During this session, you'll get an in-depth look at the principles and best practices of planning a server consolidation project. You will learn how to ensure projects meet goals such as minimizing new hardware purchases or rack space, how and when to use different strategies such as scale up versus scale out, and how to prove those goals were met after the project is finished.

1. Consolidation Planning
Getting the Most from Your Virtualization Initiatives
Mike McKay
Solutions Specialist
Mike.McKay@novell.com

2. Session Overview
Todays Data Center
Virtualization adoption rates
Consolidation ratios
Consolidation Planning
Introduction to consolidation planning
The 4 steps to success
The proof is in the virtual pudding
PlateSpin Recon Demo ®
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3. Today's Data Center

4. Virtulization in 2010
Most of the large and mid-tier enterprises are well
along the path to virtualization
Gartner Group stated in the December 2009 Data
Center conference “The Global 500 has approx.
25% of x86 workloads virtualized”
2 common methods of implementing virtualization
» Over provisioning of the virtual infrastructure (large initial investment)
» Pay as you go virtual infrastrcture
(purchase more capacity (nodes) as needed)
Forrester research indicates typical server consolidation
ratios of under 10 VM's per host initially.
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5. Virtualization Adoption
31+ Vms per
physical host
21-30 Vms per
physical host
10-20 Vms per
physical host
<10 Vms per
physical host
Firms implementing ITIL
Production systems
virtualized
Virtual server host
utilization target
Stage 1: Stage 2: Stage 3: Stage 4:
Acclimation Consolidation Process Policies and
Improvement Automation
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6. Understanding Virtualization Adoption
Stage 1: Acclimation Stage 2: Strategic Consolidation
• Get comfortable with it as a concept and tool • Comfortable with concept, use, maturity, stability
• Deploy for test/dev • Shift mindset from server to virtual server
• Deploy for non-business-critical DR • Spread production deployments widely
• Some production deployments – but tactical • Begin deployment for some business-critical DR
• No change to operations processes • Painfully transition from server sprawl to virtual
• Limited virtualization tool deployments server life-cycle management
• Experimenting with Vmotion and Distributed
Resource Scheduler (DRS)
Stage 3: Process Improvement Stage 4: Pooling and Automation
• Using Vmotion, starting to trust DRS • Trust DRS
• Can utilization rates be increased? • Implementing production policies for automation
• Deploy for business-critical DR • Some mission-critical DR deploys
• Begin bifurcating applications between • Pooling and internal cloud development
priority and non-priority
• Chargeback/utility tracking
• Developing new operational efficiencies
• SLA and Qos focus
• Process improvement spreading/butting up
against network, storage, security, development
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7. Consolidation Planning

8. What Is Consolidation Planning?
Planning the move from this (physical)... ...to this (virtual)
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9. How Consolidation Planning Works?
Identify consolidation candidates based on
performance criteria
Create consolidation scenarios to distribute
workloads across target servers
Evaluate scenarios based on TCO, space,
power and utilization
Maximize utilization and adjust resource
allocation to meet consolidation goals
Collect data (inventory or performance)
for consolidation candidates (workloads)
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10. Workload Profiling?
The workload profile captures information about the
encapsulated data, applications and operating
systems residing on a physical or virtual host.
Data
Workload Profile
Name
Applications Resource Profile
Application Profile
Inventory
CostSLA
OS
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11. One Time vs. Ongoing
Consolidation Planning
One-time Continual
• Aggressive • Conservative
• Try to virtualize as much
• Multiple rounds of
as possible at once
virtualization, select
• Goal – maximum cost saving “lowest hanging fruit”
• One-time project • Goal – successful
• Low upfront cost technology adoption
(sometimes free) (IT and end-users)
• Risks • Persistent software
• Hardware can’t support the (plan when you walk
number of servers virtualized with the latest information)
• Hardware can’t support the • Software has a cost
type of workloads virtualized
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12. The 4 Steps to Success

13. The 4 Steps to Success
1
Install: PlateSpin Recon Enterprise
®
in the data center
Installed on dedicated collector servers
No agents
Data remains on site
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14. The 4 Steps to Success
2
Inventory: Discover and inventory
every physical server,
virtual host and virtual
machine in the data center
Server type, CPU type, number of cores
Name, IP address, domain
Operating system, patches,
hotfixes, applications
Services
Storage (total and available)
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15. The 4 Steps to Success
3
Monitor: The resource utilization of
each workload, physical server
and virtual host for 30 days
CPU utilization
Storage utilization
Memory utilization
Network throughput
Disk throughput
Complete 24-hour profile,
not just peak usage
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16. The 4 Steps to Success
4
Analyze and Report: Detailed reports
and analytics on actual and
projected system performance
“Good Consolidation Candidates” report
Create consolidation scenarios with
difference virtual host server models
Set performance thresholds: 50% memory
usage for example
Project each scenario's server count, rack
space usage, power consumption, cooling
requirements, etc.
Map physical servers to projected virtual hosts
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17. The Proof is in the Virtual Pudding

18. Recon Consolidation Reports
Inventory Reports
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19. Inventory Facts
Server consolidation projects, tend to focus on
Windows based platforms initially.
– Low hanging fruit, servers nearing hardware
lease, etc.
Typically, servers with Local attached storage are
prime candidates for server consolidation
The smaller the number of cores and CPU's,
the higher the consolidation ratio
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20. Recon Consolidation Reports
Utilization Reports
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21. Utilization Facts
Most Under-Utilized resource in the data center is CPU
– Typically, server candidates are running at less
then 30 % CPU utilization
Memory is the next most under utilized resource
– Memory Dedupe, available in VMware vShpere,
is only the first step.
Network, and disk utilization vary significantly
across environments
– Not typically an issue for SAN based virtual infrastructures
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22. Recon Consolidation Reports
Consolidation Candidate Reports
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23. Consolidation Candidate Facts
Attack low hanging fruit first
– CPU percent used less then 50%
– MEMORY percent used less then 50%
– MEMORY Pages/Sec less then 500
– Disk I/O percent less then 50%
– Disk I/O MB/SEC less then 50
– Network I/O MB/SEC less then 10
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24. Recon Consolidation Reports
Consolidation Scenarios
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25. Consolidation Scenario Facts
When attacking low hanging fruit first, typical
consolidation ratios are 20:1
Rack, power, and CO2 emissions are key drivers
behind server consolidation
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26. Recon Consolidation Reports
Value Add Reports
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27. PlateSpin Recon Demo
®

28. Demo Overview
Inventory and Monitoring
Domain, network, and machine inventory
Monitoring at physical and virtual layers
Inventory and Utilization Reporting
Inventory reports
Utilization reports
Value add reports
Consolidation Planning
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