A COST-ORIENTED TOOL TO SUPPORT SERVER
CONSOLIDATION
Danilo Ardagna, Chiara Francalanci
Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Via Ponzio 34/5, 10133, Milano, Italy
Gianfranco Bazzigaluppi, Mauro Gatti, Francesco Silveri
IBM Italy, Circonvallazione Idroscalo, 20090 Segrate, Milano, Italy
Marco Trubian
Dipartimento di Sicenze dell’Informazione, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Comelico 39, 20135 Milano, Italy
Keywords: IT Costs, Distrib
uted systems, Server Consolidation, Optimization
Abstract: Nowadays, Companies perceive the IT infrastructure as a commodity not delivering any competitive
advantage and
usually, as the first candidate for budget squeezing and costs reductions. Server
consolidation is a broad term which encompasses all the projects put in place in order to rationalize the IT
infrastructure and reduce operating costs. This paper presents a design methodology and a software tool to
support Server Consolidation projects. The aim is to identify a minimum cost solution which satisfies user
requirements. The tool has been tested by considering four real test cases, taken from different geographical
areas and encompassing multiple application types. Preliminary results from the empirical verification
indicate that the tool identifies a realistic solution to be refined by technology experts, which reduces
consolidation projects costs, time and efforts.
1 INTRODUCTION
There is increasingly clear evidence that IT
contribution to productivity growth is sizeable and
positively affects both firms and countries (Dedrick
2003). Yet, the benefits of IT investments exhibit a
striking variance among firms and the continual
growth of the portion of capital spending devoted to
IT is getting to unsustainable levels. There is
therefore an increasing focus on curbing IT costs,
notably on those areas not delivering visible and
short term business benefits. The IT infrastructure,
being often perceived as a commodity not delivering
any competitive advantage (Carr 2003), is thus the
first candidate for budget squeezing; with ultimate
goals as heterogeneous as cost savings or freeing
resources for more business-related IT investments.
Server consolidation is a broad, weakly defined term
whic
h encompasses all the projects put in place in
order to rationalize the IT infrastructure. Although
each project is unique, we can identify in each server
consolidation project five main phases: a) goals and
constraints identification; b) data gathering; c)
analysis; d) solution test; and e) deployment.
For most of the projects the key goal is to reduce
costs without adve
rsely affecting the key operational
requirements, i.e. performance, scalability and
dependability. Thus the architectural design has to
be optimized against the cost variable, while the
operational requirements act as constraints.
The data gathering phase aim
s at collecting basic
information about the to-be–consolidated servers
(e.g. server configuration, OS, major applications)
and workload data (e.g. peak CPU utilization).
Since no non-intrusive tool existed in the market
able to gather workload data, IBM has developed its
own tool (IBM CDAT). All the customer data
analyzed in this article were obtained using this tool.
During the analysis phase the data gathered during
the previ
ous phase are sorted out and architectural
decisions are taken. The project team needs at least
to: a) to select the consolidation technique; b) select
the server models; c) size the systems; d) assign each
application to a server e) determine the optimal
323
Ardagna D., Francalanci C., Bazzigaluppi G., Gatti M., Silveri F. and Trubian M. (2005).
A COST-ORIENTED TOOL TO SUPPORT SERVER CONSOLIDATION.
In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - DISI, pages 323-330
Copyright
c
SciTePress
location (if appropriate). This article is focused on
identifying an optimal solution to problems (b), (d)
and (e), where optimal means the cheapest solution
meeting operational requirements.
The three key operational requirements are
performance, scalability and dependability. As to
performance, the aforementioned IBM CDAT tool
measures the average and peak CPU utilization; it is
therefore possible to select the server models and
configuration in such a way that performance
requirements are met. As to scalability, the model
will be extended to cover scalability issues in future
work. As to dependability, two High Availability
(HA) cluster configurations have been considered
(see Marcus 2000): a) 1-to-1 (symmetric), b) load
sharing. 1-to-1 HA clusters consist of two nodes that
deliver different services (even when the two nodes
host the same type of application the two servers
deliver different services). 1-to-1 clusters can be
configured in asymmetric mode (also known as
Active-Passive) or symmetric mode (also known as
Active-Active). In the asymmetric configuration
server applications run on the two servers but only
one machine delivers service to users while the
second one is in standby. In the Active-Active
configuration, vice versa, server applications are
installed on the two machines but only one instance
of a server application is executed on the cluster.
