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Chapter 2. Positioning 57
levels, simplified backups and restores, and better asset management and
security.
Rational
In combination, or rational, consolidation, the company's distributed
applications and services are combined onto fewer servers. It is a
considerably more complex undertaking, but the potential rewards are
greater. Cost savings range from 25 to 75 percent here resulting from better
asset utilization and elimination of unnecessary systems, reduced staffing,
lower maintenance costs, and fewer operating environments to support.
2.4.2 Why consolidate servers
IT managers are feeling, pressure to reduce costs, maintain or improve service
levels, and maintain or improve the availability of systems that become ever more
critical to daily operations.
Users want new applications that are delayed or inadequate because of IT
infrastructure. IT needs to provide a cost-effective and reliable service, which is
made difficult by constantly changing applications.
Many organizations are realizing that, as the number of servers increases, the
cost and operational complexity are also propagating. In many cases, there are
concerns whether multiple distributed servers can provide the application
availability, hours of service, responsiveness, and ability to grow with the
requirements of the business. These characteristics are being increasingly
demanded by business applications. To reduce these costs, many customers are
attempting to consolidate their servers into a more manageable central location.
The main objectives of server consolidation are:
Recentralizing servers
Merging workloads onto a single large server
Consolidate architecture
Optimize the IT infrastructure
2.4.3 Benefits from server consolidation
The main benefits of server consolidation are:
Single point of control
Rapidly growing firms, especially those growing through mergers and
acquisitions, frequently felt that disparate distributed systems were so
unwieldy to manage that they were losing control, which could constrain
further corporate growth.