A UBM white paper. Data Center Efficiency in the Virtual Era: Three Key Steps. Step 1: Standardize. Brought to you by
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1 A UBM white paper august 2010 Data Center Efficiency in the Virtual Era: Three Key Steps Step 1: Standardize Brought to you by
2 Defining Data Center Efficiency: Standardization Is Job One 2 Rapid changes in the business environment have put tremendous pressure on IT infrastructures. Tough global competition requires new levels of operational performance and a tight lid on costs. Executives, customers, regulators, and investors are ever more demanding. And the economic roller coaster hasn t made anything easier. At first, enterprises turned to faster and more powerful hardware. But buying a company s way into better operations is expensive and highly inefficient. Companies that tried quickly ran out of room for new equipment and the power and cooling to run it. Some corporations have experimented with simplifying their infrastructure: using some server consolidation here, a little virtualization there. But without solving the underlying inefficiencies, even those solutions became just another way to spend more money on IT. To achieve their business goals and unlock the value of their infrastructures, companies need a more disciplined and structured way to eliminate inefficiencies. A growing number are reaping benefits from a three-step process: standardize, simplify, and automate. This first installment in a three-part series explores how standardization forms the basis for deriving value from the efforts that follow. By following these steps in order, corporations can ensure that their infrastructures provide the flexibility to meet current and future demands while preserving ROI from existing technology investments and building a foundation for new tech investments to carry efficiency forward. Step 1: Standardize Data center efficiency begins with standardization, which is an antidote to the patchwork style of growth in the 1990s and early 2000s. During that period, IT addressed each new business need that arose by purchasing software, hardware, and services often for one application alone. Resources were provided to handle the application s peak workload plus an additional 25 to 50 percent to guarantee performance. As these silos grew with no an overall strategy, data centers became a vast field of underutilized capacity. The cost of housing, power, cooling, and administration took over the IT budget, especially as costs and demands continued to rise and budgets continued to tighten. The pressure on IT organizations isn t going away any time soon. Case in point: The 2010 InformationWeek Analytics State of the Data Center survey shows that only 30 percent of business technology professionals had larger data center budgets for 2010 compared with 2009, yet half faced higher resource demands. Standardization lays the foundation for solving these issues. It begins to remove the complexity of administering and maintaining diverse systems. Staff can work more efficiently, because the need for specialized expertise in different systems diminishes. Purchasing, upgrading, and inventory management also become easier. As enterprises continue to turn to virtualization, standardization makes even more sense. When software and hardware were more closely linked, the choice of underlying server was extremely important to the outcome. But the trend toward virtualization has severed that link. A lot of software people don t care what you re using for hardware, explains Alan Zeichick, principal analyst at Camden Associates. When you re running in a virtualized environment, as long as you can get the virtual system up and running, you don t care. According to Zeichick, that change makes the case for standardization even stronger. All of the old reasons for standardizing remain, he says. Better purchasing power, upgrades
3 IT leaders who are successfully increasing data center efficiency tend to select the plat forms that will meet their needs, standardize on a single family, and, within a family, stick to a limited set of platform types. but in terms of data center efficiency, four are critical: Platform Server Communications Networking and storage. 3 and patches, easier decision making, simpler stocking of spare parts, especially in terms of specific models. In addition, he says, the ease of decision-making means greater flexibility to react to changing business issues, the ability to consolidate purchases, and the simplification of the whole service environment. As a result, standardization leads directly to a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) derived from lower maintenance costs, improved operational efficiency, reduced parts inventories and simplified service contracts. Standardization can apply in many areas, The following sections explore benefits, challenges and guidelines for each. A Standard Platform Makes Management Easier The breadth of choices for data center infrastructure is huge. Virtually every maker of computers, regardless of processor type, bus type or intended operating system makes a server. In addition, there are white-box server platforms that are transformed into appliances, and there are purpose-built infrastructure items for everything from security to high-speed switching. Dell Takes its Own Standardization Advice When Dell, Inc. set out on a three-year journey to boost data center efficiency, it turned to its own Infrastructure Consulting Services (ICS) the same group that advises the company s customers for advice. First on the to-do list: Simplifying the complicated mix of proprietary and open server and network technologies that populated its data centers. Dell made the decision to focus on driving everything with the x86 platform as the standard, Dell CIO Robin Johnson explained in an interview in Dell Power Solutions magazine earlier this year. We didn t just standardize the low-risk systems, the remote office systems, and the file-and-print systems. We took our core transaction processing all of Dell.com, all of our management systems, all of our financial applications and put approximately 97 percent of it onto an x86 platform. 1 Ultimately, Dell standardized on just a handful of similar x86 servers for all its needs. Today, the company uses just four kinds of two-way servers and two kinds of four-way servers. Standardizing its silos of proprietary storage was a more complex issue. A review by ICS determined that it didn t make sense to have Fibre Channel everywhere. So the company kept the Fibre Channel where it made sense for performance and security, but not elsewhere. Gradually, the company replaced Fibre Channel with iscsi storage where it made sense to do so. The effort to remove silos and settle on open standard architectures enabled massive virtualization-based simplification. Virtualizing more than 8,000 servers has saved the company $57 million. At the same time, Dell improved its server utilization by 30 percent and accelerated application development by 90 percent. 1 Executive Q&A: Robin Johnson, reprint from Efficient Enterprise, a special edition of Dell Power Solutions, 2010.
