• Sidebar: Server Consolidation Explained

Many organizations are considering reducing or consolidating the number of servers they use for their computing infrastructure, general computing, and line-of-business applications. This trend is being driven by improvements in hardware, such as the availability of inexpensive 64-bit and multiprocessor computers, software such as Windows Server 2003 that exploit the hardware advances, and the desire to solve the problems inherent in managing large numbers of servers, such as keeping the software up-to-date with the latest security patches. The goals of server consolidation are to create a more manageable and reliable infrastructure and improve the efficiencies of IT investments, including both capital and operating costs.

What Is Server Consolidation?

Thanks to the initial low cost of Intel-based servers, it has become common practice for organizations to add capacity or new capabilities simply by adding another server. This practice combined with a lack of IT controls and processes, legitimate concerns about overloading existing processing and storage capabilities, and bad application design that created applications that could not coexist on a single server has led to server proliferation.

This server proliferation goes on despite the real problems it creates, including a growing number of servers that need to be managed and myriad different and inconsistent hardware and software configurations.

Consolidation typically means to unite into one system or whole. Consolidation also implies strengthening, as in consolidating power, and a reduction in complexity by creating a more coherent or simple structure.

When applied to servers, consolidation is more complex than merely reducing the number of servers or the number of locations where servers are installed and maintained. Although fewer physical servers is an end-result, effective server consolidation projects involve designing and implementing an IT infrastructure that is better organized, more reliable, and less expensive to maintain than the current infrastructure, yet flexible enough to accommodate the future computing needs of the organization—all in all, a complex process. There is also a danger in thinking that consolidation is synonymous with simplification—the mere fact that there could be fewer servers or components does not reduce the complexity or sophistication of the remaining servers. (For a description of the forces driving consolidation, as well as some advantages and disadvantages, see the sidebar "Server Consolidation Explained".)

Consolidation Becoming More Important

The desire to create a more organized, reliable, and maintainable IT infrastructure that is flexible enough to accommodate future computing needs is making consolidation more important to IT groups, Microsoft, and its partners.

IT groups. Organizations are putting more pressure on their IT groups to show that they are contributing to the overall productivity of the organization. IT groups have to provide new and better services, often with service level agreements they have to meet, while showing that they are reducing overall costs.

Microsoft. As Microsoft struggles with the perception that its older products, such as Windows 2000 and even NT 4.0 Server are "good enough," server consolidation has become one of the most compelling scenarios for upgrading from its legacy versions; specifically, Windows Server 2003 offers a number of performance and scalability improvements that could allow businesses to meet their IT infrastructure and services needs with fewer servers.

Consolidation also presents an opportunity for Microsoft to spur customers to switch from non-Microsoft software, such as Novell NetWare, that is also beginning to show its age or from expensive non-Intel-based systems from vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems.

Partners. To benefit from consolidation efforts, organizations must be able to determine their current processing environment and loads, understand how these can and cannot be amalgamated, and then create a plan that allows for consolidation without causing service interruptions. Developing a plan for consolidation is not easy, which presents an opportunity for partners with experience in planning and mitigating the risks of consolidation projects.

What's Ahead

This report is designed for IT managers who want to understand how Windows Server 2003 provides a platform for server consolidation. It does not provide information on how to evaluate the benefits of consolidation or how to plan the implementation or migration for consolidation, but gaining an understanding of the capabilities of Windows Server is an important first step toward performing such an evaluation and creating a consolidation plan.

This report includes the following chapters:

Windows Server 2003 Drives Consolidation. Provides an overview of the new and improved features in Windows Server 2003 and the accompanying feature packs such as Services for Unix, that make server consolidation more feasible for a variety of server roles, including general infrastructure, messaging, and hosting server applications.

Performance Improvements. Describes the performance improvements in Windows Server 2003 that result in a processing environment where fewer servers can handle the existing processing load, with a reserve to handle future processing requirements.

Availability Improvements. Describes the availability improvements in Windows Server 2003 that ensure that the servers an organization relies on will be working when needed. Without improved availability, organizations will fear "putting all their eggs in one basket."

Windows Server Storage. Describes the storage improvements in Windows Server 2003, which ensure that organizations can store large amounts of data on either storage area networks (SANs) or network attached storage (NAS), thus making it possible for a small number of servers to address the necessary data storage.

Server Licensing Backs Consolidation. Describes changes to Microsoft’s licensing programs that remove licensing barriers to reducing the number of servers.

Resources. A guide to additional information about the topics discussed in this report.