How to minimize server consolidation mistakes!

It's all too easy for even a knowledgeable and experienced IT veteran to make mistakes while managing a complex server-consolidation project. You have to think about everything, It can be a minefield.
Server virtualization projects are usually easy to justify on both financial and operational grounds, but that doesn't make them foolproof to execute. Pitfalls, such as inadequate planning, faulty assumptions or failure to quickly detect post deployment glitches, can entrap consolidation project leaders and team members at almost every stage. Every time or most of the time we felt that we covered every base, that every single thing had been looked at.... that's when the danger started.
Avoiding disaster while keeping a complicated consolidation project on schedule and within budget isn't easy. In fact a few mistakes along the way is inevitable. It will go wrong: Be prepared. On the other hand, planning and learning from others will keep you away from making the big and obvious mistakes.
Plan for success - While even the most thorough, painstaking planning can't completely eliminate project mistakes, building a detailed virtualization design and deployment strategy will help minimize the number of errors. Planning is really key for server consolidation.
Thorough planning creates a road map that helps managers gather the knowledge required to avoid most major problems. I think people aren't spending enough time thinking about the issues of the existing workloads and how you migrate those into a virtual environment, and what does that mean in terms of cost structure, ongoing expense and high availability.consolidation planning also needs to address an organization's future needs. Look at what you're going to do in a year, 3 years and 5 years from today. Servers, software and other system elements need to be planned with an eye toward anticipated growth. You don't want to get yourself in a situation where you do this whole big upgrade and then you find you need more server capacity later on.
I also agree that every consolidation plan needs to address scalability issue. From the standpoint of server virtualization, it's very important to have a system that scales and meets the performance need of the load you're putting on it. We often come to know about many organizations that either didn't allocate enough storage, or simply didn't correctly anticipate the amount of server power that was going to be needed to facilitate their server consolidation project.
It's extremely common to overestimate the physical-to-virtual consolidation ratio: Experts Advise (As per KBC)

Your biggest Risk is Poor Project Management!

One of our most highly sought after single discipline classes within project management is risk management. Top management is hot on it; they feel their Project Managers are weak in risk management because of a common pattern they witness. Projects are not being completed as expected and the main culprit it seems is unexpected events, unforeseen risks, which plague these projects. Top management believe that if PM’s receive training in risk management they will be more able to foresee these events and avoid them. What top management do not fully know is that these unforeseen events are not due to poor risk management skills but poor fundamental project management skills. This is what happens behind the scenes on a miss managed project: The project manager gets surprised when he becomes aware that his project’s schedule or quality of the deliverable is missing the mark. In an effort to draw attention away from himself, the PM creates a story based on events that could not have been seen and therefore mitigated. These stories are not total fiction, they often contain a good portion of fact but are told in a manner that supports the project manager’s position that he was the victim of these unforeseen events. What probably happened is the PM did not have a handle on the details of what the project’s current state was. He also did not pay attention to the future work that might be impacted by the current reality. As a result, the current reality was vague and its impact on the future was even more so. In this situation everything becomes a surprise. Symptoms of poor project management display themselves in several specific ways. Here are a few:

• Not breaking down the deliverables into a detailed set of tasks
• Not identifying the dependencies between tasks
• Not knowing what tasks have been fully completed
• Not knowing how much more remains to be completed on incomplete tasks
• Not curtailing scope expansion based on the project’s scope statement
• Not adjusting future estimates based on estimating error trends
• Not adjusting future work based on current reality and its impact on project completion
• Not tracking external dependencies
• Not knowing if the promised availability of partial resources is being met

If we apply the risk management process to the risk above it would go like this: Risk identification tells us poor project management is a potential risk, risk assessment tells us the potential impact is extremely high, and the risk mitigation plan is to ensure PM’s practice good project management fundamentals. This is easier said than done, but still very doable. Five actions must be implemented to ensure PM’s practice good project management fundamentals:

1. Project managers must receive training in the fundamentals. The training must cover project planning, execution and control, and it must be sufficiently thorough to give them the practical understanding of the concepts.
2. There must be a standard methodology that project managers can follow. It must be appropriately balanced between planning, execution, and control, and it must be detailed enough to give them a routine to follow that will help overcome the practices of poor project management defined above.
3. Project managers must have access to software tools that enable them to easily follow the training and methodology provided.
4. Project managers must deliver management reports on a routine basis that are metric driven and allow management to verify that good project management practices are being followed as well as an accurate status of the project.
5. Management must support the practice of project management. This is much more involved than you think. It means acquiring a working knowledge of project management fundamentals so you can talk the PM’s language. It also means giving PM’s the time to do their job right and not asking them to take a short cut or disregard portions of the methodology.

