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Traditional data centers tend to be segregated into functional silos - a model that has endured in the physical world largely because of the crisp lines of demarcation. Virtualization is shaking up the status quo and increasinng demand for more efficient IT processes. Cisco's UCS helps automate and streamline the stovepipe model by unifying network, storage and servers with virtualization. It also provides an opportunity for IT organizations to begin chipping away at those silo walls.
Dysfunctional Computing
New IT infrastructure tends to be project driven. Large application implementations and other departmental endeavors provide budget for servers and SANs – filling up data centers with a hodgepodge of technology islands in the process. Gartner's number one energy saving recommendation at its 2007 Data Center Conference was to turn off servers that appear idle and see if anyone complains (searchcio.com: Top 10 ways to save energy in the data center).
Function tends to follow form with technology specialists typically managing their own domains in relative isolation. Server administrators are unconcerned with network switch configuration. Storage administrators dole out LUNs as they see fit. The network team controls all traffic. An inherent disregard of the bigger picture excludes efficient leveraging of infrastructure across the organization. Even architectures originally deployed with a holistic perspective tend to diverge as upgrades occur at a functional level.
The requirement to support a multitude of operating and management systems, protocols and equipment drives up costs while serial processing of technology requests leads to lengthy delays. The stovepipe model saving grace is that its shortcomings are often overshadowed by the even greater inefficiencies of a physical data center. It can, for example, take weeks of administrative time to provision new servers – making storage and network resource delays moot.
These same delays become excruciating against the backdrop of a virtualized data center where the server team can provision virtual machines in a matter of minutes. Virtualization also blurs the comfortable lines of functional segregation. Server administrators may need a separate VLAN to enable vMotion or extra SAN spindles to enhance performance. They configure virtual switches, argue about protocols and can take a LUN off-line by over-provisioning VM storage.
The silo model drawbacks are amplified as IT organizations deploy VMware vSphere, the Intel 5000 CPU and the Nexus 1000V virtual switch to obtain 100% data center virtualization. As physical servers become unavailable, IT can no longer circumvent bureaucracy on the fly.
Optimizing Virtual Machine Hosting with UCS
Just categorizing UCS is generating a lot of controversy. Last week HP called it a "giant switch". Howard Marks of Byte and Switch recently called it, "next year's servers…shipping this year". According to ComputerWorld, a Dell executive referred to it as a "one-size-fits-all blade server".
UCS can only be satisfactorily defined within the context of the virtualized data center that it was designed to optimize. It is a specially built hosting platform with innovative advances in both performance and management.
Cisco's patented technology delivers far more memory at lower prices than traditional servers. UCS's unified fabric capabilities resolve the cabling nightmare of hosting many virtual machines on a single server. Its Palo adapter supports up to 128 vNICs and vHBAs – providing select virtual machines with native storage and network characteristics.
UCS revolutionizes virtual infrastructure management by allowing the server administrators to dynamically assign resource pools created by the storage and network specialists to a physical blade. All teams share a common GUI and have visibility into what other groups are doing, yet their role specializations are preserved.
Transitioning to a Data Center Team
Resource pools are enabled through comprehensive service profiles that define UCS blades through software. Initial collaboration of the functional specialists is not only required for their creation, but for ongoing troubleshooting. Zoning and vSAN modifications, for example, should be communicated to the server and network teams. Changing a vHBA should be timed so as to not reset a production server outside of a maintenance window. The server team needs to monitor space utilization and performance of their systems to ensure LUNs are "right sized" by the storage team.
Specialists will likely come under pressure to, at minimum, pick up a strong secondary skill set. The server team needs some understanding of IP routing. The network group should know how to do minor server troubleshooting and basic reinstalls. Storage specialists need familiarity with proper VMFS sizing and best practices. All three groups should understand the implications of how security affects their domains.
The challenge and opportunity for IT management is to institutionalize regular communication, drive appropriate issues to a big-picture decision-making level and utilize increased accountability to promote cross-training. A good first step for many larger organizations is to restructure the storage, network and server groups to directly report to the same person. Creating a data center team will help enable a more efficient operation that is better able to optimize the extensive UCS capabilities.
Chris Reed, Mondy Carpio and Steve Jones of INX were invaluable contributors to this article.
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Posted by: cheap computers | September 28, 2009 at 04:22 AM