Strategies for Efficient Server Hardware Management
Enhance your server infrastructure with strategies like hosting all services on one large server, deploying separate machines for each application, tracking assets to combat cost variations, leveraging virtualization for OS flexibility, and managing similar machines as a single unit in grid computing. Explore the benefits and considerations of each approach to optimize your IT operations effectively.
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Presentation Transcript
13 Server Hardware Strategies John Beckett CPTE 433 Beckett s contributions highlighted in yellow
All Eggs In One Basket One large server All services provided by that server Use RAID to improve reliability Regular backups Expansion will be more necessary, yet harder OS upgrades more difficult & risky Application upgrades may be impossible One app may need an upgrade that another can t tolerate Some defense: Give each app its own dns name so you can separate later
Beautiful Snowflakes Separate machine for each application or service Tune size & function for that service High cost of maintaining IT knowledge Not scalable (although it isn t as bad as AEIOB)
Combating Cost of Variation Track your assets So you will know what you have when planning changes Reduce variations Controls inventory and IT knowledge costs Global Optimization Focus on optimizations that help the big picture, not merely avoiding excess cost in small areas Buy in Bulk, Allocate Fractions This is an approach favoring virtualization
Virtualization - 1 Gives you the freedom to have varying operating systems while using the same hardware Facilitates standardization since you have templates for preferred configuration Live Migration VM Packing Structure your templates for standard sizes
Virtualization - 2 Virtualization allows you to utilize spare capacity to move servers aside from a physical host for maintenance Containers: Running under the same OS, but having separate data space Much lighter weight Problem: Lack of reproducibility
Grid Computing Many similar machines managed as a single unit Used for very large sites like Google Preserves fungibility any unit can substitute for any other
Disposable Servers Yahoo! used this approach Many identical 1U servers If one fails, activate a spare Don t remove the bad one immediately Harvest bad servers and fix them as a group
Blade Servers Many servers as cards or units plugged into a back-plane To be viable, this requires that the back-plane last a long time No longer a popular option
Cloud-Based Compute Services Make it someone else s problem They re better at it anyhow; focus on the magic of your own business Are they going to upgrade to something that doesn t support your application? Depends more heavily on network bandwidth
Players in Cloud Services Consumers placing data on a Web-based platform Really handy if using multiple devices Business people rented services are elastic Allows costs to track needs quickly IT Professional it s someone else s problem
Cost Benefits to Cloud Computing Can yield economy of scale, especially to smaller projects Part of the economy is that you are using the same platform you ll use when you scale up Reduces opportunity cost Lets you take advantages of business opportunities that would be lost because you couldn t set up the servers quick enough Avoids having to scale up CSA staff for sudden or temporary needs McEntee: You can t put a price on nimble
Software As A Service (SaaS) The entire system is outside your company, and you pay per transaction or per capability Coordination with your namespace is a challenge to be addressed IT department moves focus to coordination and integration
Server Appliances Residential router is an example: Package of commonly-needed services in an optimized platform DHCP DNS forwarding Routing Ethernet switch Gives you access to a well-designed system for a specific purpose or group of purposes
Hybrid Strategies Use what is appropriate You wouldn t use a virtualized machine as a firewall (would you?) because of security and performance considerations You wouldn t establish a separate hardware server for a department s Web server because you would lose benefits of standardization
