Server consolidation
Faster storage isn’t the only thing driving server consolidation. As a general rule, the more servers you have, the more time and effort it takes to manage them. In the past, “one application, one server” was adopted as a rule of thumb in order to achieve the reliability needed for business-critical functions, but more modern operating systems and applications means this strategy is less appropriate.
Migrating from one application to another can dramatically reduce the number of servers required. Oracle is a big proponent of this approach, having saved $13 million in the first year and $11 million annually thereafter by replacing 97 e-mail servers and 120 message stores with a consolidated system with a two- (later three-) node cluster running Oracle9iAS Email fronted by 10 SMTP servers and three IMAP servers.
Apart from any advantages inherent in the technology, such large savings occurred partly because Oracle has around 50,000 e-mail users distributed across many time zones thereby providing economies of scale and flattening out the usage peaks.
Server consolidation will rarely fall into the category of “do more with what you’ve got” because of the need to maintain services while the new systems are commissioned, but it may make it possible to “do more within the budget you’ve got,” especially if you can show the savings on administration, maintenance, and licensing will quickly recoup the new capital outlay and transition costs.
But that problem can be minimised with the right tools. Quest’s SharePlex helps administrators consolidate databases “with minimal effect on the business,” reducing downtime from days to minutes even when different platforms are involved, Ciardulli says.
Network priorities
One way to get the most out of your network bandwidth is to ensure that the traffic is appropriately prioritised. Much of the attention given to devices such as Packeteer’s PacketShaper has concerned their use—particularly at schools and tertiary institutions—to suppress unauthorised traffic such as peer-to-peer file sharing software. For example, Chisholm Institute of TAFE in Victoria trialled a PacketShaper and according to network manager Sue Jones discovered “we had non-business-related things like radio and music channels, Kazaa, and Gnutella chewing up all of our two megabits.”
It is not only educational establishments that suffer from this problem. Simon Richardson, technical and communication services manager at Mercy Aged and Health Care had “applications grinding to a halt for no apparent reason on links that should have been sufficient”. The organisation has 18 sites connected to a central hub, and users were calling for faster links. A protocol analyser didn’t help pin down the problem, and network probes were too expensive at around $25,000 per subnet. Richardson installed a PacketShaper: “we bought it, plugged it in, and it worked . . . [we] began fixing problems in the first hour,” he says. The PacketShaper revealed MP3 downloads, filesharing, games, video streaming, chat, and unauthorised webcams were consuming bandwidth. “No matter how much bandwidth I had thrown at some sites, we never would have got the application performance we needed,” he says. Upgrading just one link to 2Mbps would cost $20,000 per year. Instead, Richardson spent a similar amount on PacketShapers for the hub and major sites, and only increased bandwidth where required to support additional services to particular sites.
Even in situations where all the traffic is bona fide, packet shaping can be used to ensure that the most important and time-critical applications get the bandwidth they need when they need it.
An example of this can be seen at AusBulk, a South Australia-based bulk handler, where a WAN connects the head office with 22 bulk handling facilities in South Australia, New South Wales, and Victoria. By using PacketShapers to reserve bandwidth for its operational management and financial systems, AusBulk’s annual savings are around $40,000 in bandwidth costs and $25,000 in overtime payments to staff.
“It simply wasn’t viable to throw bandwidth at the problem. Bandwidth is at an absolute premium in these remote areas. It becomes very expensive when you are only operating at maximum capacity during three to four months of the year,” says technical services manager Paul Bassett. “If staff cannot access the [operational management] system in a timely fashion, our people in the field have to work in shifts virtually 24 hours a day during peak times such as the annual grain harvest, just to enter operational data.”
“PacketShaper is a must-have technology for anyone attempting to deploy time critical applications across a congested network to remote sites,” he adds.
“The AusBulk deployment is significant for Packeteer because it demonstrates one of the great strengths of the PacketShaper product line: quality of service,” says Bob Jones, Australian territory manager for Packeteer. “Deploying PacketShaper means AusBulk can rely on its core operational systems in remote areas where continuing to add more bandwidth would be prohibitively expensive. It’s about controlling network traffic instead of having your network traffic control you.”
