• Sidebar: What is Consolidation?
• Sidebar: Windows System Resource Manager

Organizations that previously deployed a separate server for each application or business group are moving to consolidate these applications and groups onto fewer servers. Consolidation reduces the number of physical servers to increase efficiencies and savings by reducing the number of physical locations, servers, software licenses, and points of management. Improvements in the capacity of hardware, such as multiprocessor-based servers; software, such as Windows Server 2003 and Windows Storage Server 2003; and storage, such as storage area networks, are facilitating consolidation, but if a consolidation effort is not well-planned and executed, the anticipated benefits may not be realized.

Windows Server 2003 Supports Consolidation

In addition to improved availability and performance, Windows Server 2003 also boasts a number of technical improvements that make it easier to consolidate servers for file and print networking, Web and application servers, messaging, database servers, and core infrastructure. The actual opportunities and benefits of consolidation vary by the role the server performs.

File and print networking. Among the improvements in Windows 2003 that facilitate the consolidation of file and print servers, the most notable are improved support for network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SANs) and the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), which takes snapshots of stored data to speed data backup and restoration. Windows Server 2003 can also handle more print queues, and print queue performance is better than on previous versions of Windows Server.

Web and application servers. The Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server in Windows Server 2003 better isolates processes, starts a Web service only when it receives a request from a client, and can restart separate applications without restarting IIS. These improvements allow the consolidation of multiple Web servers, with different Web-based applications, onto a single server. For example, online dating service Match.com used Windows Server 2003 to reduce its number of Web servers from more than 100 to fewer than 50.

However, consolidation of different applications onto a single server, called heterogeneous consolidation, can be complicated because the combined applications might interfere with each other. For example, one application may require different parameters for an underlying service than a second application. Thus, significant planning and expertise are required for organizations to gain the benefits of heterogeneous consolidation.

Messaging. Improvements in storage, processing, and applications allow organizations to reduce the number of servers required for a messaging application, such as Exchange Server. For example, thanks to the recently announced Exchange Feature Pack for Windows Storage Server 2003, Microsoft will now support Exchange 2003 on Windows Storage Server 2003-based NAS devices.

Consolidation to fewer servers of an application currently running on multiple servers, a process called homogeneous consolidation, is simpler than heterogeneous consolidation and therefore is a common starting point for consolidation. For example, Microsoft’s IT group is using consolidation to reduce the number of physical locations where Exchange servers are hosted, leading to a 75% reduction in mailbox servers.

Database servers. The ability to support multiple databases on a single server, using SQL Server’s multi-instance support, allows organizations to consolidate databases.

Core infrastructure. Improvements to core network services, such as Active Directory (AD), also foster server consolidation. For example, improvements to AD in Windows Server 2003, such as universal group caching, reduce the need for remote servers to process network authentication and authorization.

Feature Packs Support Consolidation

Several of the feature packs for Windows Server 2003, including Services for Unix, Windows System Resource Manager, Virtual Server, and the File Server Migration toolkit, make consolidation more feasible.

Services for Unix. Although Microsoft promotes Services for Unix primarily as a tool to migrate Unix applications to Windows, it can be used to allow Unix applications to run on Windows servers. This enables organizations to eliminate or reduce the number of Unix servers without losing the applications that ran on them.

Windows System Resource Manager (WSRM). The WSRM is a feature pack for Windows Server 2003 Enterprise and Datacenter Editions that allows administrators to manage processor or memory resources by process or user. This tool plays two roles in server consolidation: helping an organization determine a resource profile for an application (the amount of resources used by an executing application) and ensuring that an application does not steal resources from other applications running on the same server. (For more information, see the sidebar "Windows System Resource Manager".)

Additionally, organizations can use the resource utilization data from WSRM for a chargeback system to ensure that users and business departments pay for the resources their applications consume.

Virtualization. Virtualization software, which can emulate multiple guest OSs on a host OS such as Windows Server 2003, enables organizations to run legacy applications from diverse platforms on consolidated servers. For example, a virtual server can be used to create a virtual Windows NT or OS/2 server on Windows Server 2003. In the future, servers could run virtualization software to provide isolation between applications, preventing conflicts that might arise in cases of heterogeneous consolidation. Microsoft is not yet shipping its Virtual Server product (currently in limited beta), but many customers are using virtualization provided by products such as EMC’s VMWare.

File Server Migration Toolkit. This toolkit, released in Apr. 2004, helps administrators migrate files, folders, and security settings on Windows NT and Windows 2000 Servers to servers running Windows Server 2003 or Windows Storage Server 2003. For example, the tools help an administrator use the Distributed File System (DFS) while maintaining the original universal naming convention (UNC) path of the files after they are moved to the new servers.

Success Requires Planning

Although it may at first seem simple to reduce the number of servers, particularly during migration from one version of a server OS to the newest release, careful planning is required. Considerable effort is required to determine the following:

• Which applications are running on servers throughout the organization
• Any incompatibilities among applications that would impact heterogeneous consolidation
• The resource requirements of each application
• The appropriate systems management procedures and tools required to manage consolidated servers
• Any organizational issues, such as the need to charge for resources used or to soothe any political conflicts that consolidation may create
• The steps required to perform the actual consolidation.

Microsoft Consulting Services and several Microsoft partners offer assistance in planning and managing consolidation efforts.

Resources

Availability and performance improvements that support server consolidation are outlined in "Availability Improvements in Windows Server 2003" on page 3 and "Performance Improvements in Windows Server 2003" on page 10 of the Aug. 2003 Update.

Storage improvements in Windows Server 2003 that facilitate consolidation are described in "Windows .NET Server Supports Enterprise Storage" on page 3 of the Dec. 2002 Update.

Improvements to Internet Information Services (IIS) are described in "Rewritten IIS Anchors Windows .NET Server" on page 3 of the July 2002 Update.

A Web site with Microsoft information on server consolidation is at www.microsoft.com/serverconsolidation.

The Microsoft case study "Match.com Halves Server Farm, Doubles Speed with ASP.NET and Windows Server" is at www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies/CaseStudy.asp?CaseStudyID=15011.

The Microsoft case study "Exchange Server 2003 Site Consolidation: Preliminary Results" is at www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8bda1c7f-9dd3-46c5-93c0-063de4abcc72&displaylang=en.

Microsoft’s Windows System Resource Manager is described at www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/wsrm/default.mspx.

Microsoft’s File Server Migration Toolkit can be downloaded from www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/upgrading/nt4/tooldocs/msfsc.mspx.

Microsoft’s Solution Accelerator for Consolidating and Migrating File and Print Servers is at www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AC13F926-A398-44D3-A37A-14B38E6E0550&displaylang=en.

Microsoft’s Solution Accelerator for Domain Server Consolidation is at www.microsoft.com/business/reducecosts/efficiency/consolidate/domconmig.mspx.

Using Windows-based storage solutions for consolidation is described at www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/storage/solutions/fileserverconsolidation/default.mspx.

Microsoft Consulting Services' portfolio for managing fewer servers is described at www.microsoft.com/services/microsoftservices/main.mspx.