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Page III: When is the right time to consolidate your IT resources...or is there ever a good time?
Case study: consolidated storage
Around three years ago, McCann World Group (the parent company of McCann Advertising) was in a situation where it had to keep buying new servers just to get more storage capacity, says national director of IT Brett Winn, and this also meant 50 percent of an administrator's working hours were taken up simply managing the location of files.
The company installed a Network Appliance Filer with 500GB of storage at its Sydney offices and within a month that task was only occupying five percent of that person's time, and the number of servers stabilised. "Consolidated storage was a very smart move for us," says Winn, who found the Filer very easy to work with. Before it was installed, "I didn't realise how much time we spent managing disk storage," he says.
"For us, it's about consolidating backend storage," and the company still has around 25 servers attached to the storage system. This approach makes it very easy to fix server hardware problems, as a box can be brought back online without needing to restore large amounts of data. Storage consolidation freed up server processing power to the extent that new functions such as client Web site hosting and new payroll and timesheet applications could be deployed on the existing servers.
Over time, the capacity of the Filer was increased and it has now reached that model's limit of 1TB. More storage is required, and as part of the project Winn intends to add centralised backup and archiving facilities for McCann's Melbourne, Brisbane, and Canberra offices as the first step in implementing a formal disaster recovery plan to ensure the US-owned company meets the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
"Storage management is a hugely important part of our business," he says. The next purchase will have a capacity of between 5 and 10T, which Winn hopes will last for around three years.
Winn points out that it is important to determine the features you need from a storage unit. Network Appliance and EMC offer relatively expensive products, but the expense can be justified when you need features like redundancy and snapshots. Winn is also full of praise for the remote diagnostic system that means a Network Appliance technician can be at the door with a replacement drive before his staff are aware that a failure has occurred.
On the other hand, companies such as Dell have cheaper though less capable NAS units when you simply need bulk storage, and McCann does use Dell NAS units. Winn is working towards a tiered strategy where less important or rarely used data is moved onto slower and cheaper devices. In such circumstances, it is important that the head of IT engages with management to ensure that the selected technology meets user requirements such as the maximum time needed to restore data following a major failure.
"It's going to be an interesting few months, but at the end of it we'll be in a better position," he says.
"I wouldn't do it any other way...[consolidated storage] is much better than anything else."
- Centralising user processing with a thin client strategy reduces the management load, helps provide secure remote access and simplifies disaster recovery.
- Server consolidation simplifies administration, but that may be due to increased homogeneity rather than a reduction in the number of units. Either way, administrators require higher skill levels as any error has a bigger impact on the organisation.
- Windows Server 2003 probably can support mixed application loads, though not everyone is convinced. Virtual servers provide a route to high utilisation with less complexity.
- Exchange Server 2003 enables substantial server consolidation.
- The elimination of maintenance costs on old hardware plus the reduction in floor space, power consumption can largely fund a consolidation project.
- Software costs may increase, decrease or stay the same after consolidation, depending on the vendor's terms.
- Triggers for consolidation include software licence renewal, hardware replacement, and new requirements (eg, to support mobility).
- Plan and implement carefully, prioritising the most valuable sub-projects rather than going for a big bang. Involve affected business units, and don't sacrifice strategic advantage for tactical benefits.
- Starting with storage consolidation may ease server consolidation.
- Network performance and reliability may be crucial to successful consolidation.
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