The asymmetric configuration makes a suboptimal
usage of the resource and therefore it is implemented
only when the symmetric configuration is not
supported. Load sharing HA clusters consist of two
or more nodes that deliver the same service. The
multiple nodes extensions of 1-to-1 HA cluster (e.g.
N-to-1 in which multiple nodes can fail over one
standby node), albeit considered in the analysis, are
not widespread enough in the Intel-based servers
market and therefore have not been described in this
article.
This paper is the result of a joint project between
IBM and Politecnico di Milano. In a previous work
(see (Ardagna and Francalanci 2002), (Ardagna et
al. 2004) and references therein), we have developed
a cost oriented methodology and a software tool,
ISIDE (Information System Integrated Design
Environment) for the design of the IT architecture.
In this paper, we apply our tool to four server
consolidation projects implemented by IBM for their
customers, in order to evaluate the quality of our
solutions. The results we obtained show that ISIDE
can identify a low cost candidate solution, which can
be refined by the project team experts, which
reduces the cost and time of server consolidation
projects. The current version of the tool does not
consider scalability issues. However, the tool can be
extended in order to entirely support the server
consolidation process considering additional
constraints.
This paper is organized as follows. The next section
reviews previous approaches provided by the
literature. Section 3 discusses a model for an
Enterprise-wide Information System which supports
a server consolidation project. Section 4 describes
the current version of ISIDE which has been adopted
to investigate case studies discussed in Section 5.
Conclusions are drawn in Section 6.
2 RELATED WORK
A server consolidation project is a special case of
design of an IT infrastructure. Modern
infrastructures are comprised of hardware and
network components (Menascé and Almeida 2000).
Since hardware and network components
cooperatively interact with each other, the design of
the IT infrastructure is a systemic problem. The
main systemic objective of infrastructural design is
the minimization of the costs required to satisfy the
computing and communication requirements of a
given group of users (Jain 1987; Blyler and Ray
1998). In most cases, multiple combinations of
infrastructural components can satisfy requirements
and, accordingly, overall performance requirements
can be differently translated into processing and
communication capabilities of individual
components. These degrees of freedom generate two
infrastructural design steps: a) the selection of a
combination of hardware and network components;
b) their individual sizing.
Cost-performance analyses are executed at both
steps. Performance analyses receive a pre-defined
combination of components as input and initially
focus on the application of mathematical models to
define the configuration of each component
(Lazowska et al. 1984; Menascé and Almeida 2000).
Conversely cost analyses start at a system level, to
identify a combination of components that
minimizes overall costs, which is initially calculated
from rough estimates of individual components
configurations and corresponding costs (Blyler and
Ray 1998; Zachman 1999). The evaluation of costs
of individual components is subsequently refined
based on more precise sizing information from
performance analyses.
The literature provides various approaches to
support the design process, especially in the
performance evaluation field (Menascé and Gomaa
2000) or for specialized applications (Gillman et al.
2000) and often only a limited set of architectural
variables or sub-problems are considered (e.g. the
ICEIS 2005 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION
324
configuration of an application server (Xi et al.
2004)).
A scientific approach has been rarely applied to
cost minimization and a rigorous methodological
support to cost issues of infrastructural design is still
lacking. Our model draws from (Jain 1987) the
approach to the representation of infrastructural
design alternatives as a single cost-minimization
problem; however design variables and steps have
been significantly extended to account for the
complexity of modern computer systems and to
support server consolidation projects. The cost
optimization problem is NP-hard and in previous
works (Ardagna et al. 2004) we have proposed an
heuristic solution based on the tabu search algorithm
which will be briefly discussed in Section 4.
