IBM responds to economic woes with virtualization

The best way to optimize IT in the face of a struggling economy is through server consolidation, according to IBM Corp executive. At this week’s ComputerWorld Canada Technology Insights conference in Toronto, Moonish Badaloo, a product manager with IBM’s global technical services team, said companies need to change the way they look at server infrastructure and IT optimization as a whole.

IBM’s plan revolves around centralizing server management and the consolidation of as many servers as possible. Badaloo, whose name means “high priest of change” in English, said that this can be done in two ways: firstly, by physically replacing older servers with more powerful systems, and secondly, by consolidating applicable workloads onto virtualized machines.

“You need to look at power management, how the business utilizes your network, and your storage needs,” Badaloo said.

The key to starting any server optimization project, he added, is for IT managers to collect all the data they can about what their systems do and when they do it.

“A lot of IT organizations can’t even identify the servers they have,” Badaloo said. This can – and maybe even should – be done before your company even decides to hire IBM or any other vendor to help with a project.

Once a company has decided to upgrade its physical server infrastructure and virtualize certain workloads, the question turns to how to best take advantage of virtualization and ensure it actually delivers on the hype.

One of the companies that helps IBM answer this question, and optimize the servers within its own data centres, is Richmond Hill, Ont.-based CiRBA Inc.

Gerry Smith, president and CEO at CiRBA, said that the traditional “one app-one server” approach to physical server deployments has forced companies to buy additional floor space, pay expensive power and cooling bills, and retain a large management staff. On the other hand, one of the biggest advantages to all these physical servers, he said, is that it segregates the processing power of each business unit throughout the enterprise.

“When you switch to a virtual infrastructure, what used to be your pros are now your cons,” Smith added. When different organizational units start sharing their virtualized infrastructure, he said, the finger pointing and name calling will ensue as soon as trouble arises.

CiRBA’s data centre analysis software brings together configuration information, business attributes and utilization data of servers, representing them as a three-dimensional cube and finding opportunities to optimize their use through virtualization or consolidation.