The reason is that the five actions above were instituted within the PM’s organizations and were sustained. Next time a PM plays the victim and blames unforeseen risks audit him. You will learn that most likely it isn’t unforeseen risk that hurt his project; it is poor project risk management.

DATA MIGRATION OUTLOOK

This is more or less related with DC migration, however it mainly concentrate on Data migration. It came with some more clear understanding about this activity of the lifetime. Following are the 1st requirement in this term. 1.    Clear Definition of requirement for all data
2.    Funding constraints
3.    Required expertise in heterogeneous storage  / Server H/W / Network environment / cooling / HVAC
4.    Detail security & availability requirements
5.    Define migration requirement -- which determines success criteria - includes, SLA, expectation for new storage infrastructure, and objective such as reduced management cost, reduced storage expenditure, greater insight info expenditure, a simplified vendor model or greater technical flexibility or stability The prospect of data migration can be overwhelming. Some of the common conditions we find among our clients are familiar to many IT leaders:

• Lack of clear definition of requirements for all data. Data rules should focus on security, availability and recoverability. It's easy to imagine that documents with temporary data and permanent data could be confusing, making it difficult to determine which data is important and which isn't.
• Distributed islands of data. Often, a business unit will implement a new application and request that the infrastructure for it remain close at hand.
• Funding constraints. Tight budgets may limit technology decisions and options.
• Lack of expertise in heterogeneous storage environments. With each vendor's support limited to its own products, incompatibility between storage technologies becomes the problem of the IT manager.

Data migration has much in common with storage consolidation. However, storage consolidation tends to be a better-organized project because it's usually backed by executive sponsorship with specific goals for cost reduction. Data migration, on the other hand, tends to be departmental in scope and limited to tactical objectives, which minimize project size and potential returns. We should focus on the similarities between storage consolidation and data migration, to ensure that the work that's done has strategic value.

1. Detail security and availability requirements. Sometimes called data classification, this requires the security and infrastructure teams to jointly identify the needs of the IT environment. Data classification describes conditions for data access, retention requirements and security measures such as encryption. Even a very limited set of classifications will have tremendous benefit.
2. Define migration requirements -- which determine success criteria. These may include new service-level agreements, expectations for the new storage infrastructure, and objectives such as reduced management costs, reduced storage expenditures, greater insight into expenditure, a more simple vendor model or greater technical flexibility or stability.
3. Survey the IT environment. IT departments often use tools and scripts to do this. But migration requires a complete understanding of infrastructure technology involved, including the networks and file servers. The location of data is just as important: Without providing sufficient bandwidth capacity to support heavy network access, relocating data to a centralized repository could have wrong effects. A internal survey could provide the following:
   • The location of the data, its capacity and growth requirements.
   • Data usage as a measurement of the I/O load.
   • Data criticality rating, which can reveal potential effect on network load and influence retention and availability requirements.
   • Data classification. IT managers can decide what data requires the most expensive storage and stringent protection and what could be restored easily from an archive (backup). They can then make well-informed, strategic decisions about future systems.
   • Management costs for the current environment. This often-overlooked step offers the best opportunity to define benefits of migration.
4. Design the appropriate consolidation or replacement platform, including technology, management and backup tools and procedures. Data classification and a good survey reduce the chance of an over engineered system and contribute to a platform design that will accommodate and boost growth, availability and performance.
5. As with any IT project, it's important to remember that communication is vital. The actual movement of data from Point A to Point B will affect the organization, and it's crucial to minimize downtime -- especially in situations where data could change even as databases are restored from tape.
   Ideally, standards for data should be defined and communicated in advance of the migration, and personnel are alerted to changes in the way they will access data. However, costs also need to be communicated so that business managers understand how noncompliance will affect the project.