3 THE SYSTEM MODEL
The model of the Enterprise Information System we
consider is depicted in Figure 1. The Internet ties
multiple local networks, whose number and
extension depends on the topology of organizational
sites and on the location of users. The Infrastructure
is associated with a “Total Cost of Ownership”
(TCO), defined as the summation of network costs,
investment and management costs of all
infrastructural components (Faye Borthick and Roth
1994). The server consolidation problem consists of
the joint problem of selecting new hardware
components and localizing them while minimizing
the TCO of the system, according to operational
requirements. The set of servers to be consolidated
is a subset of application servers adopted in the
current enterprise infrastructure which execute
server applications (web servers, e-mail servers,
DBMSs, etc.) and thin/Hybrid Fat Client (HFC)
servers, i.e. servers which support users which adopt
thin or HFC client computers (Ardagna et al. 2004)
and access a Metaframe or Terminal Services
environment (Microsoft 2003).
The system is described by the following
fundamental variables:
Organization sites S
i
, defined as sets of
organizational resources (users, premises and
technologies) connected by a LAN.
User classes C
i
, defined as a group of users with
a common application profile located in an
organization site, where an application profile is
characterized by the set of applications and
functionalities, computing requirements, and
user think time.
Figure 1: Enterprise Information System Model.
Applications A
i
, defined as a set of
functionalities that can be accessed by
activating a single computing process.
Applications are characterized by computing
and memory (primary and secondary)
requirements.
Databases D
i
, defined as separate sets of data
that can be independently stored, accessed and
managed. Note that DBMSs are supposed to be
specified as server applications and,
accordingly, databases are simply described by
the size of secondary memory that they require.
Applications and databases are the main drivers of
architectural design of server farms, while the
specification of sites and user classes is critical to
select and size network components. All users in a
user class are supposed to use the same set of
applications. Application computing capacity
requirements are evaluated by considering the
average utilization of the server which support their
execution in the original system. Note that a
thin/HFC servers in a server consolidation project
can be modelled as a single application. User classes
and applications exchange data. The data exchange
is modelled as a weighted directed graph whose
nodes represent an application or a user class and the
weight of each edge (i,j) represents the average
bandwidth required to support data exchange
between node i and j.
Different sites are constrained to be connected
through an IP-based Virtual Private Network (VPN).
VPNs have been selected due to their flexibility in
realizing point-to-point connections. In this way,
network design is performed by sizing link capacity
and taking into account the associated costs. This
provides a necessary input for the evaluation of
overall infrastructural costs and allows the analysis
of the impact of Internet costs on infrastructural
design choices.
The optimization domain can be limited by the
project team by specifying one or multiple
A COST-ORIENTED TOOL TO SUPPORT SERVER CONSOLIDATION
325
constraints on the association between a) hardware
components which will constitute the new
consolidated system; b) existing applications.
Constraints are defined by the project team before
optimization and represent an input to the software
tool presented in the next section. The set of all
possible optimization constraints is defined as
follows:
Client Typology: each user class can be
associated to a client typology (thin, fat or
hybrid). The target operating system and,
possibly, remote protocol are also specified.
Allocation of applications and thin/HFC users:
server application can be supported by the same
cluster (i.e., a set of nodes which work
collectively as a single system). This is
specified by consolidation island
Γ
k
, i.e., sets of
server applications A
i
that can be possibly
allocated to the same cluster. The set of
consolidation islands is denoted as G
1
.
In the same way, thin and HFC servers can be
shared among different user classes associated
with thin/HFC clients and consolidation island
Φ
k
are defined accordingly. The set of
consolidation islands for thin/HFC servers is
denoted as G
2
. Note that G
2
is a partition since
usually user classes of an Information System
are partitioned for security reason or privileges.
If the cardinality of a consolidation island is n,
2
n
-1 different allocations of server applications
or user classes can be selected (that is, the
consolidation island’s power set, excluding the
empty set). For example, if there are two
instances A
1
and A
2
of web servers the
consolidation island
Γ
1
={A
1
, A
2
} is introduced,
then the set of candidate clusters is {A
1
, A
2
},
{A
1
} and {A
2
}.
