Hp COMPAQ PROLIANT 6000, COMPAQ PROLIANT 3000, COMPAQ PROLIANT 6500 Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers

White Paper

March 1999
ECG030/0499

Server Consolidation with

Prepared by Industry Standard
Server Division

Compaq Computer Corporation

Contents

Introduction to Server Consolidation – p.3
The Three Types of Consolidation – p.4
Logical Consolidation – p.5
Physical Consolidation – p.7
Rational Consolidation – p.11
Summary – p.13

Compaq ProLiant Servers

The advantages of logical, physical

and rational consolidation

Abstract: This document addresses the benefits of server
consolidation on industry standard ProLiant servers. Server
consolidation is an industry trend that involves the optimization of
physical resources, the consolidation of applications onto fewer,
more powerful servers and centralizing the management of business
critical applications.

Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers 2

Notice

The information in this publication is subject to change without notice and is provided “AS IS” WITHOUT
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INFORMATION REMAINS WITH RECIPIENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL COMPAQ BE LIABLE FOR
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WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS
PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION OR LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION), EVEN IF
COMPAQ HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

The limited warranties for Compaq products are exclusively set forth in the documentation accompanying
such products. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting a further or additional warranty.

This publication does not constitute an endorsement of the product or products that were tested. The
configuration or configurations tested or described may or may not be the only available solution. This test
is not a determination or product quality or correctness, nor does it ensure compliance with any federal
state or local requirements.

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companies.

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Copyright ©1999 Compaq Computer Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers

Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers prepared by Industry Standard Server Division
First Edition (March 1999)

Document Number ECG030/0499

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Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers 3

The act of balancing

Introduction to Server Consolidation

The IT Balancing Act

Many IT professionals find themselves carefully balancing many problems

many problems
simultaneously forces IT
organizations to be
reactive, ultimately
spiraling costs out of
control

simultaneously, in an attempt to prevent systems and productivity from
crashing down. Forced to respond to the disparate needs of the many
departments they support, IT specialists often struggle to meet the requests of
their organization. A common method of reacting to changing demands
involves adding equipment. This procedure often solves immediate problems,
but later reveals unforeseen consequences. Like a clumsy dance, this
balancing act tends to trickle down to one common industry problem – out of
control costs.

The Trend towards Standards

Server consolidation
stems from the
acceptance of industry
standard systems and the
need to reduce the total
cost of ownership

Industry wide trends reveal that most major corporations are migrating from
custom designed, proprietary platforms to more economical, standardized
systems running fewer operating systems. Beyond the obvious cost savings
are powerful benefits such as highly expandable systems and easy to use
shrink-wrapped applications. These trends stem from IT organizations’
growing need to reduce the total cost of ownership of servers, storage and
labor while maximizing processing power. Together, these trends have led to
the demand for highly available consolidated systems that enhance the ability
to respond to new business challenges.

Server Consolidation Defined – From Many to Few

Server consolidation involves optimizing resources to increase staff
productivity and reduce labor requirements, reducing total costs. Placing
systems at core locations enables IT organizations to effectively respond to
emerging business challenges, simplifies data management, reduces space
requirements and helps control the overall cost of ownership. As the world’s
largest computer supplier of Industry Standard computing platforms, Compaq
is able to provide the most reliable and cost-effective server consolidation
solutions. Compaq servers lead the industry in reliability, are designed for
optimal space utilization, and include tools that empower IT staffers with the
ultimate in manageability.

The primary benefits of consolidation involve reducing costs and increasing
reliable access to data and computing resources. Server consolidation can
help contain the following costs:

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• Personnel productivity: centralized server management leverages
precious IT resources, improves response times, and decreases
server down-time

• Data control and security: server consolidation provides more
consistent and reliable access to data

• Hardware costs: equipment standardization leads to economies of
scale as maintaining smaller numbers of servers reduces overall
hardware costs

• Software licensing fees: reducing the number of servers required
to support clients means fewer application licensing fees

Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers 4

Logical consolidation is

Server Consolidation – Three Types

The Gartner Group identifies three different styles of server consolidation:
logical, physical and rational as tactical and workable consolidation solutions.

many to few consoles,
physical consolidation is
many to few locations
and rational
consolidation is many to
few servers

Logical consolidation: adopting tools that provide a centralized mechanism
for managing a set of applications. It provides operations consistency,
improves application and infrastructure reliability, increases security and
leverages precious IT talent as a business grows.

