OPTIMIZING THE FEDERAL DATA CENTER IN A HETEROGENEOUS WORLD

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1 WHITE PAPER: OPTIMIZING THE FEDERAL DATA CENTER IN A HETEROGENEOUS WORLD OPTIMIZING THE FEDERAL DATA CENTER IN A HETEROGENEOUS WORLD Who should read this paper CIOs, CISOs, IT Managers

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3 Content Executive Summary The New Realities of Federal Data Centers Using the Right Artillery for Heterogeneous Data Center Optimization Data Center Optimization in a Heterogeneous Environment: Five Core Principles Solutions for Data Center Transformation Data Center Optimization A Risk Worth the Reward Appendix A: Symantec Data Center Optimization Solution Matrix

4 Executive Summary While we continue to rack up closures and focus on consolidation opportunities to maximize savings, it s equally important to focus on the efficiencies of data centers that remain in our inventory. These data centers, which will take on additional work as we consolidate, will become the centerpieces of service delivery to American taxpayers. Steven VanRoekel Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States Federal government data centers are shrinking even as the amount of data continues to grow at an accelerated pace. In 2010, the federal government unveiled an effort to manage this conundrum. The Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) was developed to reduce the cost of data center hardware, software, and operations, and pave the way towards more cost-effective data center optimization and management solutions. But while the FDCCI continues, so does data growth. As Gartner remarked, big data continues to present government with information management and processing issues that exceed the capability of traditional IT to support the use of information assets. 1 The challenges of data center consolidation and optimization revolve around how to best manage that data, but these efforts have been complicated by the fact that many federal IT organizations have become highly heterogeneous. The days of IT shops operating on a single operating system or through a lone vendor are quickly falling by the wayside. They have been replaced by a varied infrastructure that employs unique tools that run on different systems. While this is great from a whatever it takes to get the job done perspective, it introduces a whole new set of problems for managers undertaking data center optimization efforts. But addressing these problems is important for successful data center optimization, which can yield billions of dollars in cost savings. There are several core principles fundamental to successful data center optimization. Among them: storage optimization; ensuring 24/7 availability; accelerating virtualization and cloud adoption; maximizing agility; and managing security. To minimize risk, capture the cost savings, simplify IT complexity, and comply with mandates, government agencies need an approach that combines best practices with complementary technologies that address each of these. This white paper provides an overview of key drivers for data center optimization in the federal government and describes the core principles associated with data center optimization (and why they re so important). It also looks at the primary challenges of consolidating data centers in today s IT environment, which is becoming largely heterogeneous and dependent upon various solutions from different vendors each designed to do their own thing, but all contributing to overall data management efforts. The New Realities of Federal Data Centers Like everyone else, the federal government is facing enormous data growth while being tasked with across-the-board consolidation. Given this, it s no surprise that federal IT organizations are turning to more lightweight and flexible computing resources, which can be more costeffective, flexible, and environmentally-friendly. This is keeping in-line with the three foundational principals of the FDCCI: 1- Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for Smart Government, April,

5 Virtualization is the driving force behind much of this, particularly from a cost perspective. In fact, federal IT professionals expect savings of up to $23.6 billion by 2015 as a result of virtualization. 2 With virtualization has also come the proliferation of new and sometimes untethered virtual servers and data growth. Because virtualization contributes to green IT initiatives (as virtualized environments tend to use less energy) a rush to use virtualized systems with multiple operating and hypervisor systems further complicates the need to optimize and consolidate the data center. So while the Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2014, which is designed to improve energy efficiency within government data centers, may inspire the use of virtualization, agencies also need to address the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA 2007), Executive Orders and and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ENERGY STAR Data Center Energy Efficiency Initiatives. Each of these mandates share a goal of improving efficiencies and reducing energy consumption, with the latter specifically targeted at efficiencies in the data center. This creates both competing and complimentary drivers to data center optimization and consolidation. Of course, the move to the cloud is well underway. In order to cut costs, become more nimble, and more effectively optimize data, federal IT managers are actively looking to move more servers to the cloud. It s estimated that the federal government could save approximately $16.6 billion if all agencies move their mission-critical applications to the cloud. 3 As federal IT organizations dispense with the old and bring in the new, they re creating shops that feature a hodgepodge of different utilities from multiple vendors. Each of these utilities must work together seamlessly. This may entail legacy systems working in concert with new, virtualized tools. It may require sharing and storing data across different types of utilities. It will definitely require a strong foundational set of tools that can work across operating systems. These foundational tools are the basis for a highly efficient and optimized data center. Using the Right Artillery for Heterogeneous Data Center Optimization Heterogeneous IT environments are born as a result of using the faster, required or ideal operating and hypervisor platform and yet, at the same time, they introduce more challenges. IT teams are able to use different solutions for specific tasks but making those solutions work together can often be difficult. Simultaneously, transferring and managing massive amounts of unstructured data across different platforms and operating systems ones that are not meant to talk to each other can create confusion, disorganization, or worse, breaches or disclosures of information. Then, there is the matter of making sure that fundamental needs continue to be met. These needs include managing security, availability, and backup and recovery. All are equally important, but all become more challenging in an IT environment that employs different systems and tools not to mention one that is actively moving from legacy hardware to virtualized, cloud-based software. 2- Virtualization Vacuum: The 2012 Government Virtualization Study, MeriTalk, 3- Virtualization Vacuum: The 2012 Government Virtualization Study, MeriTalk, 2

