Server Solutions
The rapid growth of IT requirements over the past 10 years has left many organisations with a server infrastructure which is complex, inflexible, unreliable and costly to manage and support. The old adage of “if it isn't broken don't fix it” unfortunately doesn't apply to server infrastructures that are creaking under the burden of today's IT challenges.
The BSG Approach is to work hand in hand with you and major infrastructure vendors such as HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems to address these challenges. By designing and deploying best of breed solutions, BSG help to simplify the infrastructure environment, which meet the high level business objectives to reduce cost and increase operational efficiency, thus ensuring that the optimum return on investment is achieved.
By modernising and consolidating server environments BSG help you to implement IT environments which are easy to manage and provide a flexible platform which can adapt to business requirements today and in the future.
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Consolidation and Rationalisation
Consolidation and rationalisation both offer effective strategies for effective server solutions. Server consolidation has the potential to provide massive savings by reducing the number of servers, the administration time of those servers and the benefits of virtual server technology. Low hanging fruit for server consolidation includes file and print, geographically dispersed Microsoft Exchange environments, database and applications which require processing power at different times of the day.
Rationalisation provides a different and often complementary approach to a server environment, enabling organisations to take advantage of the benefits provided by Blade Server technology.
The key benefits of server consolidation and rationalisation include:
- Reduced management requirement
- Increased flexibility
- Reduced Server footprint
- Better performance density
- Reduced timescales for deployment of new environments
BSG provides a common sense approach to server consolidation and rationalisation, which takes into account variables such as return on investment, total cost of ownership, the type of business you run, the operating systems your servers use and the tasks your server environment performs.
The following describes a range of consolidation and rationalisation options:
UNIX Server Consolidation
UNIX Server Rationalisation
Consolidating UNIX server environments from a large number of disparate servers down to a core few compute environments can have considerable benefits for IT organisations.
Reduced complexity drives a reduction in management costs and improved hardware redundancy improves overall application availability significantly. With datacentre space at a premium the reduction in footprint and power requirements is a considerable business driver
for consolidation projects.
By implementing server virtualisation software within the new environment, server environments (partitions) can be dynamically reduced or expanded as business needs dictate. This ensures that hardware investments are utilised to their full potential and speeds up the process of deploying new applications ensuring that IT remains a business enabler.
UNIX Server Rationalisation
The improved performance density of the latest UNIX servers has
driven many organisations to look at server rationalisation as opposed
to consolidation.
A simple server for server replacement of the current environments
can provide many of the benefits which are gained from a full consolidation
exercise. Improved server performance means that the number of racks
required in a datacentre can be reduced by over 80%. This can free
up space for other business systems and in hosted environments is
a significant cost saving.
By upgrading to the latest hardware environments significant performance benefits can be gained and greater investment protection achieved.
Windows Server Consolidation
Many organisations have coped with the growing demands on IT by adding more and more separate environments into their IT infrastructure.“Server Sprawl” has been particularly pronounced in the Windows environment with a proliferation of disparate applications and platforms. Demands for user storage have also been met with a profusion of file & print servers all of which require management and hosting.
The latest Microsoft technologies such as Exchange 2003, SQL 200, Virtual Server, 64-bit CPU's and Terminal Services all make server consolidation a real and viable option.
BSG work with IT departments to consolidate these environments in order to reduce the management overhead, reduce maintenance costs and build flexible environments which can adapt to business needs. The saving afforded by simplified patch management alone can justify the project in terms of reduced administration, increased security and as a result reduced downtime.
By employing advanced virtualisation technologies such as VMWare, BSG can help consolidate numerous IT environments onto fewer more robust systems. These systems are designed to dynamically allocate processor resource to the applications which need it most, so at peak times resource can be moved from dormant applications to those which are experiencing high demand.
Current Server Environment
Consolidated Server Environment
Windows Server Rationalisation
With datacentre space at a premium, many IT managers are looking at ways of improving the performance density within their IT infrastructure environments. Developments in “Blade” technologies have allowed IT organisations to rationalise multiple server environments into single “blade frames”.
The blade environments are highly cost effective, reduce pressure on network resources and offer a flexible and resilient hardware platform for business growth.
By employing dynamic resource allocation tools across the blade environment, resilience can be significantly improved. Employing an N+1 methodology allows server failures to be dealt with efficiently and effectively. Any blade failure can be dealt with quickly and efficiently by simply deploying an image of that blade onto a stand-by blade.
Current Server Environment
Rationalised Server Environment
