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Five reasons to make the move to converged infrastructure
1. A UBM TECHWEB WHITE PAPER
SEPTEMBER 2012
Five Reasons to Make the Move
to a Converged Infrastructure
This is no time for complacency when it comes to data
center architecture and operations. Only by moving
aggressively toward more closely converged and better
automated systems, storage and network infrastructure can
IT shift resources from low-value operations to high-value
innovation — and fulfill the relentlessly escalating demands
of the business.
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2. Five Reasons to Make the Move to a
Converged Infrastructure
This is no time for complacency when it comes to data center
architecture and operations. Only by moving aggressively toward
more closely converged and better automated systems, storage
and network infrastructure can IT shift resources from low-value
operations to high-value innovation — and fulfill the relentlessly
escalating demands of the business.
IT has always faced the challenge of meeting esca- nothing short of a crisis in infrastructure strategy.
2 lating business demands with limited resources. In The agility imperative. Companies also
fact, the pressure of those demands is what has need to be much more nimble when it comes to
driven the advances in IT that have brought us to provisioning new IT services and scaling existing
where we are today. ones up and down. The volatility of markets and
But several factors are making it especially the constant entry of new, disruptive competitors
important now for IT decision makers to initiate are forcing businesses of all kinds to move faster
some strategic changes in the way they architect and change direction with greater agility. That
and manage their organizations’ data center envi- means IT can no longer take weeks or months to
ronments, including: respond to the changing needs of the business.
The growing disparity between business Unfortunately, most existing IT architectures
demands and IT resources. An always under- and operating models don’t provide adequate agil-
resourced group, IT today faces more challenges ity. Provisioning new services still requires multiple
than ever. Business demands are relentlessly chang- IT staffers to build systems, configure storage and
ing. The sheer volume of data that IT is asked to administer network access. This complex, manual
store, manage, secure and analyze is growing expo- process is often done differently for each new
nentially. Customer-facing IT services drive wildly service. Most IT organizations also tend to ensure
fluctuating capacity requirements. The advent of service levels by overprovisioning infrastructure,
ubiquitous mobility is pushing IT to deliver a broader which they rarely scale back when demand slows.
range of always-on services, as is the explosion in As a result, IT can find itself insufficiently respon-
network-connected objects — from packages with sive to the business — as well as more wasteful
RFID tags to vehicles that report on their where- and error-prone than it would like to be.
abouts and fuel consumption. Disintermediation and the cloud. In their
At the same time, uncertainty in global mar- quest for faster, less CAPEX- and OPEX-intensive
kets is inhibiting companies from growing their IT ways to fulfill their needs, business users increas-
spend in proportion to their increased IT demand. ingly turn to software as a service (SaaS), platform
The hiring of new staff is something they particu- as a service (PaaS) and other public cloud providers
larly want to avoid. for rapidly deployable, pay-as-you-go solutions.
This combination of unprecedented unpre- The availability of these public cloud solutions
dictability in business demand and a strong is a good thing on the whole, yet public clouds can
disinclination to increase IT spending can lead to pose a variety of problems. One is that compliance
3. A UBM TECHWEB WHITE PAPER | Five Reasons to Make the Move to a Converged Infrastructure
and other considerations limit which IT services applied to any given workload. These impediments
can be migrated to the public cloud. Another is to agility and efficiency are commonplace despite
that when different business units engage with the rise of virtualization.
different cloud providers without appropriate IT Depending on the complexity of a company’s
governance, all kinds of data management and infrastructure and processes, unraveling the ref-
governance issues can arise. erence architectures of the past can take a lot
IT, therefore, can’t simply abdicate efficiency of time and effort. Convergence accelerates a
and agility to external cloud providers. It has to company’s journey by consolidating the “moving
deliver responsive, shared services to the business parts” of the infrastructure — thereby simplifying
in a resource-efficient way. Otherwise, it will put management and change.
both its own relevance and the competitiveness of Better infrastructure automation.
the business at serious risk. Convergence complements the pooled manage-
ment of distributed resources with automation
capabilities that eliminate the cost, delays and
Convergence is not an all-or-nothing potential errors associated with current manual
processes. This automation makes it much easier
proposition. You can focus on coordinating virtual
to quickly bring together the compute, storage
machines and disk arrays now and bring networking into and network resources necessary to provision a
the automation mix later, for example. new application or service. It also allows the IT
environment to respond automatically when an
uptick in workload demand starts to create a per-
Moving Toward Convergence formance bottleneck — whether that bottleneck
Every IT organization starts its move to next-gen- is in CPU cycles, server memory, storage I/O or net-
eration infrastructure at a different place. And work throughput. Just as important, automation
every IT organization has different workloads allows resources to be released when they are no
3 that drive the evolution of that infrastructure. But longer needed — eliminating the all-too-common
regardless of those differences, every IT organiza- phenomenon of wasted infrastructure capacity.
tion facing the new pressures of efficiency, agility And, it allows IT to eliminate unnecessary power
and control needs the benefits that converged consumption.