6 Symantec provides the tools needed to optimize today s heterogeneous data center, giving federal agencies the ability to build a technology foundation that will work for them both now and in the future. Data Center Optimization in a Heterogeneous Environment: Five Core Principles In order to capture the billions of dollars in cost savings and comply with government mandates, federal agencies and departments should consider pursuing data center consolidation initiatives with a focus on five core principles. 1. Storage Optimization- The growing volumes of data that need to be stored, managed, and moved are taxing government infrastructure. A moratorium on expanding data center space and a need to save costs are forcing agencies to find alternatives to storage build out. Poor visibility across the data center and assets, high storage costs driven by the inability to reclaim storage and unnecessary purchases, and over-provisioning of storage to avoid multiple requests between server and storage teams are making storage optimization difficult. Additionally, the costs and challenges associated with migrating or consolidating stored data from one array to another in a heterogeneous environment can be daunting if not supported by a framework with the ability to work with different platforms. Finally, a new wave of flash storage options are making massive leaps in high performance for applications, resiliency, and potential cost reduction. Agencies will be in positions to decide if they will add flash to existing storage, utilize all flash SAN arrays, or make the most of in server or on motherboard flash cards. Each of these options has its advantages, but the agencies that can utilize the best of each of these technologies where appropriate, and who do so with resiliency and availability in mind will make the largest gains. To exasperate matters, federal data centers are not getting everything they potentially can out of their operations. Identifying strategies to increase utilization of existing servers and roll out thin provisioning are a priority. Federal data centers should consider taking steps to deploy solutions that can successfully: 3

7 Serve as a foundation for storing and transferring data within heterogeneous IT systems Aid in centralizing visibility and control through physical and virtual environments Gain the most efficiency from storage by identifying and capitalizing on wasted storage Automatically and continuously reclaim and optimize storage 2. 24/7 Availability Ensuring the continuity of government systems and their 24/7 availability is essential to delivering important mission services as well as providing for national security. Continuous and heightened threats due to natural and man-made disasters put national infrastructure and citizens at risk. Likewise, external and internal threats have the ability to expose critical government data, threatening system, network or agency shutdowns. There s also the potential for downtime caused by human error and complex systems, as well as lack of support for high availability and disaster recovery solutions in heterogeneous environments. Combine all of these with cost concerns and difficulties associated with planning and testing without disrupting service, and ensuring minimal downtime is a monumental task. Given this, government agencies should apply best practices and solutions that: Accelerate application and data failover Provide automated support for high-availability; e-discovery, disaster recovery, and archiving Eliminate unplanned downtime 3. Acceleration of Virtualization and Cloud Adoption The Symantec 2011 Virtualization and Evolution to the Cloud Survey found that concerns related to disaster recovery and the ability to maintain security and control over mission-critical data and applications are slowing adoption of virtualized/cloud environments. Identifying strategies to improve security of the data center and storage performance in virtual machines (VMs), automate application recovery in VMs, and improve data governance through insights into unstructured data, are essential to confidently integrate virtualization and the cloud into data center optimization strategies. Federal data centers should ensure that the following needs are met through a combination of processes and solutions that: Underpin efforts to create a heterogeneous environment that is comprised of solutions (both legacy IT and virtualized) that can easily work together Ease the transition from legacy IT systems to virtualization and the cloud Centralize visibility and control across virtual and physical assets Enforce security, backup, and storage policies on VMs Protect mission-critical data Automate recovery across virtual and physical environments Increase utilization and reclaim storage Virtualize pooled storage and leverage dynamic tiering Automate discovery and data archiving Gain insights into ownership, usage, and lifecycle of unstructured data 4. Maximum Agility Effective data center transformation requires the ability to manage change and increased complexity in an efficient manner. That can be a challenge in a heterogeneous infrastructure. But remaining agile in the face of operational complexity is critical. Therefore, identifying ways in which to enable agility through consolidation, visibility, automation, and standardization across the heterogeneous data center are essential. Government should consider applying practices and solutions that: 4