Data Center Relocation Coordination

It is essential to have the IT equipment migration project team assembled and organized early in the design process. As construction drawings are completed and the construction begins, the team should be very hard at work with equipment planning and migration activities.

• Pre-design relocation project cost estimating.
• Identification and cataloging of all equipment within IT spaces.
• Production of project drawings, schedules, meeting documentation and other documentation for distribution to all teams.
• Team Participation in design and construction meetings. 
• Monitoring of the building construction schedule against planned events.
• Coordination of the installation of voice and data circuits from the carriers.
• Supervision of the physical relocation of all equipment.

That’s all from me. Take good care of your valuable data.

Data Center basics - Definition and Solutions

What is a data center?
Known as the server farm or the computer room, the data center is where the majority of an enterprise servers and storage are located, operated, maintained and managed. There are four primary components to a data center:
1. White space: This typically refers to the usable raised floor environment measured in square feet (anywhere from a few hundred to a hundred thousand square feet). For data centers that don't use a raised floor environment, the term "white space" may still be used to show usable square footage.
2. Support infrastructure: This refers to the additional space and equipment required to support data center operations — including power transformers, your UPS, generators, computer room air conditioners (CRACs), remote transmission units (RTUs), chillers, air distribution systems, etc. In a high-density, Tier 3 class data center (i.e. a concurrently maintainable facility), this support infrastructure can consume 4-6 times more space than the white space and must be accounted for in data center planning.
3. IT equipment: This includes the racks, cabling, servers, storage, management systems and network gear required to deliver computing services to the organization.
4. Operations: The operations staff assures that the systems (both IT and infrastructure) are properly operated, maintained, upgraded and repaired when necessary. In most companies, there is a division of responsibility between the Technical Operations group in IT and the staff responsible for the facilities support systems.
How are data centers managed?
Operating a data center at peak efficiency and reliability requires the combined efforts of facilities and IT.
IT systems: Servers, storage and network devices must be properly maintained and upgraded. This includes things like operating systems, security patches, applications and system resources (CPU, memory, and storage).
Facilities infrastructure: All the supporting systems in a data center face heavy loads and must be properly maintained to continue operating satisfactorily. These systems include cooling, humidification, air handling, power distribution, backup power generation and much more.
Monitoring: When a device, connection or application fails, it can takedown mission critical operations. Sometimes, one system's failure will lead to applications on other systems that rely on the data or services from the failed unit. A failure in one will compromise all the others. Additionally, modern applications typically have a high degree of device and connection interdependence. Ensuring maximum uptime requires 24/7 monitoring of the applications, systems and key connections involved in all of an enterprises various workflows.
Building Management System: For larger data centers, the building management system (BMS) will allow for constant and centralized monitoring of the facility, including temperature, humidity, power and cooling.
The management of IT and data center facilities are often outsourced to third party companies that specialize in the monitoring, maintenance and remediation of systems and facilities on a shared services basis.
What are some top concerns about data centers?
While the data center must provide the resources necessary for the end users and the enterprise's applications, the provisioning and operation of a data center is divided uncomfortably between IT, facilities and finance, each with its own unique perspective and responsibilities.
IT: It is the responsibility of the business's IT group to make decisions regarding what systems and applications are required to support the business' operations. IT will directly manage those aspects of the data center that relate directly to the IT systems while relying on facilities to provide for the data center's power, cooling, access and physical space.
Facilities: The facilities group is generally responsible for the physical space — for provisioning, operations and maintenance, along with other building assets owned by the company. The facilities group will generally have a good idea of overall data center efficiency and will have an understanding of and access to IT load information and total power consumption.
Finance: The finance group will be responsible for aligning near term vs. long term CAPEX to acquire or upgrade physical assets and OPEX to run them with overall corporate financial operations (balance sheet and cash flow).
Perhaps the biggest challenge confronting these three groups is that by its very nature a data center rarely will be operating at or even close to its optimally defined range. With a typical life cycle of 10 years or might longer, it is essential that the data center's design remains sufficiently flexible to support increasing power densities and various degrees of occupancy over a not insignificant period of time. This in-built flexibility should apply to power, cooling, space and network connectivity. When a facility is approaching its limits of power, cooling and space, the organization will be confronted by the need to optimize its existing facilities, expand them or establish new ones.
What are some data center measurements and benchmarks and where can I find them?
PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness): Created by members of the Green Grid, PUE is a metric used to determine a data center's energy efficiency. A data center's PUE is arrived at by dividing the amount of power entering it by the power used to run the computer infrastructure within it. Expressed as a ratio, with efficiency improving as the ratio approaches 1, data center PUE typically range from about 1.3 (good) to 3.0 (bad), with an average of 2.5 (not so good).
