Thoughts on Virtual Infrastructure Management

Why aren’t you successful consolidating?

It being the first week of January, I thought it was time for some reflection on the past year.  I have been hearing many IT folks say, “We need to reduce storage and/or server costs”.  Interestingly, I was at a VMUG  meeting discussing this with some of the attendees when I asked, “Why are you not virtualizing more then”?  I got two answers.

1. FLAT budgets are making it difficult to purchase tools that provide the needed visibility into the infrastructure and reduce the risk of virtualizing production applications. 
2. FLAT head count is making everyone work longer hours and take on less new projects.

Server consolidation, especially in environmentally and space strapped locations, is back in vogue after a little reprieve.  Then why are most companies still getting what I feel, based on the ratios our customers are able to drive, are extremely conservative consolidation ratios (10 to 1)?  It’s not because they don’t want to consolidate more.  Many factors seem to be getting in the way in addition to the money and people constraints.

1. POLITICS:  This is not a swipe at the President or Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).  It’s actually company politics that seem to be the #1 inhibitor.  When I was in IT, I didn’t want to get involved in a project without knowing that it clearly mapped to the executive committee goals  and objectives.  In other words, if the project didn’t have CXO support it would limp along. 

2. TIME:  This comes down to how much planning it takes to change the engine on a plane while you are flying .  We used to create three to five year plans in IT.  It was easier to dictate where funds would be spent based on the IT roadmap.  The last year has turned most three year plans into three month plans if you are lucky.  Most of the people I talk to are seeing server to admin ratios grow from 100-1 to 300-1.  It used to take three weeks to get a server installed, up, and ready for deployment. Now, with virtualization, it is taking 30 mins.

3. Process – or the lack of it:   I remember that “ analysis paralysis ” could be the case when I was in the last big IT shop.  But I think that process is really taking a major back seat.  This is hurting IT organizations when it comes to justifying purchases, especially those meant to help with some of the soft costs.  You know,  those costs that equal you vpn’ing in on your weekend or worse from your vacation.  I think the lack of process is leading to an easy way to have little or no accountability by IT management.

4. Tools maturity: Tools have been slow in catching up to the change in how to manage old processes for the physical world.  Two things need to happen. First,  we as an industry need to mature and realize there is still not one vendor or tool that can solve all our issues.  Second, we need to use the hierarchies such as FACS or ITIL frameworks to lead us in enabling our management.  One example is understanding that you WILL have multiple event/fault management systems (VMware vCenter , MS SCOM, NetIQ,  EMC Ionix) which will need to be augmented with tools from independent third-party vendors.

Obtaining higher consolidation ratios is going to take some effort, so my recommendation is to establish a management hierarchy first. Then figure out how to minimize the number of tools you need to enable your processes; like ITIL.  Establish a gap analysis of your current tool sets and determine what type(s) of tools you are looking for.  This will be critical to get CIO / VP / Director buy in as budgets return.  Also, tools that do not take a full time employee will help as well. Let me know if you’re seeing the same inhibitors in your organization and whether you think this approach would work.  I’d love to get your feedback.

January 5, 2010 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | 1 Comment 

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One Response to “Why aren’t you successful consolidating?”

  1. Server Tiering? What the heck is that! : The Akorri blog on January 11th, 2010

    [...] Already down the virtual-first path you say?  Well here is a perfect opportunity to go back and prove that you can get better than 10 VMs per one host.  Here is a perfect time to go and beat the industry average.  Again this is average and not all applications are the same.  So, gather the quantitative data first then make your adjustments.  And get management buy in first and I discussed in my last blog. [...]

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