4 4 While servers will necessarily be somewhat different depending on where they are in the upgrade cycle, the efficient data center should aim for consistency. But just because there are a lot of choices doesn t mean that companies should choose completely freely. Data center expert Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, explains that it makes the most sense to stick with an industry standard architecture. The majority of companies today are better off standardizing on a commodity market, Gold says. That s because x86 and x64-based systems are so prevalent that the cost is almost always lower than that of equivalent systems using other architectures. Standardizing on open systems such as Intel x86 and x64 processors ensures that most commonly used server, workstation and infrastructure software (storage and application servers, for example) will work in the environment. Processor standardization results in easier management, commonality of software choices, easier stocking of spare parts, and easier reassignment of roles among servers as loads and needs change. Standardization allows for a modular design in the data center. If you have 50 servers and they re all the same, Gold says, if a couple go down you can swap components if you need to. Swapping out a server needing maintenance with a fresh server is simply a matter of sliding one chassis out of the rack and sliding another in. Everything from cable management to cooling should be unaffected. The same holds true for adding capacity. For example, if Web traffic picks up, adding an additional two-way Intel Xeon processor-based server to a rack that s already supporting one would be easy. If it s the same as the one that s already running the Web service, simply bringing up an additional instance of the software doubles the capacity. The management requirements wouldn t change, and no software changes would be needed. But for standardization to be most effective, the platform choices must show more commonality than simply the choice of processor brand. The processors must be of the same type and use the same support architecture, memory and drivers to the extent possible. If the data center uses an Intel Xeon processor for servers, for example, it should use related Intel Xeon processors whether the server is a two-way or a four-way device. Likewise, the servers should use common memory components, storage architecture, and communications. IT leaders who are successfully increasing data center efficiency tend to select the platforms that will meet their needs, standardize on a single family, and, within a family, stick to a limited set of platform types. Otherwise, costs tend to go out of control and management becomes impossibly complicated. Standard Server Form Factors Aid in Upgrades, Power and Cooling Although it s unlikely that any data center will be made up entirely of identical servers, it makes good economic sense to standardize on one or two basic form factors. Doing so facilitates the process of populating the racks and planning for power distribution, cable management and cooling. In addition, standardizing on a minimal set of allowed form factors means you can swap servers when a different level of capacity is needed or when servers are upgraded. A data center manager might plan to use only 1U or 2U servers in the racks, for example. This approach would provide significant density, but would also make it easy to upgrade to a new server. Planning power and cooling requirements for racks is significantly simpler when everything in the rack is basically the same. In terms of servers if you stay with the same hardware, it s easier to allocate if you know that all of your servers are roughly the same, Zeichick says. They should all be the same quad server or dual processor box. If you have different capabilities or different connectivity that gets messy. While servers will necessarily be somewhat different depending on where they are in the upgrade cycle, the efficient data center should aim for consistency. The more identical you can make them, the more efficient you can make them, Zeichick explains. They should all have the same hardware, processor and memory, the same connection, the same number of steps to the router or load balancer. You want to remove anything that makes them different. Standards in Communications Can Lay the Foundation for the Future The data center communications environment must also be standardized to the extent possible. While a data center that s being upgraded or