8 Offer centralized control over IT infrastructure Reduce complexity through automation Proactively identify risks Simplify maintenance Provide end-to-end visibility Support cross-team collaboration to minimize disruptions during migration 5. Ensure Security Perhaps nothing is more important to federal agencies than the ability to keep data secure. That s a challenge in a normal data center environment, but mixing in heterogeneous solutions and consolidation increases the risk that data could be lost or compromised. In particular, using different solutions can heighten the chance for data to be exposed to harmful viruses. Plus, the complexity of a virtual network can be more difficult to monitor for potential threats. Agencies must consider implementing solutions that can: Automatically alert to potential risks before they take place Identify security breaches and data compromises in a timely manner Track breaches back to their source Protect against harmful viruses and zero-day and targeted attacks Optimizing data centers based on these core principles requires a combination of proven methodologies and solutions to minimize risks and costs, as well as complimentary technologies that can be leveraged across heterogeneous environments. This combination will help pave the road that federal agencies must take as optimization and consolidation needs grow. Solutions for Data Center Transformation Symantec s software solutions can help federal agencies address each of the data center principles they may be focused on. Storage Optimization: Symantec is helping government clients optimize storage with solutions that reduce acquisition costs, increase utilization, maximize flash adoption, and leverage thin provisioning. Primary among these solutions is the Symantec Storage Foundation, which improves data access while reducing application downtime, complexity, and costs. The Symantec Storage Foundation and other Symantec solutions allow clients to: Centralize visibility and control of heterogeneous servers, storage, databases, and applications across both physical and virtual environments. Use storage more efficiently since it is not consumed at the time of provisioning, but rather at the time that applications write data. Discover wasted storage and reclaim unused storage into a shared storage pool, thereby increasing storage utilization and reducing storage hardware and operational expenses. Transparently reclaim all unused storage by enabling automated reclamation during migrations and continuous storage optimization on thin provisioning-enabled hardware. Increase and accelerate flash adoption with redundant resiliency in server flash clusters Symantec data center optimization experts work with clients to recommend specific products from a range of offerings. Symantec s solutions offer comprehensive visibility and control over data center assets, support for thin provisioning enabled hardware, and automatic reclamation during migrations and continuous storage reclamation. For more information, see the Appendix. 5

9 24/7 Availability High availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) solutions from Symantec help clients reduce complexity, prevent downtime, and accelerate recovery. The solutions help clients to: Achieve cost-effective, automated, and accelerated application and data failover across any distance on any major platform or storage array. Reduce complexity with out-of-the-box HA/DR support for all major platforms, applications, databases, and replication technologies. Protect against unplanned downtime with HA/DR testing. Detect and identify risks in HA/DR infrastructures. Keep data, applications, and infrastructure available as demand grows. Receive end-to-end visibility and optimization across virtual, physical, and heterogeneous environments. Ensure timely data center recoverability. Symantec consultants and client teams work together to identify the best solutions from a range of products. Symantec is uniquely positioned with HA/DR solutions that offer the widest and deepest support for heterogeneous platforms, reducing or eliminating vendor lockin. Additionally, Symantec provides centralized management of all clusters across the enterprise, campus cluster support, and comprehensive, non-disruptive HA/DR testing capabilities. For more information, see the Appendix. Acceleration of Virtualization and Cloud Adoption Symantec virtualization management solutions help clients fully optimize their virtual data centers by increasing application awareness across virtualized environments, optimizing VMs, and providing them with the confidence to easily transition to the cloud. The solutions allow clients to: Increase visibility and control across application tiers, improving storage I/O performance and availability, and unifying backup and recovery across virtual domains. Build resilient and secure private cloud services on their existing infrastructure. Instrument the virtual data center and automatically update service-level processes in response to dynamic changes in resource allocation. Automate the discovery of VMs and enforce existing security, backup, and storage allocation policies. Help ensure the highest levels of data protection for mission-critical workloads. Help ensure continuity by automating application recovery and failovers across virtual and physical environments. Optimize storage with point-and-click management and de-duplication. Reclaim orphaned storage. Virtualize pooled storage and leverage dynamic tethering and provisioning across heterogeneous arrays. Symantec consultants work with clients to identify the right solutions from a range of products. Symantec offers the broadest and deepest range of solutions that work seamlessly across physical, virtual, and heterogeneous environments to centralize and standardize management of assets. For more information, see the Appendix. Maximum Agility Symantec helps federal agencies and departments maximize agility with solutions that centralize management, automate operations, and support non-disruptive change. Core to these efforts are solutions such as NetBackup, Enterprise Vault, and Symantec Storage Foundation. Collectively, these solutions help clients reduce their costs, optimize resources and operations across heterogeneous environments, and more. Using these solutions, clients can: Centralize control of storage and server infrastructure. Automate operations and complex tasks for storage, HA/DR, and multi-pathing. 6