DCiE (Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency): Created by members of the Green Grid, DCiE is another metric used to determine the energy efficiency of a data center, and it is the reciprocal of PUE. It is expressed as a percentage and is calculated by dividing IT equipment power by total facility power. Efficiency improves as the DCiE approaches 100%. A data center's DCiE typically ranges from about 33% (bad) to 77% (good), with an average DCiE of 40% (not so good).
LEED Certified: Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system. It provides third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most:- energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emission reduction, the quality of the indoor environment, the stewardship of resources and the sensitivity to their impact on the general environment.
The Green Grid: A not-for-profit global consortium of companies, government agencies and educational institutions dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. The Green Grid does not endorse vendor-specific products or solutions, and instead seeks to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data center energy efficiencies.
Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA): TIA is the leading trade association representing the global information and communications technology (ICT) industries. It helps develop standards, gives ICT a voice in government, provides market intelligence, certification and promotes business opportunities and world-wide environmental regulatory compliance. With support from its 600 members, TIA enhances the business environment for companies involved in telecommunications, broadband, mobile wireless, information technology, networks, cable, satellite, unified communications, emergency communications and the greening of technology. TIA is accredited by ANSI.
TIA-942: Published in 2005, the Telecommunications Infrastructure Standards for Data Centers was the first standard to specifically address data center infrastructure and was intended to be used by data center designers early in the building development process. TIA-942 covers:
• Site space and layout
• Cabling infrastructure
• Tiered reliability
• Environmental considerations
Tiered Reliability — The TIA-942 standard for tiered reliability has been adopted by ANSI based on its usefulness in evaluating the general redundancy and availability of a data center design.
Tier 1 Basic — no redundant components (N): 99.671% availability
• Susceptible to disruptions from planned and unplanned activity
• Single path for power and cooling
• Must be shut down completely to perform preventive maintenance
• Annual downtime of 28.8 hours
Tier 2 — Redundant Components (limited N+1): 99.741% availability
• Less susceptible to disruptions from planned and unplanned activity
• Single path for power and cooling includes redundant components (N+1)
• Includes raised floor, UPS and generator
• Annual downtime of 22.0 hours
Tier 3 — Concurrently Maintainable (N+1): 99.982% availability
• Enables planned activity (such as scheduled preventative maintenance) without disrupting computer hardware operation (unplanned events can still cause disruption)
• Multiple power and cooling paths (one active path), redundant components (N+1)
• Annual downtime of 1.6 hours
Tier 4 — Fault Tolerant (2N+1): 99.995% availability
• Planned activity will not disrupt critical operations and can sustain at least one worst-case unplanned event with no critical load impact
• Multiple active power and cooling paths
• Annual downtime of 0.4 hours
Due to the doubling of infrastructure (and space) over Tier 3 facilities, a Tier 4 facility will cost significantly more to build and operate. Consequently, many organizations prefer to operate at the more economical Tier 3 level as it strikes a reasonable balance between CAPEX, OPEX and availability.
Uptime Institute: This is a for profit organization formed to achieve consistency in the data center industry. The Uptime Institute provides education, publications, consulting, research, and stages conferences for the enterprise data center industry. The Uptime Institute is one example of a company that has adopted the TIA-942 tier rating standard as a framework for formal data center certification. However, it is important to remember that a data center does not need to be certified by the Uptime Institute in order to be compliant with TIA-942.
What should I consider when moving my data center?
When a facility can no longer be optimized to provide sufficient power and cooling — or it can't be modified to meet evolving space and reliability requirements — then you're going to have to move. Successful data center relocation requires careful end-to-end planning.
Site selection: A site suitability analysis should be conducted prior to leasing or building a new data center. There are many factors to consider when choosing a site. For example, the data center should be located far from anyplace where a natural disaster — floods, earthquakes and hurricanes — could occur. As part of risk mitigation, locations near major highways and aircraft flight corridors should be avoided. The site should be on high ground, and it should be protected. It should have multiple, fully diverse fiber connections to network service providers. There should be redundant, ample power for long term needs. The list can go on and on.
Moving: Substantial planning is required at both the old and the new facility before the actual data center relocation can begin. Rack planning, application dependency mapping, service provisioning, asset verification, transition plans, test plans and vendor coordination are just some of the factors that go into data center transition planning.
If you are moving several hundred servers, the relocation may be spread over many days. If this is the case, you will need to define logical move bundles so that interdependent applications and services can be moved together so that you will be able to stay in operation up to the day on which the move is completed.
On move day, everything must go like clockwork to avoid down time. Real time visibility into move execution through a war room or a web-based dashboard will allow you to monitor the progress of the move and be alerted to potential delays that require immediate action or remediation.