Physical consolidation: reducing the number of server and storage locations
to reduce operational costs. Also includes reducing the number of servers
and storage devices required to accomplish an organization’s computing
needs. Additionally, physical consolidation includes standardizing on a
storage environment, such as the Compaq StorageWorks Enterprise Network
Storage Architecture, to simplify day-to-day storage management, improve
economies of scale for storage purchases and easily accommodate changing
business needs.

Rational consolidation: the consolidation of applications onto fewer, more
powerful servers. Rational consolidation reduces hardware and software
expenses as well as operational overhead.

Rational ConsolidationLogical Consolidation

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Proliant Server

Consolidation

Solutions

Physical Consolidation

Figure 1: ProLiant server consolidation solutions address the various levels of
consolidation to different degrees.

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Corporations that rely on

Logical Consolidation

business critical
applications may benefit
from application
management capabilities,
a core feature of logical
consolidation

Organizations that may benefit from logical consolidation rely on business
critical applications such as ERP, business intelligence, e-commerce, Internet,
Intranet, mail and collaboration products. These applications are often difficult
to control and benefit from management applications that ease their
administration and reduce downtime. With logical consolidation, application
management tools improve application availability, significantly reduce
downtime and decrease IT labor costs. Logical consolidation centralizes IT
support staff and gives them the ability to manage centrally located or
distributed applications. Additionally, logical consolidation automates tasks
and applies application management across many systems at once to resolve
common problems such as disk space utilization and software updates.

Benefits of Logical Consolidation

The valuable benefits of logical consolidation include:

• Extended uptime: by proactively monitoring system resources and solving
application problems before they fail.

• Increased administrator productivity: by automating and centralizing tasks,
making it easier to maintain or improve network, systems and application
performance.

• Reduced total cost of ownership: by minimizing the number of man hours
required to perform installations, upgrades and application management.

• Improved application availability: by reducing planned and unplanned
downtime, assuring users access to network and computing resources.

• Enhanced data management capabilities: by centralizing administration of
data used in mission critical applications.

Management software
costs, installation labor
and time are all factors
that can inhibit a
management application
installation

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Tradeoffs of Logical Consolidation

Research has revealed that any tradeoffs of logical consolidation can be offset
if a proper solution is implemented. The primary challenges of installing
application management tools include the material costs of the management
software, the labor required to install the solution and the time needed to fully
implement a solution. An installation can take months to fully implement and
IT staffers must be trained to fully utilize the functionality of management
tools. Fortunately Compaq logical consolidation solutions, as revealed in a
major study conducted by IDC, realize a return on investment in an average of
only 77 days.

Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers 6

Benefits of Using Compaq for Rational Consolidation

Compaqs partnerships with major independent software vendors such as
BMC, CA, Tivolli and others, coupled with powerful Compaq products help
you plan, deploy and operate application management tools. Additional
benefits include:

• Compaq Insight Manager integrates with major network frameworks,
enabling IT staff to control many applications from a single console. This
powerful tool keeps your applications highly available by proactively
predicating failure of critical system resources and aids in the planning
and installation of applications across multiple servers and workstations.

• Compaqs “Active Answers” empowers administrators with unparalleled
access to information that can aid in the management of major applications.
See http://www.compaq.com/activeanswers/ for more information.

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Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers 7

Corporations with

Physical Consolidation

Physical consolidation involves two types of consolidation: systems and
storage. The benefits and tradeoffs of each are unique and described as
follows:

SYSTEMS CONSOLIDATION

Organizations that may benefit from systems consolidation often have

physically dispersed
computing resources may
benefit from consolidating
and updating systems into
fewer locations to ease
physical systems
management and reduce
overall expenses

applications and servers in separate departments, rooms and even buildings
across the globe. As systems become more distributed, managing, repairing
and upgrading them becomes more difficult and costly. Corporations need to
carefully weigh the business benefits of distribution in light of the cost benefits
of consolidation. With systems consolidation, corporations rework and
upgrade their network so that resources are located in a smaller number of
locations. Consolidating systems enables enterprise management of physical
resources from fewer locations, quick identification and resolution of problems
and it can significantly reduce overall expenses. In addition, the installation of
newer hardware and software can increase performance, capacity and fault­tolerance of the entire infrastructure.