10 Protect virtualized deployments at scale, allowing them to manage thousands of VMs today, and software-defined data centers and IT-asa-service tomorrow. Efficiently store, manage, retrieve, and delete unstructured data as necessary. Maximize storage efficiency, availability, and performance across operating systems, virtualization technologies, and hardware. Identify risks and issues across the infrastructure with operational reporting. Simplify maintenance and installation processes. Gain end-to-end visibility of storage, server, and application environments. Bridge the gap between the server, storage, and application teams by enabling these teams to identify dependencies and minimize disruptions during migration. Working with clients, Symantec consultants recommend the most appropriate products from a range of offerings. Symantec offers solutions that can work across all hardware platforms; manage storage resources and availability configurations through a single tool; maximize agility and efficiency for disaster recovery; offer comprehensive visibility of heterogeneous hardware assets; and provide easy to install and use risk management capabilities. For more information, see the Appendix. Ensure Security Symantec Data Center Security: Server and Symantec Data Center Security: Server Advanced provide clients with automated solutions that protect against viruses and other potential security threats. With these solutions, clients can: Monitor virtualized servers for viruses. Protect VMs without in-agent guests. Monitor and protect both virtual and physical server environments. Monitor and protect against potential threats through features such as protective white listing, sandboxing using least privilege access controls, host-based intrusion detection (HIDS) and prevention (HIPS), and real-time file integrity monitoring (FIM). Protect against zero-day and targeted attacks across heterogeneous networks. Fulfill compliance mandates across critical systems. Symantec consultants work directly with clients to outfit them with the appropriate security solutions to meet their individual needs. They customize the solutions to enable clients to easily secure their virtual, physical, and heterogeneous environments. They also make sure that the solutions are easily scalable, meeting clients current and future needs as they continue to build out their data centers and storage needs. For more information, see the Appendix. Data Center Optimization A Risk Worth the Reward Government mandates and initiatives such as FDCCI, along with the potential for billions of dollars in cost savings, are driving data center consolidation initiatives, but there are still concerns. Despite government efforts, data center optimization is often regarded as one of the highest risk projects that IT can undertake, with fears of data compromise and loss too often outweighing potential benefits at least in the minds of federal IT staff. But data center consolidation is real, as are its benefits. It s a government-wide effort that is still only in its infancy but it will continue, and, done correctly, can show real results through five core principles: Storage optimization 24/7 availability Accelerating virtualization and cloud adoption 7

11 Maintaining maximum agility Ensuring security Symantec has developed a strategic approach to address these core principles with a portfolio of industry-leading solutions. These solutions are based on Symantec s success working with government clients for more than a decade. During that time, Symantec has accumulated a deep understanding of the challenges of federal data center optimization, and demonstrated results that show minimized risk, cost savings, IT simplification, and the ability to serve as the foundation for federal agencies newfound predilection for heterogeneity. Appendix A: Symantec Data Center Optimization Solution Matrix Product(s) Storage 24/7 Acceleration of Maximum Ensure Description & Benefits Optimization Availability Virtualization Agility Security and Cloud Adoption Symantec Data Center Security: Server & Server Advanced X X X Symantec Data Center Security: Server optimizes the deployment of threat protection services by providing agentless anti-virus for virtualized servers. By leveraging VMware Endpoint Service and VMWare NSX platform extensibility with Service Composer integration, Symantec supports the automated provisioning of its security virtual appliances (SVA) and orchestration of policy to protect virtual machines without in-guest agents. Symantec Data Center Security: Server Advanced extends the Data Center Security: Server solution beyond agentless threat protections by incorporating technologies previous known as Critical System Protection. Data Center Security: Server Advanced provides granular, policy-based controls with a low impact in-guest agent to monitor and protect numerous physical and virtual server environments. Organizations can proactively safeguard their heterogeneous server environments and the 8

