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
Friday 5 December 2008, 4:45 PM
Head in the Cloud
Hello again !
October brought me the chance to sit alongside DELL, Intel & VMWare for ZDNet’s Breakfast Briefing on virtualisation, and also brought me a virus infection that totally floored me for 3 weeks which scuppered the former invitation. It also brought me a little baby daughter called Daisy who sleeps very soundly and is a wonderful complement to her 3 brothers. I know what you’re thinking – Yes, We do have a telly, but the reception isn’t very good at times.
Back to business. Very busy here, companies obviously seeing data centre hosting as a more sensible way of reducing costs while still providing the services they need. It makes sense. Running kit in-house whilst meeting the business needs of more security and more availability is costly and a pain. Moving the kit to purpose built data centres that will ensure availability and security and still allow you the access you require seems to be the way forward for companies large and small.
Talking of Data Centres, loving this story which is on The Register but was on BBC site the day before... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/03/inverness_data/ which informs us of a super-eco data centre, placed in Inverness and will therefore use less power for its HVAC systems because it’s already blooming cold up there. Wonderful !
I guess it illustrates how competitive the Hosting market is that people have to come up with such mad ideas to differentiate themselves. What about taking the idea that one step further and put a data centre on Ben Nevis.... Obviously better connectivity to TheCloud up there....
October brought me the chance to sit alongside DELL, Intel & VMWare for ZDNet’s Breakfast Briefing on virtualisation, and also brought me a virus infection that totally floored me for 3 weeks which scuppered the former invitation. It also brought me a little baby daughter called Daisy who sleeps very soundly and is a wonderful complement to her 3 brothers. I know what you’re thinking – Yes, We do have a telly, but the reception isn’t very good at times.
Back to business. Very busy here, companies obviously seeing data centre hosting as a more sensible way of reducing costs while still providing the services they need. It makes sense. Running kit in-house whilst meeting the business needs of more security and more availability is costly and a pain. Moving the kit to purpose built data centres that will ensure availability and security and still allow you the access you require seems to be the way forward for companies large and small.
Talking of Data Centres, loving this story which is on The Register but was on BBC site the day before... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/03/inverness_data/ which informs us of a super-eco data centre, placed in Inverness and will therefore use less power for its HVAC systems because it’s already blooming cold up there. Wonderful !
I guess it illustrates how competitive the Hosting market is that people have to come up with such mad ideas to differentiate themselves. What about taking the idea that one step further and put a data centre on Ben Nevis.... Obviously better connectivity to TheCloud up there....
