Dell

What is Server Consolidation? – Server Consolidation is a restructuring of an organization’s infrastructure for the purpose of reducing costs and improving control by optimising the resource requirements. Dell has the right tools, products, and services to help address the key stages of consolidation (Logical, Physical, Workload, and Application), including the critical first step of preparing a business analysis to determine an estimated return on investment achievable from the effort. Dell’s broad PowerEdgeTM  server family meets the needs for high performance, serviceability/manageability, and flexibility dictated by consolidation requirements. And Dell’s system management portfolio, which includes Dell’s OpenManageTM  system management software, enables centralized management and simplified operations.

The potential ROI Advantages from Server Consolidation:

  • Reduced hard costs  – Fewer servers, software licenses, server locations and simplified server administration reduces overall IT costs
  • Improved control and manageability of servers  – IT standardization helps administrators to better manage their server environment while ensuring high availability and security
  • Improved service levels and efficiency of operations  – Increased product reliability and performance enables higher skilled resources to focus on higher value tasks

Dell’s approach to Server Consolidation can save you both time and money, from planning to purchase to deployment.

Dell simplifies the process of consolidating your server infrastructure based on industry best practices. Dell focuses on environments providing high potential return from consolidation- Microsoft Windows 2003 File/Print and Exchange 2003, SQL data base, server-based computing and web servers

The Dell PowerEdgeTM Servers – Dell’s rack-optimized server family provides a broad offering of cost effective choices for server consolidation.

Best Practices – Dell provides “Best practices,” technical white papers and customer success stories to support customers by sharing expertise

Contact your Dell account team to learn more about Dell Server Consolidation.

 

 

Tools

The Dell Server Consolidation ROI Analyst tool is used to create a customized business case for consolidating print, messaging (Microsoft® Exchange® 2003), database (Microsoft® SQL® Server 2000), server-based computing and other application environments with Dell PowerEdge Servers and Dell services. The ROI analysis, a gratis service from Dell, provides customers a 50-page business case analysis with expected costs, resultant benefits, and demonstrable ROI.

Products

The Dell PowerEdgeTM family of servers provides a broad offering of cost effective choices for server consolidation. Key features of all new family members are rack density, serviceability/manageability and high performance, attributes critical to successful consolidation efforts.

For customers undertaking physical consolidation (co-locating systems to reduce the number of sites/data centers), Dell recommends the PowerEdge 1855, Dell’s Server Blade offering, for the ultimate in density which allows you to consolidate more than just the server—you can also consolidate all the ports (like Ethernet, KVM and management ports)—reducing not only physical space requirements but also the “out of box” costs as well. Also ideal are the flexible, rack- optimized servers which offer a range of performance and capacity in space-saving packaging. These servers, such as the ultra dense 1U dual processor PowerEdge 1850, the 2U dual processor PowerEdge 2850 and the 4U quad processor PowerEdge 6850, can be packed and stacked into a 42U rack reducing the data center footprint required to deliver customers’ application throughput.

For consolidation of workloads (supporting more users running the same application on fewer servers), the PowerEdge 6850 provides new levels of performance, based on the latest Intel® XeonTM processor MP technology from Intel® , which offers a performance boost of up to 30% versus previous generations of Pentium® III XeonTM processors. And similarly, the 2-way XeonTM server, the PowerEdge 2850, with dual processors, large internal storage and configuration flexibility, delivers the high-performance levels, plus the availability and expandability necessary to handle your email, departmental database and infrastructure application needs.

Another type of consolidation is application consolidation which involves combining mixed workloads onto a single system. To consolidate compatible applications on the same server, customers may want to consider using a resource management software, such as that from Microsoft® . To consolidate incompatible applications onto the same server, customers may want to consider using software that enables partitioning, such as those from Microsoft® or VMwareTM . However, Dell recommends limiting the use of partitioning software to non-mission critical applications since a system failure may adversely impact all virtual machines on a server.

Dell’s systems management portfolio includes Dell’s OpenManageTM system management tool, services and other resources to help simplify and more effectively manage your enterprise environment. These tools and services are designed to help logically consolidate your environment- a process of establishing common processes and standard system management procedures – and to ensure maximum value from your IT infrastructure.

Services

When you’re ready to plan the implementation details, Dell Services can provide a comprehensive consolidation readiness assessment. Dell has services for the full lifecycle of Server Consolidation starting at the feasibility assessment stage to effective implementation through Dell Services program management. And to mitigate the risks of consolidation, Dell Services can outline the challenges and strategies to avoid them.

Contact your Dell account team to learn more about Dell Server Consolidation.

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