Consolidation & Virtualization

Every enterprise server consolidation and storage consolidation effort is unique, but what they all have, or should have, in common is a measured approach that is derived from a detailed analysis of the current IT infrastructure and designed to serve the future needs of the organization.

Logicalis has developed a comprehensive, system wide approach to assessment that has saved its customers literally thousands of man hours and millions of dollars. Here’s a look at our consolidation and virtualization assessment goals and the methodology we use to accomplish them:

Assessment Goals

• Detail the capacity, performance and utilization of the current infrastructure.
• Understand the current total cost of ownership of the existing environment.
• Select target servers for server consolidation and virtualization.
• Identify servers to be retired.
• Create a plan to aggregate workloads into an alternative, consolidated and virtual environment.
• Optimize performance and utilization while allowing for growth and application isolation.
• Project the total cost of ownership of an alternative, consolidated environment.
• Compare the existing environment with the alternative and forecast return on investment, net present value and payback of the server consolidation project.

Assessment Methodology

• Identify, document and understand the customer's detailed IT and related business requirements.
• Validate and gain agreement on the customer's needs, goals, resources and objectives.
• Identify, document and understand the customer's detailed cost structures, spending levels and financial policies.
• Monitor and document existing capacity, utilization and performance of existing IT assets and resources on a system wide macro-level and on an individual server or server-subsystem basis.
• Identify and monitor peak hour, prime time and business-hour system and component utilization.
• Build and validate an architectural vision that represents the customer's stated and validated goals and objectives.
• Financially and architecturally model the most likely scenarios that will ensure compliance with the customer's agreed and validated architectural vision.
• Generate a detailed financial justification for each scenario.

Getting Started
Our Server Consolidation and Virtualization service is tailored to match the different needs of different sized organizations, ranging from a full proof-of-concept design and test lab for larger organizations to Start Up Express for small businesses. The elements of Start Up Express include:

• Mini design
• VMware installation and configuration
• P2V process, overview and migration
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Virtual center overview and installation

Our Production Services are designed to implement the consolidation strategy determined in the assessment process. Production Services include:

• Project design and plan
• Hardware deployment and install
• SAN install and setup
• Software deployment and install
• Virtual machine template development
• P2V migration
• Virtual center install and overview
• Training and knowledge transfer
• As-build documentation

A typical implementation realizes a consolidation ratio of 6:1, but we have seen ratios as high as 14:1.

What could Logicalis virtualization, server consolidation and storage consolidation do for your organization?

See how we can help you transform your IT department from a cost center to a competitive advantage.

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