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Figure 2: Before and after systems consolidation

Benefits of Systems Consolidation

Consolidating and upgrading systems and resources into fewer locations
provides significant benefits, including:

• Reduced costs: as a function of fewer systems performing greater tasks.

• Increased physical security: enabling all hardware to be locked and

monitored in fewer locations.

• Improved data security: as the number of platforms decrease, the access
to data can be monitored more effectively.

• Increased administrator productivity: as engineers spend more time on
server related issues and less time on non-server administrative functions,
such as traveling to remote sites to trouble shoot and upgrade systems.

• Enhanced reaction time: and proactive monitoring of systems allows
administrators to quickly solve problems, significantly reducing downtime.

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Organizations that are

As the largest

• Simplified upgrade procedures: is a function of systems in fewer locations,
reducing staffing requirements.

• Improved capacity planning: as applications may be run from fewer
servers in centralized locations.

• Increased network performance: as closer physical proximity of servers
enables high-speed connections among servers and to the network.

• Efficient use of floor space: enabling multiple servers to be stacked in a
single rack.

Tradeoffs of Systems Consolidation

distributed by design,
such as retail chains,
may not realize
significant cost saving
with systems
consolidation

manufacturer of Intel
based industry standard
servers, Compaq has the
broadest array of
services and support for
your systems
consolidation efforts

There are some situations where systems consolidation may not be cost
effective. For example, if an organization’s servers are supporting extremely
remote locations (such as U.S. based servers supporting locations in Asia­Pacific regions of the world), network infrastructure costs may outweigh the
benefits of consolidation. In addition, organizations that are distributed by
design, such as retail chains, may benefit by distributing computing resources
while centralizing the management of those resources.

There are general tradeoffs for nearly all organizations implementing server
consolidation. Significant up-front expenditures may be required to redesign
the corporate network architecture. In addition, centralizing physical
equipment opens a corporation to greater risks in disaster situations.
Additionally, when downtime does occur, it may affect a larger number of
users. Clustering and other fault tolerant features can help increase the high
availability of data. Finally, the administration staff should be prepared for
increased need for telephone support from remote users.

Benefits of Using Compaq for Systems Consolidation

An important reason to consider Compaq for your consolidation needs and
upgrade efforts is the completeness with which Compaq can satisfy your
needs. Compaq manufactures the industry’s most compact, expandable and
complete line of Intel-based servers. Compaq also has professional services
to provide configuration consulting and implementation of your solution.
Compaq consolidation solutions also include system management tools.
Compaq can partner with you during each step of planning, design and
implementation to ensure the success of your consolidation effort. Additional
benefits include:

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• Compaq Servers are rack optimized for the data center, enabling up to 14
servers to be stacked in a rack that occupies only 5.5 square feet of floor
space. ProLiant workgroup servers start at 5.25 inches (3U) tall and
ProLiant 4-processor enterprise servers start at only 7 inches (4U) in
height.

• The Compaq Smart Start installation tool decreases the time required to
install and upgrade servers. This automated tool surveys systems and
configurations, enabling easy manageability of upgrades.

• Compaq Insight Manager can manage an unlimited number of servers
from a single console. This powerful application keeps your data
available by proactively predicating failure of critical system components,
such as CPU, memory and hard drives. Compaq will cross ship
components under warranty that are predicted to fail.

Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers 9

Corporations with

• The Compaq Network and Systems Integration Services team will help
you plan your consolidation efforts, assuring a smooth and cost efficient
implementation.

STORAGE CONSOLIDATION

Organizations that benefit from storage consolidation, a form of physical

dedicated storage pools
for each server in their
network may benefit from
storage consolidations
highly available and
manageable features

consolidation, often have a dedicated and rapidly growing storage capacity for
each server in their network. Whether servers are centralized or distributed,
dedicated disk and tape volumes deter data sharing, complicate information
security, make backups more difficult to administer, and greatly increase the
cost and complexity of growing a storage farm. As the importance and
volume of data grows, continuous access becomes critical and data
management becomes more complex. Storage consolidation provides pools
of highly available, flexible and centrally managed storage that can be
distributed to provide the performance and availability demanded by
applications. In addition, storage consolidation enables organizations to
better manage growth, control security and information access, and it provides
rapid response to changing business demands.

