Manageability and availability
Server consolidation can help you improve manageability and availability of IT systems in the following ways:
–Enterprise management - Integrated operations allows for consistent management of all facilities and IT services.
–Consistent performance - Providing consistent response time at peak load periods is very important.
–Dependability - Commonly cited problems of distributed environments include frequency of outages and excessive requirements for manual intervention by the IT staff.
In addition, it provides the following benefits:
–It is easier to enforce consistent user policies in a consolidated environment.
–Fewer servers lead to a simpler network structure that is easier to manage.
–Reorganization following mergers or acquisitions is easier in a
–Consolidation encourages standardization of tools, processes, and technologies to provide a stable and consistent application platform.
Server consolidation can help you improve data access and protection in the following ways:
–Network technology - The growth of networking and network speeds is enabling the centralization of IT networks today and will continue and expand into the future.
–Fragmentation and duplication of data - This is a core issue in most organizations with large numbers of distributed servers.
–Physical security - Consolidation of servers in a central data center can restrict unwanted access and ensure a more secure environment.
–Integrity, local backup and recovery - Enterprises are concerned about the dangers of business disruption, customer lawsuits, and regulatory action in the event of severe data loss, and they need to implement effective disaster recovery procedures.
Server consolidation can help you leverage existing investments in the following ways:
–Expand existing servers - Add new capabilities to the existing installation rather than to deploy new dedicated servers.
–Optimization of capacity utilization - In order to manage performance and have a level of acceptable, consistent response times, enterprises typically
Chapter 2. Positioning | 59 |