12 information they contain from zero-day and targeted attacks, and fulfill their compliance mandates across critical systems. Symantec Storage Foundation Cluster File System X X X Storage Foundation Cluster File System reduces complexity and costs in a highly available environment, delivering faster recovery for business-critical applications. It significantly reduces application downtime and improves data access. Because multiple servers share the same storage resources, the length of time it takes to bring storage online is drastically reduced when an application fails. Its high-performance file system spans heterogeneous servers to provide concurrent access to data, and enables faster failover of applications and databases, such as Oracle, SAP or Tibco. Symantec Cluster Server powered by Veritas X X X X SymantecTM Cluster Server powered by VeritasTM protects your most important applications from planned and unplanned downtime. Cluster Server provides high availability and disaster recovery for individual databases, custom applications, and complex multi-tiered applications across physical and virtual environments over any distance. It detects any possible risks to availability and recovers the applications automatically. Cluster Server can also detect site outages and initiate application recovery at the disaster recovery site. It includes builtin testing to proactively detect and report potential problems before they have an impact on IT services. 9

13 Symantec Dynamic Multi-Pathing X X X SymantecTM Dynamic Multi-Pathing delivers improved storage I/O performance and availability across heterogeneous server and storage platforms using intelligent algorithms and load balancing for faster throughput. Dynamic Multi-Pathing s loadbalancing and management capabilities enhance administrators productivity, improve overall storage performance, increase application uptime, and bridge storage and server administrator communications. Symantec Replicator Option X X X SymantecTM Replicator Option provides organizations with a comprehensive solution for heterogeneous data replication. When combined with Symantec Storage Foundation, Replicator Option enables costeffective replication of data over IP networks. This gives organizations an extremely flexible, storage hardware independent alternative to traditional array-based replication architectures. Replicator Option provides the flexibility of block-based continuous replication with Volume Replicator and file-based periodic replication with File Replicator. This flexibility lets organizations choose virtually any combination of storage devices on any major operating system, providing a consistent, easy-to-manage disaster recovery solution. Symantec Storage Foundation X X SymantecTM Storage Foundation, powered by VeritasTM, maximizes storage efficiency, data availability, operating system agility, and performance across heterogeneous server and storage environments. Storage Foundation helps organizations adopt solid- 10

14 state drive (SSD) technology and helps deliver storage quality of service (QoS) at the application level, while improving the return on investment (ROI). Unlike point solutions, Storage Foundation enables IT organizations to manage their storage infrastructures in a centralized fashion. It also allows them to reduce operational costs and capital expenditures across storage from a variety of vendors. Symantec NetBackup X X The NetBackup platform simplifies the protection of information-driven organizations by automating advanced technologies and standardizing operations across applications, platforms, and virtual environments. Integrated de-duplication, replication, and patent-pending virtual machine protection helps organizations improve storage efficiency, infrastructure use, and recovery times through one console. 11

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16 About Symantec Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC) is an information protection expert that helps people, businesses, and governments seeking the freedom to unlock the opportunities technology brings anytime, anywhere. Founded in April 1982, Symantec, a Fortune 500 company operating one of the largest global data intelligence networks, has provided leading security, backup, and availability solutions for where vital information is stored, accessed, and shared. The company's more than 20,000 employees reside in more than 50 countries. Ninety-nine percent of Fortune 500 companies are Symantec customers. In fiscal 2014, it recorded revenue of $6.7 billion. To learn more go to or connect with Symantec at: go.symantec.com/socialmedia. For specific country offices and contact numbers, please visit our website. Symantec World Headquarters 350 Ellis St. Mountain View, CA USA +1 (650) (800) Copyright 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec Logo, and the Checkmark Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. 8/2014