Hosting
Comments and opinions about the world of Hosting and IT in general
Friday 19 December 2008, 2:20 PM
Get Fit For Summer !
I'm jumping on the bandwagon of what seems to be typical at this festive time of year, The Diet/Excersise Celebrity DVD.
So, I’m launching My Get-Fit-For-Summer-Workout-Plan.
That’s right Ladies and Gentlemen I’m going to save you from excess Server-Spread brought on by year upon year of single role servers used by long since forgotten projects that your business deemed critical at the time. I’m going to help you shed those pounds of application servers that are only used by a bloke in HR, rid you of the 26 Domain Controllers you have and exorcise (ha !) those demonic database servers that are so idle you sometimes catch them playing solitaire.
Now, I can’t do this for you, but I’ll be with you every step of the way. It’s going to be tough, there’ll be tears (especially from that bloke in HR when you prise away that server of his) but in the end you know that you’ll be mean and lean ready to service your businesses more sensibly than before.
Six little words... which used to mean a chance to boast but now makes you feel very guilty indeed......
How Many Servers Do You Manage?
Be honest with me now ! I’m not just talking about physical servers, you still have to manage those VM’s too...
I wonder what the stats would look like for this question? I think around 30% could answer straight away, 60% would need to look at a spreadsheet or RDP/console config and 10% wouldn’t know. I’m pretty sure that 50% wouldn’t have the correct answer.
This was prompted by seeing a customer this week who wanted to virtualise their infrastructure, all 100+ servers worth. The reason this shocked me was that this wasn’t a huge company, just a medium sized ISV. Building a virtual infrastructure whittles this down to 4 physical servers plus storage, a great saving in tin and associated power/heating costs as well as all those vendor warranties needed.
Great idea but it still leaves them with not only 100+ servers to manage but a VM infrastructure also!! 100+ servers to backup and patch, manage and monitor which takes an awful lot of effort.
The reason they have so many servers is that they host customer servers (running their own developed app) and each customer has its own shiny, new server to themselves. First thing I asked was if their application was multi-tenanted, apparently the newest version was tested and it is. I suggested that it would be a better idea if we began consolidation first before moving to a VM infrastructure. With less servers the VM infrastructure would be cheaper and more importantly the whole infrastructure would be much more manageable.
So, make this your New Year’s resolution. Look at your servers and shed some pounds, you’ll feel much better for it !
Merry Christmas & A Happy (and slimmer) New Year
So, I’m launching My Get-Fit-For-Summer-Workout-Plan.
That’s right Ladies and Gentlemen I’m going to save you from excess Server-Spread brought on by year upon year of single role servers used by long since forgotten projects that your business deemed critical at the time. I’m going to help you shed those pounds of application servers that are only used by a bloke in HR, rid you of the 26 Domain Controllers you have and exorcise (ha !) those demonic database servers that are so idle you sometimes catch them playing solitaire.
Now, I can’t do this for you, but I’ll be with you every step of the way. It’s going to be tough, there’ll be tears (especially from that bloke in HR when you prise away that server of his) but in the end you know that you’ll be mean and lean ready to service your businesses more sensibly than before.
Six little words... which used to mean a chance to boast but now makes you feel very guilty indeed......
How Many Servers Do You Manage?
Be honest with me now ! I’m not just talking about physical servers, you still have to manage those VM’s too...
I wonder what the stats would look like for this question? I think around 30% could answer straight away, 60% would need to look at a spreadsheet or RDP/console config and 10% wouldn’t know. I’m pretty sure that 50% wouldn’t have the correct answer.
This was prompted by seeing a customer this week who wanted to virtualise their infrastructure, all 100+ servers worth. The reason this shocked me was that this wasn’t a huge company, just a medium sized ISV. Building a virtual infrastructure whittles this down to 4 physical servers plus storage, a great saving in tin and associated power/heating costs as well as all those vendor warranties needed.
Great idea but it still leaves them with not only 100+ servers to manage but a VM infrastructure also!! 100+ servers to backup and patch, manage and monitor which takes an awful lot of effort.
The reason they have so many servers is that they host customer servers (running their own developed app) and each customer has its own shiny, new server to themselves. First thing I asked was if their application was multi-tenanted, apparently the newest version was tested and it is. I suggested that it would be a better idea if we began consolidation first before moving to a VM infrastructure. With less servers the VM infrastructure would be cheaper and more importantly the whole infrastructure would be much more manageable.
So, make this your New Year’s resolution. Look at your servers and shed some pounds, you’ll feel much better for it !
Merry Christmas & A Happy (and slimmer) New Year
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