infrastructure — whatever specific form it takes at Through this combination of pooled resources
any given moment — can uniquely deliver. and better automation, convergence empowers
“Convergence” is actually a journey, rather IT to define policies that govern the relationships
than a specific destination. It describes a process between infrastructure resources and business
by which IT organizations begin to evolve their workloads. These policies can be driven by busi-
environments to make them more responsive and ness priorities, service level objectives, compliance
efficient — and then continue to evolve them over requirements and other relevant parameters. So, in
time as business requirements change and new addition to streamlining operations, IT can lever-
technologies become available. age convergence to bring coherent governance to
Convergence is characterized by several its day-to-day operations.
distinct but related data center transformations, More efficient infrastructure. Convergence
including: isn’t just about more adaptive management of
Consolidated management and alloca- infrastructure. It’s also about evolving that infra-
tion of server, storage and network resources. structure to make it inherently more manageable
Today, most IT organizations manage their envi- and efficient. On the server side, for example,
ronments as multiple separate silos. Not only do a move to blades can give IT the more modu-
they treat servers, storage and network resources lar, higher-density computing power it needs to
as separate management domains, but they also respond to shifts in business demand. Servers can
wind up managing different sets of devices within also be designed to deliver greater performance
these domains (physical and virtual machines, per watt, to run at higher temperatures and to
virtual machines running different hypervisors, automatically power down when they’re not in
disk arrays from different vendors, and so on) as use in order to conserve energy.
siloed subdomains. This approach slows down Similarly, storage infrastructure can be made
service provisioning and makes it difficult to adapt much more efficient through a more modular
quickly to changes in workloads. It also leads to approach to adding disk capacity — as well as
the underutilization of available capacity, because the more aggressive use of technologies such as
resources in any given subdomain can’t readily be deduplication, compression and automated tiering
4. A UBM TECHWEB WHITE PAPER | Five Reasons to Make the Move to a Converged Infrastructure
of “hot” and “cold” data — so that IT can drive
down operational costs at the same time that it
improves its ability to adapt to shifts in demand. THE FIRST STEP
Workload transportability. In addition to
One great way to get your journey to
automating the allocation of pooled resources to convergence jump-started is with Dell’s
specific service workloads, convergence enables Efficient Architecture Workshop. This
the flexible movement of workloads across that half-day workshop can be held at Dell
environment. So, for example, a new application or at your location and includes:
workload can readily be migrated from a rapidly
• n assessment of your current state
A
provisioned development workspace to a dedi- and future goals
cated test-and-QA domain to a limited pilot for a • n open discussion of how
A
user-acceptance trial and then to production — all new technologies map to your
without the delays and manual resource alloca- requirements
• proposal for next steps,
A
tions required in today’s typical IT environment.
including suggestions for a staged
This workload transportability also enables IT implementation
to greatly increase its resiliency without the added
cost of standby servers or complex clustering solu- Dell has the expertise, services and
tions. That’s because workloads can quickly and solutions to help you start your
convergence journey in the right
easily be moved to other available infrastructure
direction. Regardless of how much
resources in the event of a device, rack or local or how little Dell equipment your
data center failure. infrastructure uses, Dell can help you
Essentially, convergence is the process by design and execute a convergence road
which IT evolves from a disparate set of manual map that’s appropriate for your needs
and budget.
operational silos to a well-governed data center
that delivers superior efficiency, responsiveness With Dell’s assistance, you can get
4 and value — as well as other objectives such as better, clearer answers to your most
self-service and reduced power consumption. pressing questions about architecture,
workload provisioning, automation,
governance and an orderly, safe
Five Reasons to Start Now
evolution to the kind of hybrid cloud
Few, if any, IT organizations will find it practical or environment your company needs to
desirable to move to fully converged infrastructure successfully compete in a world where
overnight. The cost of a massive forklift upgrade IT is more important than ever — but
would be prohibitive — especially in today’s invest- budgets just aren’t growing accordingly.
As a result, you’ll be better equipped
ment-averse climate — as would the disruption to
to make well-informed decisions about
current operations. where to focus your energies and
Also, different IT organizations will want efforts in the near term to achieve your
to progress toward their convergence objectives longer-term goals with the greater
along different paths. Some may need to priori- speed and confidence.
tize the converged management of physical and
virtual resources and processes. Others may need
to replace entire workload silos of compute, net-
working and storage with integrated, customized 2. You can start with what you have.
private clouds. Conver-gence does not require the immediate
But every IT organization can benefit from replacement of any existing infrastructure resources.
initiating its convergence move sooner, rather than On the contrary, in its initial stages, convergence can
later. Here’s why: focus exclusively on leveraging existing resources
1. You can gain essential advantages right through consolidated management and automation.
away. Convergence is not an all-or-nothing propo- 3. Your enterprise urgently needs to free
sition. You can focus on a specific pain point such as resources for innovation. The more of your IT
the coordination of virtual machines and disk arrays budget your company spends on supporting exist-
now and bring networking into the automation mix ing applications and services, the less it can devote
later. This incremental approach lets you validate to real business-enhancing IT innovation. But that
your strategy with quantifiable wins that you can kind of innovation has become a life-and-death
use to get broader buy-in for your longer-term issue in today’s fast-moving, digitally enabled mar-
convergence strategy. kets. So the time to start driving down OPEX is now.