For each consolidation island
Γ
k
the following
technology constraints are specified:
The family of servers that will be adopted for
the server consolidation (e.g., IBM xSeries 345
and xSeries 440).
The virtualization of the servers in the
consolidation island by means of a Virtual
Machine Monitor (VMM), e.g. VMware ESX
Server. VMMs allow multiple operating
systems to run on the same server. Since most
applications do not scale up, VMMs increase
thereby server utilization.
The value of availability AV required for the
hardware platform.
The fault tolerant schema implemented in the
consolidated system (1-to-1 or load sharing).
Thin/HFC servers and application servers, and
corresponding user classes/server applications,
can be constrained to be located in a specific
organizational site.
As discussed above G
2
is a partition, while
consolidation islands in G
1
can overlap. In this way
multiple tiers allocation for server application can be
defined. As an example, a servlet engine can be
executed with a web server or an application server
or as an independent tier, vice versa application and
DBMS servers are usually allocated to individual
machines (possibly supporting multiple application
instances) for management and security reasons.
Such a situation can be characterized by defining
three consolidation islands: the first consolidation
island contains web servers and servlet engines; the
second consolidation island contains the servlet
engines and the application servers and the third
consolidation island contains all of DBMS
applications.
Technology constraints are satisfied as follows:
Computing Capacity
The computing capacity of thin/HFC servers is
evaluated as the maximum value of MIPS required
by applications that are executed remotely
multiplied by the number of concurrent users of the
corresponding user class (Ardagna and Francalanci
2002). Servers are selected to provide a computing
and storage capacity that guarantee a utilization of
CPU and disk lower than 60% (Menascé and
Almeida 2000; Ardagna et al. 2004) under the
hypothesis of load balancing in the cluster and a
single faulty server of the consolidated system.
With values of utilization greater than 60%, small
variations of throughput would cause a substantial
growth of response time and, overall, performance
would become unreliable. This empirical rule of
thumb, which is commonly applied in practice
(Menascé and Almeida 2000; Microsoft 2003), has
been provided a formal validation. It has been
formally demonstrated that a consolidation island of
a-periodic tasks will always meet their deadlines as
long as CPU and disk utilization of the bottleneck
resource are lower than 58% (Abdelzaher et al.
2002). Note that performance analyses should follow
cost analyses to refine sizing according to a formal
queuing model. The aim of the proposed tool is to
evaluate a large number of alternative solutions and
find a candidate minimum-cost infrastructure that
can be analyzed subsequently by the project team by
applying fine-tuning performance evaluation tech-
niques. The prediction of computing requirements
for applications on the consolidated system is
evaluated by benchmarking data (e.g. SpecInt, TPC-
C). If a Virtual Machine Monitor is adopted, then
corrective factors, which take into account the
system overhead for the virtualization both for CPUs
and disks, are considered.
ICEIS 2005 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION
326
Servers Availability
The availability required by a single server of the
consolidated system depends on the fault tolerance
schema required for each consolidation island. If the
load sharing is implemented, then the availability
AV
Server
of each of the physical servers which
compose a cluster of N machines is evaluated as
follows:
this equation is derived by the relation that evaluates
the availability of parallel systems (Trivedi 2002):
The cluster which can support a given set of
application is evaluated by an exhaustive search;
anyway the enumeration can be stopped before
reaching the maximum number of servers which can
be supported by server applications (Ardagna et al.
2004).
Vice versa, if the 1-to-1 schema is selected, then a
cluster of two machines is identified as a solution
and the availability of each server is simply given
by:
Note that, in this latter case, the system has to be
sized in order to guarantee that a single server can
sustain the overall application load independent of
the configuration Active-Active or Active-Passive
adopted.
Network bandwidth requirements
Once physical hardware resources have been
selected and servers have been localized to
organization sites, the VPN is designed and sized.