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Figure 3: Storage Consolidation allows multiple servers to access a shared
storage repository

Benefits of Storage Consolidation

Storage consolidation provides numerous benefits to organizations, including:

• Highly scaleable storage: enabling administrators to manage growth and
quickly respond to changing business needs.

• Highly available and fault tolerant storage: providing continuous and
reliable access to data.

• Improved data management: and protection from consolidated storage.

• Increased storage utilization: from allocating storage via a centrally

managed pool of storage.

• Reduced administrative costs: and time required to troubleshoot problems.

• Platform independence: enabling sharing of data and simplified backup

procedures.

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With consolidated

As the world’s largest

Tradeoffs of Storage Consolidation

storage, issues such as
disaster recovery,
network reconfiguration
and financial planning
need to be considered

storage supplier, Compaqs
high availability, high
capacity and high
performance solutions will
meet the needs from desktop
to data center

Storage consolidation’s numerous benefits also include a few notable
tradeoffs. It is important to consider disaster recovery scenarios when data is
centralized to a single location. In addition, storage engineering and
application configuration expertise is required to adequately analyze network
performance requirements. Storage consolidation may require a significant
initial cash outlay to procure large RAID units as opposed to simply adding
hard drives to a system. In addition, existing investments in RAID and tape
backup may become obsolete as they are replaced by larger arrays and
automated tape backup libraries.

Benefits of Using Compaq for Storage Consolidation

A primary reason to consider Compaq for your storage consolidation efforts is
that Compaq is the world’s largest storage supplier. Compaq is also the only
storage vendor that ensures high availability and reliability, high capacity and
high performance storage, with solutions for applications ranging from the
desktop to the data center. Other benefits include:

• Compaq’s Enterprise Network Storage Architecture (ENSA) provides a
highly flexible environment for data storage capacity and management.
This advanced technology creates “virtual disks” from a large pool of
consolidated storage. The storage pool is physically distributed as
business needs require. With ENSA, a storage pool can consist of a
number of small, relatively inexpensive “array controllers” that are
deployed as needed. Storage growth is granular down to a disk drive. In
addition, ENSA preserves much of today’s storage hardware investment.
Only ENSA offers the range of configuration, performance tuning,
monitoring and data protection capabilities needed to unify an enterprise
storage environment. ENSA is also designed to grow as business needs
require, while maximizing the protection of your existing storage
investments.

• StorageWorks Command Console, a Windows NT based monitoring and
configuration tool, can manage up to 1.2 petabytes of data distributed
across an enterprise from a single workstation. Its easy to use features
include failure notification, reliability monitoring and multiple levels of
security.

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Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers 11

Corporations

Rational Consolidation

experiencing dramatic
expansion and growth
often benefit from
consolidating workload
tasks into fewer, more
powerful systems and
applications

Organizations well suited for rational consolidation have experienced dramatic
growth that resulted in complex solutions for workload related tasks.
Situations such as corporate mergers and global expansions create
redundant, incompatible workgroup practices, including financial applications,
office productivity tools, intranet applications, e-mail and customer
management applications. Rational consolidation merges different workgroup
applications onto standardized enterprise applications, running on fewer and
larger servers, optimizing labor usage and reducing overall costs.

Rational Consolidation Example

In 1995, Digital Equipment Corporation evaluated its global
staffing and equipment requirements for its e-mail application
servers. The company found there were 700 staffers attending to
mail servers around the globe. After consolidating on a single e­mail application, Digital was able to eliminate nearly fifty
percent of its e-mail servers and reduce dedicated support staff to

200. In 1997, the company handled 50 million messages per day
at a cost thirty-five percent less than it did in 1995.

Benefits of Rational Consolidation

The many benefits of rational consolidation include:

• Increased administrator productivity: by standardizing on fewer servers
and reducing the number of applications that are required.

• Reorganization of complementary resources: into a singular workflow
environment (e.g. order entry and general ledger).

• Decreased downtime: in a centralized single application environment
because problem-resolution capable staff are locally accessible.