5 5 Although it may be marginally more expensive up front to buy from a standard set of platforms, in the long run, the total cost of ownership is lower. transitioned may have legacy communications or storage, the number of platforms in use should be minimized to the extent that s possible without affecting the ROI of existing systems. At the same time, IT organizations must lay the groundwork for future changes. For data communications within the data center and the enterprise, the only real option in use today is Ethernet. But when it comes to storage communications, data center staff can choose between Ethernet and Fibre Channel. Ethernet s speed and robustness continue to improve; 10 Gigabit Ethernet is the current data center standard, 40 Gigabit speeds are under development, and research on 100 Gigabit Ethernet is underway. That s why many enterprises are migrating to 10Gb Ethernet, according to the InformationWeek/Network Computing 2010 Data Center Trends report, which notes that most equipment vendors already support 10 Gb Ethernet in the data center as a standard. Although there is speculation about which standards will end up being successful in the marketplace, there are very few network vendors that are not engaged in the move to Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CCE), according to the report. CCE uses copper-based 10 Gb Ethernet within the data center. Even so, many data centers have significant existing investments in Fibre Channel storage networking, which continues to perform reliably. Fibre Channel is a legacy protocol that was once the primary form of networking in this environment. SANs used specialized 4 gigabit per second fiber and switches. Servers that attached to storage were required to have separate Fibre Channel cards installed. Although Camden Associates Alan Zeichick agrees that Ethernet is the best choice ( You want what s proven and ubiquitous, he notes), he doesn t recommend jettisoning an existing storage network before its economic lifetime is up. If a company already has investments in Standards in Virtualization: A Look Ahead Most enterprises today use virtualization at some level, and they use a wide variety of approaches to it. In most cases, virtual systems are a way to allow companies to have the flexibility to meet varying workload demands. Virtualization moves processing load to the resources that have the ability to support it and frees up processor capability on platforms that aren t fully utilized so they can be used by other loads. The same standardization principles that apply in overall data center efficiency are equally relevant to virtualization efforts. Data center expert Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, recommends picking one virtualization platform (whether it s VMware, Hyper-V, Xen, or another for servers or Citrix or others for desktop virtualization) and sticking with that. One of the problems that companies are going to run into is that virtualization and cloud computing are not really all that standardized, Gold points out. If you re running VMware versus Xen, will they run the same? Standardizing on one virtualization platform reduces management load, data center complexity, and training requirements. In addition, choosing one virtualization approach enables data center managers to choose hardware that will work with that platform with confidence that swapping machines or purchasing upgrades won t interfere with the virtualized environment.
6 6 Fibre Channel, I don t see a reason to move off of it, Zeichick says. That s because the investment in an existing SAN is significant, and the process of migrating to a new SAN is difficult, expensive and disruptive to the operation of the data center. However, data centers can build bridges to the future by implementing new SANs and new storage using iscsi and Ethernet. In this way, the data center can gradually evolve to an Ethernetonly environment as the Fibre Channel SANs are replaced. Zeichick s observations about legacy SANs underscore the need to build flexibility into the data center. Doing so effectively preserves existing ROI while building a foundation for emerging technologies. Storage Standards Network communications play a crucial role with storage in the data center. Currently, the standard that s growing is Ethernet, using iscsi for storage traffic. The availability of storage arrays that use iscsi, along with the standardization of an iscsi Initiator in most major server operating systems, including Windows Server 2008 R2 and Linux, has boosted the popularity of this storage protocol. iscsi will work over any Ethernet network, and can work in parallel with other network traffic, as long as the switches handling the traffic are able to assign the appropriate priority to the storage traffic. Fibre Channel, as previously noted, still persists in some legacy systems, and its infrastructure is very similar to Ethernet s. Although the switches require different fabrics and the storage needs different controllers, combining a legacy Fibre Channel storage network with a new iscsi Ethernet network is easy to accomplish and cost-effective for the economic life of the legacy system. Beyond the communications infrastructure, the standards for storage are only partially in place. SAN storage devices remain highly proprietary, and although the actual storage media follow a few specific standards, the means for moving data from the network to the storage medium do not. Storage hardware standards, however, play a significant role in designing tiered storage. Data center managers can choose among expensive, high-speed disk-based storage that allows highly transactional operations; slower disk-based storage that s more useful for fast access but doesn t deliver the performance of transaction-based storage; and archival storage that may be off-site, on tape, or both. iscsi storage has the additional benefit of running on the same Ethernet environment as other network traffic. This