Data Center Migration Do's & Don'ts

For any and every organization, data center migration can be a bit tricky. But that's especially true for the do-it-yourselfers at small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs); they often don't have the resources to involve high-priced specialists. Instead they need to do the best with the resources they have.
The common challenge in all of the moves/ migration is unknown. "That's why it is so important to plan, plan, plan and then plan some more". In one of the "worst case," one of my friend Manu said the bankruptcy of a co-location facility forced an unplanned shift of one of his data centers within a matter of days (3 weeks). Thanks to good luck, he and his organization has immediately identified an alternate location, the move succeeded. However, he noted, "It took three months before things were really back to normal." Data Center migrations have been the result of more leisurely and thorough planning as well as the ability to prepare a whole new facility and then simply move the resources, to minimize the impact and reduce the possibility of outages.
As Manu suggested that first step should always has be to be clear your mind about your bandwidth needs and then talk to your ISP / network suppliers. "Moving network devices might take as little as a few weeks, but for higher capacity systems you might need three or four months of lead time," he said.
By the way, any one knows how a specialist work on the DC migration project. Ok, no guess needed,  I have prepared a Data center migration checklist which will help you to become a specialist in DC migration project. The list includes the following steps....
a. Review support contracts to make sure they will still be valid in the new location, after H/W migration
b. Determine who will do the physical shifting and reconfiguration: your own staff, a consultant. Collect & classify every bit of detail
c. Review service-level agreements (SLA) with outside customers (if any), particularly with regard to liability for any customer supplied or customer owned equipment
d. Document and label everything. If possible, consider simplifying your infrastructure well in advance of a move
e. Document every application/system interdependencies and plan the sequence of the move accordingly
f. If possible, set up a duplicate facility in the new location rather than moving and setting up the same equipment again
g. Be aware of and try to eliminate any single points of failure in both old and new locations
h. Develop and use redundancy. For example, a disaster recovery (DR) location where you can keep critical apps and provide failover
i. Consider moving to storage or server virtualization -- or both. one could set up a virtual platform including storage, virtualize the physical servers and move the virtual platform to the new location while keeping the physical setup at the old location until the virtual platform is up at the new location
j. Back up everything in preparation for the move. Hard drives are notorious for failing when they have been shut down, cooled, moved and restarted
k. You need to identify your most critical applications and have contingency plans in place, its just like preparing a disaster recovery and business continuity (BC) plan
As per my understanding, the planning process should be divided into two phases. The first phase is to determine what is wanted from the new data center or ensuring that a chosen location can meet certain requirements (i.e., space, power, security, other facilities, growth capacity and location). The second phase is to execute the move.
5 years ago I moved our two-racks worth of kit between floors in the same data center at VSNL Mumbai and it was too hard to get all the communications suppliers / colo server owners to turn up on the same Saturday to move everything at once.
Of course, migration aren't smooth, which begs the question of whether to do it yourself or hire someone else. As per my understanding, it depends on many factors. If you hire an outside consultant, be sure they have experience in this type of work and be sure you know how equipment will be transported and by whom.
For his part, Manu said hiring outside help may be a must if you have a small staff. However, he said, at a minimum, "You should make sure preparing for the move and coordinating it is the full-time responsibility of at least one person." Otherwise, you are looking at trouble. "Moving is a challenge but if you properly plan and prepare, it's manageable," he added.
For those embarking on a data center move, there are a few tools that may help. For example, data migration can be assisted by product such as....
a. Brocade's Data Migration Manager (DMM)
b. EMC Corp.'s Rainfinity (a NAS virtualization appliance that can be deployed for migrating data)
c. Hitachi Data Systems (Universal Replicator and open-source rsync). In addition
d. Shunra Software's Shunra VE, a tool that helps predict the impact of moving or reconfiguring a data center on application performance, backups and other aspects of operations.
That's all from me, all the very best for your endeavor to migrate Data Center

