Servers: How To Do More With Less

The two buzzwords making rounds in the industry today are server virtualization and consolidation. Both are aimed at reducing the clutter of servers in your setup such that just a few servers can do the job of many. While virtualization aims to squeeze out every ounce of computing power from your servers, consolidation aims at helping you centralize your server infrastructure. In either case, you're reducing the number of physical servers in your setup. 

The end results of doing this are many. Fewer physical servers mean lesser floor space requirements, and lesser cooling, 



ventilation, and cabling. It also means lesser running around for troubleshooting, doing server upgrades and routine maintenance. Imagine being able to commission a fresh server in just a few minutes for that new application you have to deploy. 

Or better still, you don't need to depute engineers to manage your remote server locations anymore, because all those servers have been consolidated into one large box. Everything is managed centrally. Imagine the cost savings that would result by having this kind of an environment. While these could be significant, one mustn't forget to look at the other side of things. How much would it cost to achieve this? 

Let's take virtualization first. Using this technology, you can run multiple operating systems or multiple instances of the same operating system on a single physical server. Each would have its own hardware requirements. On top of each OS, you'll 



also install an application, which will further increase the hardware requirements. In all, you need to put in more RAM, 


processing power, and more storage in case you're not using a separate storage network for the last option. Moreover, if your
existing servers can't take the extra load despite the hardware upgrade, you'll have to replace them with new and more powerful hardware servers. All these come at a cost, which needs to be taken into account. w 

Cost of migration comes next, which also applies to server consolidation. You have to move everything from multiple physical servers into a single server. This would take quite a bit of time and expertise, which come at a cost. To take one example, if you're running your own customized applications on physical servers, then how easy would it be to re-deploy them on new hardware and that too in a virtualized environment? If the hardware is significantly different, it might require extra coding to do that. So add the software development cost here. 

Up next is the cost of downtime. This is what gives most network managers and CIOs sleepless nights. If you had individual applications running on their own physical servers, then you'd only have to worry about a single application going down. But in a virtualized environment, all applications would go down. To protect this, you would have to set up a redundant or fail-over server. So most of the costs we just talked of would get almost doubled. In case of consolidation, you're likely to use a multiple CPU (4-way or 8-way) server for the job, which doesn't come very cheap. So here again, you'll need to have another box for fail over. 

These are just a few costs to give you an idea. Don't forget to add the direct cost of the virtualization software itself, if you're using a commercial package. In case of free virtualization software, you'll need to acquire skilled manpower or train existing people to deploy it. In case of consolidation, you'll need skills to do the migration from one platform to another. 

Once you've taken all the costs for doing server virtualization and consolidation into account, work out the cost savings that would result from it. This would again vary from case to case, and would be a mix of direct and indirect costs. In case of consolidation, for instance, you'd save on the licensing costs for applications, a direct cost saving. 

In virtualization, you'll be using all your servers much more efficiently, which is an indirect cost. Server provisioning becomes easier, as you could easily deploy new applications quickly. That's another indirect cost saving. Cost of downtime can be taken in a positive sense here as well. If you're doing an application upgrade, then you'd need to first check it in a test environment before rolling it out on the production server. With virtualization, you could quickly clone your production application, and upgrade it to see whether everything works fine. If not, then you can bring it down. 

Only after you find significant cost savings after taking the investments into account should you venture into the actual 



deployment. In this story, we've discussed both concepts in detail, how they work, their benefits and limitations. Plus, we've gone a step further and evaluated a number of server virtualization software, both free and commercial. Lastly, we've also 


spoken to a number of organizations who have already done their deployments and are benefiting from them. Their inputs have also been included. 

By Anil Chopra, Anindya Roy, Rinku Tyagi and Sanjay Majumder