Embracing the datacenter consolidation challenge

I am accustomed to vendors boasting about their accomplishments, but I was nevertheless surprised to hear HP had consolidated its 85 datacenters down to just six.

I learned of this reduction during a recent conversation with John Bennett, HP’s worldwide director of datacenter transformation solutions.

My first question was, How did HP manage to end up with so many datacenters in the first place?

The same way most companies do, Bennett responds. For example, buying a business means acquiring an IT infrastructure that is not always easy to integrate into your existing infrastructure. Opening for business in another country is another common reason for creating satellite IT structures: More often than not, it seems faster and easier to create a separate structure that speaks the language of the land and is familiar with local regulations.

The cost of datacenter dispersion

While having multiple datacenters may not seem much of a problem at first, companies soon realize that separate IT domains can be much more expensive to manage and keep consistent with business requirements than a few, well-consolidated structures.

After all, each structure requires its own business continuity strategy and enough resources to sustain transaction peaks. And when you consider the question from that perspective, it is easy to understand how consolidating servers, applications, and storage repositories into fewer locations can surface synergies that would otherwise be difficult if not impossible to achieve.

Not surprisingly, a consolidated datacenter costs less to maintain and is more efficient than the structures it replaces. Think, for example, of creating server clusters to increase performance and resiliency: Whereas clustering is relatively easy to implement when all the machines are in the same coop, achieving the same objectives becomes a significant challenge when resources are spread across continents.

Of course, clustering may not always be the right answer, but concentrating servers on fewer locations paves the road for server virtualization, which is perhaps the easiest consolidation activity to implement — and the quickest to bring rewards.

A too-widely fragmented IT infrastructure, however, affects more than just application servers. Typical storage consolidation projects, such as grouping heterogeneous storage devices under the powerful virtualization tentacles of, say, an Hitachi TagmaStore or an IBM San Volume Controller, don’t make much sense if the arrays are thousands of miles apart.

Consolidation in practice

Is cost saving the only major benefit to expect from consolidation? Bennett sums it up into three major objectives that companies should pursue while consolidating datacenters: simplify the infrastructure by moving to fewer components; modernize to achieve increased benefits; and lay the foundation for future projects.

According to Bennett, consolidation should become a routine exercise: “Best practices in the datacenter today make consolidation and especially infrastructure consolidation a regular practice,” he says.

It’s difficult to disagree with those objectives or with the cost-reduction benefits, but what are the risks of consolidation? After all, isn’t datacenter consolidation one of the most challenging projects a company will ever undertake?

Not surprisingly, given his title, Bennett dismisses those concerns, suggesting that consolidation projects are probably easier to complete than most pure technology projects. He does, however, concede that companies that don’t have in-house consolidation expertise should perhaps hire outside help to assist in planning or conducting the consolidation.

Furthermore, he acknowledges that an imperfect discovery of all company assets and applications can bring unforeseen challenges to the process.

Although similar missteps can happen in any IT project, they can be more damaging if not found promptly during a consolidation.

It’s difficult to generalize because a variety of dissimilar projects fall under the “datacenter consolidation” umbrella. Obviously, there is a dramatic difference in cost and complexity between, say, consolidating a bunch of servers on a VMware machine and building or retro-fitting two new super datacenters to host the existing dispersed infrastructure.

The fact remains that, regardless of scope, datacenter consolidation is no cakewalk but can bring remarkable benefits, often commensurate to its complexity.

Think, for example, how much more energy efficiency you can build into a new datacenter, including, but not limited to, servers and HVAC. Google may be disappointing in other areas, but it has shown a commitment to alternative energy sources that could bring a handsome payback on electric bills.

Can you afford not to think about datacenter consolidation? Please post a comment below or just e-mail me.

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