Each site is associated with its total input and output
bandwidth requirements, calculated as the
summation of input and output bandwidth
requirements of all client/server requests exiting or
entering the site and of thin clients and HFCs
accessing remote servers. The bandwidth
requirements of an active user of class C
i
accessing a
remote thin/HFC server are evaluated according to
professional benchmarks as a function of think-time
and of the remote protocol (Microsoft 2003). The
capacity of the physical VPN, referred to as physical
bandwidth, is then calculated according to
Kleinrock’s model:
Physical-Bandwidth=Total-Bandwidth+l/T,
where T is the time latency and l is the average
packet size, which for IP-based VPNs can be
empirically set to 200 ms and 550 bytes, respectively
(Yuan and Strayer 2001).
4 SOFTWARE TOOL
The selection of a cost-minimizing combination of
hardware and network components that satisfy
organizational requirements is a complex design
problem with multiple degrees of freedom. The
corresponding optimization problem not only
embeds the structure of NP-hard problems, but also
represents a challenge for well-structured heuristic
approaches. To reduce complexity we have applied a
problem decomposition technique. We have
identified three sub-problems which are sequentially
solved. The given solution is improved by a final re-
optimization step. The following decomposition is
performed:
Thin/HFC servers optimization: Thin clients
and HFCs are assigned a minimum-cost clusters
to support the remote execution of client
applications. Clusters are assigned to their
clients’site to minimize network communication
costs. The solution of the thin/HFC server
optimization sub-problem is modelled as a set
partitioning problem (Papadimitriou and
Steiglitz 1982) and is solved by a state of the art
integer linear programming tool.
Server optimization: Server applications are
assigned to minimum-cost clusters that satisfy
computing requirements and constrains. This
optimization sub-problem is formalized as a set
partitioning problem and is solved as the
previous problem.
Server localization: Server machines identified
by solving the previous sub-problems are
allocated to sites by minimizing overall network
and management costs. This optimization sub-
problem is formalized as an extension of a min
k-cut problem (Lengauer 1990) and is solved by
implementing a tabu search heuristic (Glover
and Laguna 1997).
The problem decomposition is discussed in
(Ardagna et al. 2004). The decomposition of the
overall optimization problem into three sub-
problems does not guarantee that the final solution is
a global optimum. Hence, an overall re-optimization
process based on a tabu-search approach has been
implemented to improve the (possibly) local
optimum obtained by separately solving the three
sub-problems.
5 EMPIRICAL ANALYSES
This section provides empirical evidence of the
quality of the solution which can be obtained by the
software tool. Analyses focus on four case studies,
which have substantially different requirements. In
A COST-ORIENTED TOOL TO SUPPORT SERVER CONSOLIDATION
327
the first case study, a single site system is considered
and the server consolidation includes only a limited
number of servers of the customer infrastructure.
The second test case considers a more complex IT
infrastructure extended over three sites. The third
server consolidation project is based on new
technologies, i.e., server virtualization and blade
servers; finally, fault tolerance issues are addressed
in the last case study. The solutions provided by the
software tool have been compared with those of the
project team. The project team solution considers
always peak CPU utilization load provided by IBM
CDAT for the sizing of the hardware platform. Vice
versa, the solution provided by the software tool
considers two different scenarios. The first scenario
considers the peak CPU utilization load, while the
second scenario, in a more conservative way,
assumes that the CPU utilization is 100%. This
second solution will provide as a result an hardware
infrastructure whose total computing capacity is
greater or equal to that of the initial system
configuration. Such solution can be used as
benchmark even if it provides an over-sized estimate
of system configuration and costs.
The TCO is evaluated by benchmarking data
(Ardagna and Francalanci 2002, Ardagna et al.
2004) over a three year period. Management costs
are estimated as a percentage of hardware
investment costs as in (Blyler and Ray 1998). In the
following tables TCO is expressed in Euros.
Server Consolidation Project A
The customer infrastructure includes 134 servers in a
single site but the server consolidation project
considers only 20 of them: 8 e-mail servers, 8 file
servers and 4 print servers. The peak utilization of
the set of servers target of the consolidation varies
between 5% and 77%. The project team has
considered two different alternatives:
Alternative a): file and print servers are
consolidated on separate machines.
