heat output proxies for age / efficiency Operating System Type and Version STEP»» Type (Solaris*, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, AIX*, NT, Red Hat Enterprise Linux etc.»» Version»» Release level (build, kernel, service pack)»» Architecture (32/64 bit) Storage Requirements STEP»» Local/NAS/SAN»» HBA interfaces»» Firmware Stack Software STEP The stack includes all infrastructure and application deployment software in a standard build, with the exception of the line-of-business applications that the server hosts. That in-cludes, but is not limited to, security, backup, and management and monitoring software. You must take care to ensure that the information captured will allow you to rebuild a similar stack. The information gathered here will serve as a baseline for delivering the application on a test platform. Important information includes, but is not limited to:»» Running software products/processes»» Versions»» Applications»» Package dependencies (e.g., other applications, processes, systems, userids, etc.)»» Software vendor»» Version Applications ANd Services Function STEP The purpose here is to capture as much information as possible about the applica-tions and services to be migrated. These may be business applications (such as SAP or Oracle) providing critical business services (such as CRM), and can be broken down into several sub-categories or a technology service such as DNS. This information is absolutely critical in determining prioritization of migration work streams and understanding the impact of the migration on the business. 4

7 Challenges of Achieving an Accurate Inventory Baseline within Challenging Project Timescale Constraints Key to all a successful migration projects is that you begin with an accurate and detailed data center inventory of servers, soft-ware, and applications, including identifying inter-system and application dependencies. What are the challenges and barriers to creating the inventory and what are the opportunities to address them? How can you meet and maintain the quality of the data while meeting restricted timeframes? To achieve this, organizations need to consider several aspects of data quality.»» Coverage Ensure all the in scope servers have been discovered»» Completeness Ensure all the required attributes are captured»» Accuracy Ensure the data is correct and reliable»» Currency Ensure the data is up to date, considering the number of changes that take place in DC while meeting restricted time frames. Automation can resolve many of the data quality and timeline concerns, however there are other considerations of procurement process, integration process, and costs of licensing. A complete IT inventory of servers, soft-ware, and applications, including identifying inter-system and application dependencies is central to any decision-making process and is instrumental to ongoing operations as changes continue to occur in the data center. When performed manually, this inventory can take staff-months to complete, and based on empirical evidence, it is unlikely to provide the required granularity and data quality for effective decision support. Data gathered is employed in subsequent plan-ning, cost, and risk-mitigation activities, and also serves as the basis of a system of record that will guide change dur-ing the migration itself. If the data is not accurate, it could have costly, long-term effects on the operations. By using BMC Software s automated IT discovery solution, customer organizations have identified 20 percent more assets then manual inventory approaches, and the tool is faster, more accurate, and costs less. Once in place, BMC Atrium Discovery an automated IT discovery solution maintains a precise picture of the state of the IT environment from day to day. This allows project progress to be monitored, provides a continuously updated view of what changed incorrectly in the en-vironment when incidents occur, and assists with necessary re-planning. The solution also provides ongoing assurance that as changes occur in the data center, data quality is maintained for coverage of all the servers, completeness of the data, and accuracy of the data. Proper planning is paramount to a successful migration; however, projects often are scoped within a short timeframe. This can be achieved by seeking an automated IT discovery solution that:»» Provides a baseline as a service offering, omitting the need for a complex and time-consuming software procurement process»» Is licensed on a term basis to match the project duration, ensuring you are not left with an unused perpetual license for software»» Utilizes an agent-less approach, which not only ensures that you capture all servers but also accelerates timescales, as there is no need to deploy agents 5

8 Conclusions & Recommendations Empirical evidence shows that designing, planning, and executing any data center UNIX-to-Linux migration project is a complex activity with many moving parts. Automated IT discovery provides an accurate, consistent, and sustainable map of the data center infrastructure and helps teams to factor and plan their goals accurately. An automated IT discovery approach provides:»» A detailed inventory that enables identification of in-scope servers and the required level of analysis to be performed for planning»» Grouping by cohesive server groups based on applications, services, and workloads to be identified, and provides input into prioritization of migration workstreams based on risk, complexity, and the opportunity to obtain the greatest benefit in the shortest time»» Server dependencies to proactively mitigate risk of downstream impact on business Consistently, vendor guides and best-practice methodologies for migration planning agree that the critical first step is to know what already is in the datacenter so you can make an informed decision and fully understanding the business impact and risk. Having an easy-to-implement, easy-to-consume solution for asset and dependency discovery is needed for the duration of project. 6

9 Appendix: Stage 1 - Baseline Tollgate Checklist Use the following checklist to determine whether you have the necessary and trustworthy data to progress through the baseline tollgate of your UNIX-to-Linux migration project. 1. Accurate inventory of all in-scope server candidates, which includes the following configuration attributes: Hardware»» Manufacturer»» Model»» Architecture (32/64 bit)»» CPU type (e.g., x86, AMD64, EM64T, IA64, PPC, PA-RISC)»» Number of CPUs»» Number of cores»» RAM»» Rack Size (RU)»» Power capacity / Heat output Operating system type and version»» Type (Solaris, AIX, NT, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, etc.)»» Version»» Release level (build, kernel, service pack)»» Architecture (32/64 bit) Storage requirements»» Local/NAS/SAN»» HBA interfaces»» Firmware 2. Accurate inventory of software, including version information of software, to enable investigation of current support level on chosen platform and coordinate migration activities and timeline accordingly 3. End-of-life data for software products that are good candidates for migration and can be incorporated into plans to reduce downtime and increase effectiveness 4. Details of cohesive server groups that make up applications, services, and workloads, as it is typically not practical or sensible to migrate all servers at one time. Hence the need to identify groups of related servers to move together. 7

10 Appendix 2: BMC Atrium Discovery Examples Identifying In-Scope Solaris Servers 8

11 List of in-scope Server Candidates for Solaris-to-Linux Migration 9

12 Detailed Solaris Server Configuration 1 0

13 Software Nearing End Of Life Software Versions to Enable Investigation of Current Support Level on Linux Platform 1 1

14 Cohesive Server Groups Based on Applications / Services Enabling Identification of Groups of Related Servers to Move Together 1 2

15 Server Group Providing Key Business Service 1 3

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