• Reduced application licensing fees: as a single application replaces the
workload of many applications.

• Increased resource utilization: in large scale global environments because
fewer servers are operating for longer periods of time, as opposed to
many servers being under-utilized.

• Reduced total cost per user: as a function of decreased hardware,
software and overhead expenses.

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Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers 12

When consolidating

Tradeoffs of Rational Consolidation

workloads, equipment
must be highly fault
tolerant and plans must
be made to reduce
planned and unplanned
downtime

Consolidating workload activities presents notable tradeoffs that must be
appropriately planned for. A major challenge when centralizing workloads is
the requirement for increased fault tolerance. A failure or even planned
downtime in a consolidated environment can affect a great number of
individuals and have an adverse effect on the productivity of an entire
organization. Equipment must be highly reliable and fault tolerant to minimize
failures. Organizations considering rational consolidation need a plan to deal
with backup and planned downtime. In addition, rational consolidation may
place a larger burden on the staff supporting remote users. Additionally, as a
function of current operating systems, the ProLiant platform has limited
capabilities when operating multiple applications on a single server. Compaq
AlphaServer and Himalaya platforms may be better suited for more intensive
rational consolidation efforts. The net benefit of any rational consolidation
effort is a streamlined IT infrastructure that can better leverage the IT staff
while assuring greater reliability for the users and lower capital costs for the
corporation.

Benefits of Using Compaq for Rational Consolidation

A principal reason to use Compaq for all of your rational consolidation is
Compaqs industry leadership in fault tolerant solutions. With applications that
can predict component failure and redundant components such as storage
controllers, power, fans and hard drives, Compaq provides the fault tolerance
demanded for rational consolidation. Additional benefits include:

• Compaqs “Active Answers” empowers administrators with unparalleled
access to information that can aid in the planning, deployment, operation
and trouble shooting of popular applications ranging from Oracle
databases to SAP. See http://www.compaq.com/activeanswers/ for more
information.

• Compaq provides services to aid in the consolidation to a standard
platform. These professional services include business critical assistance
with high availability planning as well as network and systems integration
services.

• Compaqs hardware and software makes up the industry’s most powerful
and standardized solutions for your rational consolidation efforts. Highly
scaleable and rack mountable, Compaq servers can handle up to 1
terabyte of storage each, can contain multiple processors, extensive
memory and an array of networking equipment. Investing in a Compaq
solution is a secure way to assure that you can grow problem free for
years to come.

• Compaq Capital, Compaq’s in-house financial services unit, can finance
up to100 percent of the Compaq solution, including hardware, software,
and services. Afterwards, Compaq Capital’s financial asset management
services can help reduce the total cost of owning technology, while Trade

In Programs, Tech Refresh Options and Equipment Disposal
Services ensure that your implementation meets your business needs, --

even as those needs change.

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Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers 13

Summary

Forced to respond to the disparate needs of the many departments they
support, IT staffs often struggle to meet the needs of their organization.
Industry trends have revealed a demand for centrally managed highly
available systems that reduce administration costs and enhance the ability to
respond to new business challenges. Server consolidation meets these
needs head-on by consolidating operations to reduce total costs.

There are three types of consolidation efforts that address unique concerns
within a typical IT department: logical, physical and rational. Logical
consolidation is the centralization of application management tasks to
increase uptime and IT staff productivity. Physical consolidation consists of
two types of material consolidation, systems and storage. Systems
consolidation is the centralization and updating of server resources to fewer
locations to reduce operational costs. Storage consolidation is the
standardization on a disk and tape storage platform to reduce operational
overhead and increase data availability. Rational consolidation is the
consolidation of applications onto fewer, more powerful servers, to curtail
hardware and software expenses as well as operational overhead. Together,
these three categories of consolidation can significantly reduce costs and
increase a corporations overall productivity levels.

Compaq Computer Corporation is well positioned to meet all of your server
consolidation requirements. As the market leader of Intel based industry
standard servers, Compaq offers an unparalleled array of services and
equipment to aid in your consolidation efforts. If you need absolute reliability,
Compaq has computing platforms and solutions that can meet your needs.
Regain control of your enterprise by contacting your authorized Compaq value
added reseller today or visiting Compaq on the world-wide web at
http://www.compaq.com.

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