Alternative b): file and print servers are
consolidated on the same set of machines.
From the methodological point of view, in the first
alternative three different consolidation islands
Γ
1
,
Γ
2
and
Γ
3
are defined in G
1
, one for each application
type. Vice versa, in alternative b, only two islands
are specified.
Γ
1
includes file and print servers,
Γ
2
includes e-mail application servers. The server
families considered in the server consolidation
project are xSeries 345 and xSeries 360. No
availability constraints (in terms of availability
required and fault tolerance schema) are introduced.
Table 1 reports the solution provided by the IBM
project team, for the two alternatives,
Table 2 reports the solution identified by the
software tool.
Table 1: Project A IBM Project Team Solution.
Altern.
Initial
numb. of
servers
Numb. of servers
of the cons.
Solution
TCO
A 6 160.544
B
20
4 166.112
Table 2: Project A Software Tool Solution.
Altern.
Initial
numb. of
servers
Numb. of servers
of the cons.
Solution
TCO
peak
CPU
12 111.620
a
100%
CPU
20 170.042
peak
CPU
12 106.422
b
100%
CPU
20
20 168.658
The software tool solution is cheaper in the peak
utilization scenario of about 30%, while in the 100%
scenario is more expensive than the IBM solution of
about 5%. Both solutions are based on xSeries 345
and xSeries 360 servers. In the peak utilization
scenario, overall the same computing capacity is
implemented for both the software tool and the
project team solution, but with different
configurations. The software tool solution has lower
costs, but the number of servers identified is twice as
high as those of the IBM solution.
Server Consolidation Project B
The customer infrastructure comprises 62 servers in
three remote sites. The server consolidation project
considers 27 servers which are classified and located
as reported in Table 3. The peak utilization of the set
of servers target of the consolidation varies between
30% and 90%.
Table 3: Server applications in project B.
Site
Application S
1
S
2
S
3
Application Server (A) 0 1 0
Application Server+DBMS (AD) 8 0 4
DBMS (DB) 0 2 0
E-mail (E) 1 4 2
Web (W) 0 4 1
Initial numb. of servers 9 11 7
The project team has identified three consolidation
islands:
Γ
1
includes applications of type A, AD and DB;
Γ
2
includes e-mail servers;
Γ
3
includes web servers.
ICEIS 2005 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION
328
The server families considered in the server
consolidation project are xSeries 360 and xSeries
440. No availability constraints are introduced.
Table 4 shows results in terms of total number of
servers and costs for both the IBM project team, and
the software tool solution.
Table 4: Project B Solutions.
Solution
Initial numb.
Of servers
Numb. Of
servers of the
cons. Solution
TCO
IBM 5 149.148
Softw. Tool
peak. CPU
4 61.512
Softw. Tool
100% CPU
27
6 97.480
Here, the difference between the peak and 100%
utilization solution identified by the software tool
are lower than in project A, since there is a lower
variance in server CPU utilizations. Even the 100%
CPU analysis has a lower cost than the solution
provided by the IBM project team. The main reason
for this difference of about 30%, origins in the
scalability required by the customer which is not
currently supported by the software tool. Indeed, the
minimum cost solution identified by the software
tool introduces only xSeries 360 servers, while the
IBM solution introduces a few xSeries 440 servers
which, with an additional cost of about 20-30%,
provide higher scalability.
Server Consolidation Project C
The customer infrastructure includes 67 servers in
two remote sites. The project addresses a large
portion of the IT infrastructure since 56 servers, are
considered for the consolidation. The peak servers
CPU utilization varies between 1% and 89%. The
server families target for the server consolidation are
xSeries 445 and BladeCenter. A single consolidation
island is defined, which is supported by a virtual
machine monitor and severs are constrained to be
located in a single site. 30 applications with peak
utilization lower than 5% are modelled as a single
application (this reduce the number of alternatives
explored by the software tool and it is reasonable to
centralize under-utilized applications on a single
server). No availability constraints are introduced.