means that there s no learning curve as there is with Fibre Channel. The same network management software will work with storage traffic and other network traffic, and the same infrastructure, including switches and routers, can handle both types of traffic. Those factors contribute to simplicity in the data center, and a resulting reduction in both staff and operational costs, as well as a reduction in acquisition costs. The Link Between Standardization and Efficiency Reducing total cost of ownership is one of the key goals for many enterprises setting out on to improve data center efficiency. Although it may be marginally more expensive up front to buy from a standard set of platforms, in the long run, the total cost of ownership is lower. The cost of the hardware isn t the only component of TCO, explains Jack Gold. TCO is the overall cost of doing business. Consider the complete cost of any machine you plan to put into the data center, including the acquisition cost, the cost to provide power and cooling, the cost of the staff to operate it, and of course maintenance costs. In many cases, Gold says, the costs to operate a server, the electricity it uses and the cost of cooling will far exceed the cost of purchasing it in the first place. Virtualization is a significant factor in controlling the total cost of ownership. Although it does cost money to buy servers capable of handling a virtualized environment and the necessary licenses, the cost savings from only having to run one machine instead of several make up for it. Gold notes that advances in processor design are making new processors with low power requirements attractive to the data center. He says that he expects to see a new series of servers featuring Intel s Atom processors because they use less power and require less cooling over the life of the machine. Still, virtualization isn t the answer for every computer in the data center, and servers in the
7 UBM WHITE PAPER Data Center Efficiency in the Virtual Era: Three Key Steps 7 Intel: The Standard for Efficiency Many companies are following the example set by global tech giant Dell and standardizing on one platform. This kind of standardization brings benefits (see the sidebar on Dell s efficiency efforts, for example), but for the greatest benefit, the selected platform must support and contribute to the efforts to simplify and automate data centers once the standardization is complete. Intel offers platforms to meet the flexibility, power efficiency, security and scalability requirements of an efficient data center. Because Intel adheres to an open standards-based approach, it preserves the enterprise s ability to choose solutions that meet its needs without regard to vendor. Highlights of Intel s enterprise-class platforms include: Flexible workload migration and performance optimization across 32-bit and 64-bit operating environments based on rules set by IT staff. Intel 10Gbe increases Ethernet speed to 10Gbps, lowers power requirements and reduces the number of ports, switches and cables needed. With Data Center Bridging, it improves quality of service when data and storage share the same network. Automated, real-time power consumption and server performance adjustments via Intel Turbo Boost technology to meet energy-management and variable-workload requirements. Intel Intelligent Power Technology can dynamically adjust CPU and memory settings into the lowest available power state (IT staff can also manually adjust settings). data center won t be identical in every instance. There will always be some differences in the requirements for the machines for storage, applications, Web serving or other more-specific needs. Similarly, no one approach will meet every need. For this reason, building flexibility into the infrastructure through the use of open, industry standard systems is a basic tenet of data center efficiency. Standardizing for Efficiency Standardization can lower the total cost of ownership of the data center, it can help reduce energy consumption, and it can help the enterprise control its acquisition costs. Standardization also lowers maintenance costs, reduces parts inventories, and lowers training costs while improving flexibility. With a standardized environment, the data center can grow to meet current and future needs. But standardization is only the first step toward overall data center efficiency. Once the data center unites on open, standard technologies, simplification can occur. A standardized, simplified data center environment provides the most stable base for the automation, the final layer of the efficiency initiative. Read more about the role simplification and automation play in data center efficiency in parts 2 and 3 of this series. Dell and InTEl Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services they value. A leading global systems and services company uniquely enabled by its direct business model, Dell is No. 33 on the Fortune 500 list of America s largest companies. For more information, visit or to communicate directly with Dell via a variety of online channels, go to To get Dell news direct, visit Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at and blogs.intel.com.
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