What this all boils down to is one tall order: a "forward" server consolidation for the new projects and a "backward" server consolidation for the upgrades and migrations.
Spearheading the initiative are data-center manager Marvin Mips and network manager Dirk Packet. Marvin and his team own our larger servers, which include various Unix and other non-Wintel boxes. Dirk and his crew are responsible for Wintel servers, even though most of those boxes live in the data center owned by Marvin's staff.
Honkin' Big Servers
When we began evaluating our server options for the consolidated environment, we focused on 16- and 32-way boxes. We would need multiples of each. We have great relationships with our server vendors, and they were salivating after hearing our plans. Marvin and Dirk checked the market, talked to peers, studied analyst reports and narrowed down their list of manufacturers. The vendors agreed with us that consolidation made sense.
Our utilization reports also confirmed this direction. Have you ever noticed how little of your servers' processor and memory are actually used? The consolidation would let us make better use of processing power and combine multiple enterprise applications on each box. Apart from the objections of some software vendors, who don't like to share server power, Marvin and Dirk saw no reason not to push ahead with the project.
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