Results are reported in Table 5. A BladeCenter is
considered as a single server independent of the
number of blades installed. As results show, the
software tool solution is 35% cheaper than the
solution provided by the project team in the peak
utilization scenario. Vice versa the 100% scenario is
more expensive but the system is over-sized (30
severs in the original system have peak utilization
lower than 5%). Both project team and software tool
solutions employ a large number of blades. This is
very attractive since the IT architecture is
centralized, while it could be less interesting from a
cost perspective in a multi-site scenario.
Table 5: Project C Solutions.
Solution
Initial
numb. of
servers
Numb. of
servers of
the cons.
solution
TCO
IBM 5 245.972
Softw. Tool
peak CPU
3 157.916
Softw. Tool
100% CPU
56
4 280.032
Server Consolidation Project D
The customer infrastructure comprises 32 servers in
two remote sites and the server consolidation project
considers the overall infrastructure. The peak
utilization of the set of servers target of the
consolidation varies between 2% and 90%. The
project team has identified four consolidation
islands:
Γ
1
includes 8 DBMS servers, the target system
is xSeries 440;
Γ
2
includes 2 e-mail servers, the target system is
xSeries 440;
Γ
3
includes heterogeneous servers (mainly web
and application servers), the target system is
BladeCenter;
Γ
4
includes heterogeneous servers (network and
file servers), the target system is BladeCenter
with a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMware ESX
Server).
The first two consolidation islands support mission
critical applications and the availability is fixed to
0.99999. The fault tolerance schema implemented is
the load sharing. Results are reported in Table 6.
Table 7 shows the solution identified by the software
tool in the peak utilization scenario for consolidation
islands
Γ
1
and
Γ
2
as a function of hardware
availability.
Table 6: Project D Solutions.
Solution
Initial
numb. of
servers
Numb. of
servers of the
cons. Solution
TCO (€)
IBM 7 354.572
Softw. Tool
peak CPU
6 276.566
Softw. Tool
100% CPU
32
5 429.202
It is interesting to note that, with current
technologies, low availability requirements can be
satisfied even by introducing a single server. The
100% utilization scenario is very expensive since the
system is oversized, the cost difference between the
peak utilization scenario and the solution identified
by the project team is about 22%.
A COST-ORIENTED TOOL TO SUPPORT SERVER CONSOLIDATION
329
6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
WORK
We have developed a software tool which supports
server consolidation projects and identifies the IT
infrastructure of possible minimum cost. The tool is
based on the decomposition of the overall problem
into sub-problems which are sequentially solved by
optimization techniques and whose solution is fine-
tuned by a local search based heuristic (tabu-search).
The tool has been tested by considering four real
projects implemented by IBM system designers.
Results show that our minimum cost solution is
realistic and the cost reduction with respect to an
expert ranges in 20-30% of the total infrastructural
cost. The minimum cost solution can support
technology experts on further analysis and allows to
reduce the time, costs and efforts required in server
consolidation projects.
Availability constraints are included in the
design of the IT infrastructure. The current version
of the software tool identifies a possible minimum
cost architecture, however it does not guarantee that
the solution can be easily upgraded at low costs in
order to support new customer requirements. Future
work will consider scalability issues in the server
consolidation process and analyses will be based on
management costs provided by customers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Particular thanks are expressed to Thomas Vezina
(IBM US) who provided most of the data on which
our analysis has been based. Thanks are expressed
also to Mattia Poretti, Andrea Molteni and Simone
Amati for their assistance in data collection and
development activities.
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Table 7: Solutions for DBMS and e-mail servers as a function of availability requirements.
AV=0.9 AV=0.99 AV=0.999 AV=0.9999
Cons.
island
Initial
numb.
of
servers
Servers
cons.
solution
TCO (€)
Servers
cons.
solution
TCO (€)
Servers
cons.
solution
TCO (€)
Servers
cons.
solution
TCO (€)
Γ
1
8 1 60.712 1 60.712 1 97.860 2 121.446
Γ
2
2 2
16.954
2
19.752
3
25.434
3
29.630
ICEIS 2005 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION
330