2 Lessons on risk

2 Lessons for oil industry from aeronautic industry on risk management....
Risk is an non avoidable, elusive, and ultimately unconquerable, opponent. And there's a strong argument to be made, looking at the disaster in the recent times, (i.e. gulf oil leak) that perhaps we shouldn't be opening up the earth in places too remote to close it up again. But in any event, the oil industry would do well to take two lessons from the aeronautics community.
1st: anything mechanical can and will break -- and that includes back-up systems. Count on it, and
2nd: expect the unexpected. And plan accordingly.

Ideas for arguing your point effectively in IT meetings

If you’re in IT management, improving your communication skills is probably the best investment of time and effort you can make. Most business executives will tell you that even senior IT leaders tend to falter when it comes to putting their business strategy into a common business language. IT has a well-known tendency to drown their audience in a sea of technical jargon. And when no one challenges any of the statements, it can look like agreement. However, a lack of challenge is less a sign of an apprehension to ask for clarification. It takes someone with a healthy and brave heart to ask for clarification in front of the group, as many see it as an admission of one’s ignorance. It is of no surprise, then, that an IT leader finds after a meeting that her recommendations, seemingly well received by the audience, have gone unnoticed. Sometimes it’s just a blow to his ego, but most in this field have a story of a magnificent and expensive failure that resulted from IT advice that had been ignored. Discussing the three usual suspects that lead to such failures. Today, I want to explore the topic further and offer some advice on getting your point across that most people, irrespective of seniority, will find useful. This is not a complete list or an ultimate guide but a collection of ideas intended to provide incredible return on the time invested to read it. So, here we go…

1. Realize that a dialogue should not be about you, Accept the fact that you just might be wrong and treat the opposition with respect.
2. There are two parts to every argument: A position and a bunch of points that support it. Always separate them and be clear on them both.
3. Never accept an argument that you don’t understand. Ask for clarification.
4. To each decision, there are objectives (what we want to achieve) and alternatives (how we can achieve it).
5. Choose the language both you and your opponent understand.
6. When you make your point, nothing is as effective as the masterful command of the language and use of relevant examples.
7. Your opponent might pass his beliefs and opinions for an unquestionable truth. So, be ready for attacks (when your opponent targets your persona and not your argument).
8. Watch out for arguments that say that something is right just because it is either new or old.
9. Don’t fall for arguments that rely on wide acceptance and popularity. What’s right for many is not necessarily right for you, even if the others are in the same industry, market, or building.
10. Beware of the attacks like, your opposition objects not to your position but to a similar but much weaker and sometimes ridiculous one.
11. Watch for arguments with little to no connection to the issue at stake, which are introduced to misdirect the attention of you and the rest of the audience.
12. Sometimes you may lose on the basis of unobtainable perfection. Your way may be the best available but not perfect, When you feel that the conversation has fallen into this rut, call a spade a spade.

You have probably noticed that in a number of points I advised you to “watch out” or “beware of” or to “be ready” against various acts of attacks. The Golden Rule applies.