In terms of ROI, there are many benefits to server consolidation. First, there's administrative time-savings. Each server requires a number of tasks be performed on a yearly, monthly, weekly or daily basis. For example, dreaded annual tasks include physical inventory, such as serial-number verification and machine-configuration recording, and software inventories to keep up those licensing schemes. Monthly (at least) tasks include software updates, utilization monitoring and OS security monitoring. And don't forget weekly utilization tracking and daily verification of nightly backups of each machine. All these tasks take administrative time. (Remember, though, that there are multiple administrative levels, and tasks are often split. Don't count everything at the top pay grade.) Reducing head count has not proved to be a major source of savings--it's cited by only 23 percent of those surveyed by Gartner. But being able to redirect talent can lead to cost avoidance down the road.
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FYI
An ROI analysis' value is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. There are two kinds of cost savings, soft money (qualitative) and hard money (quantitative). Hard money is measurable in generally accepted accounting terms. For example, if a consolidation project lets you retire 15 servers, quantitative savings can be gained from canceling service contracts, reducing facilities costs (power, cooling) and transferring or selling server OS licenses--that's real cash saved, on a daily, monthly or yearly basis. Hard-money savings are the easiest to sell and should be the backbone of your ROI analysis whenever possible.
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Another benefit to consolidating servers is having a highly fluid infrastructure, which not only allows for simpler management but keeps an organization more nimble in terms of allocating capacity on the fly. A company that truly knows its capabilities can more accurately predict the costs and benefits attached to a new project. Consolidation will give you an accurate picture of your overall available data-center capacity and facilitate planning for future server projects. Server consolidation also can be a jumping-off point toward making business and IT goals more closely aligned from the ground up, perhaps enabling greater access to silos of customer data.
Speaking of cost analyses, remember that some savings, such as less need for technical support and reduced security risk, are highly subjective. We strongly recommend that you determine early in the game what is important to your company in terms of soft dollars. For instance, some organizations may not place much value on administrative time-savings. Make sure that your projected ROI numbers reflect your reality. Do not let consultants determine the relative value of qualitative factors. Outside contractors can help educate upper management, but at the end of the day, if a given metric has limited credibility in your organization, don't make it the cornerstone of your presentation.
Adjustment 2: Enough for everyone
In the 'burbs, it didn't matter that dad hogged the bathroom for two hours every night after dinner. There were two more bathrooms in the house.
Likewise, in the server room, standardized buying practices and other factors have led to uneven utilization rates. A data center before practical consolidation will no doubt have a number of servers running well under their capacity and some that consistently red-line or come close. A server consolidation project will help you identify specific servers that can be consolidated into one unit to better utilize capacity across the enterprise. This process can be as simple as moving several multiple-purpose servers into one large unit. Another piece of low-hanging fruit is the ability to consolidate systems with similar end-user functions into one company-standard platform.
Moreover, capacity utilization has more than one facet: Each individual server takes up space in your data center. Each running server consumes expensive data- center power, cooling, cabling infrastructure and UPS capacity. All these physical considerations can be quantified into reduced TCO.
Adjustment 3: Care and maintenance
Move to the city, and forget tending an acre lot. Visualize one tomato plant in a pot on the fire escape. Likewise, fewer servers to care for equals more care for the servers you have. The process may be painful, but the result will be easier to maintain.
Less hardware means less failure. The more time your server administrators have to perform routine maintenance, the more likely that problems will be caught before they cause downtime. The result:
Server consolidation leads to greater uptime and reliability, letting you achieve service-level goals without breathing hard.
Adjustment 4: Guarding the castle
Trade in that buggy security system with wires running around 78 windows and doors for one large doorman named Spike.
Security is one of those benefits that is hard to quantify. If your organization has servers scattered across multiple locations, the chances increase that you'll be compromised by an attack on your systems or social engineering. Branch offices that have little contact with IT are often less than vigilant. Even within your main locations, IT may not strictly enforce its security procedures on every department-level server. Having fewer people responsible for knowing and following a security policy can't help but result in stronger enforcement (if you have problems in this area see "Got Discipline?").
Even physical security can be problematic in geographically diverse environments. Security in the headquarters may be top-notch, but at a small regional office it may be nothing more than glass and a locked door. All these factors point toward the strong likelihood of increased security benefits via a consolidated server environment.
Adjustment No. 5: Being cost-conscious
In the suburbs, you pay the gas bill, the water bill, the electric bill, the lawn guy, the property taxes and so on. In the city, you pay the rent, period.
Beyond the simple costs of server purchase and maintenance, there are licensing and software support costs. Linux may be free-as-in-beer, but most server OSs cost money. Your management suite probably has a per-server license, as does your antivirus software. Add in the cost of support contracts for the operating systems and service contracts for the servers, and you're spending a good pile of cash on each machine. Fewer machines, fewer costs.
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