Combat the new virtual server sprawl

Today many organizations already virtualized a great amount of their servers or are in the process of doing it. But the pitfall of converting a physical machine into a virtual entity, which can be done with ease, is a lack of attention to processes.  

Result, many projects seem to follow the road of  'garbage in, garbage out' without actually doing something about the waste. Benefits like faster provisioning and less underutilized systems are undisputed but technology alone will not align IT to the business. At the end the net profit is often not as expected. 

These new delivery models allows users to easily apply for a server. However servers remain active even the purpose of deployment has become absolute. So the advantage of virtualization becomes a loss and a new server sprawl is born. As those ‘orphans’ not only consuming licenses but also need to be patched and maintained regularly, the waste shifts from unnecessary resources to unnecessary activities in IT Service Management. Neglecting processes, transparency and portability leads into a complexity that wouldn't solve the Business-IT alignment issues. And the next technology push, hyped as Cloud Computing is at our doorstep.

Penny wise and pound foolish
Instead of copying the base stack over and over again as we do with server virtualization we should pay attention to rationalizing applications. Just as the Gartner I&O model recommends. Unfortunately technology vendors have deceived us to take a shortcut. Pushing technology and selling licenses is of course more profitable as solving the real problem. Due to the lack of mature processes IT departments lose control and flight into technology. So it's about time to take back control and focus at the processes first instead of the common reversed order by picking a tool and find the problem for it.

Average ICT infrastructure is a mix of technology solutions, each with their own tools. As they poorly exchange metadata and most often require a dedicated server it’s the beginning of waste. Not infrequently, these management tools consuming licenses, in addition to the 'orphans' in the infrastructure license also. But as deploying technology is less time consuming instead of engineering the processes it's hard to break.  So let's start by setting some priorities:

1. Create visibility; it’s not about what you own but what the value to the business is.
2. Regulate the tap; establish cost accounting to prevent you will be flooded.
3. Reuse the knowledge; finally people and processes aling IT to the business

Bottom-up 
All things considered, the problems with the client-server model, a cause of the first server sprawl are not resolved with virtualization. Actually the Gartner model for I&O maturity placed virtualization after standardization and rationalization. Most organizations didn't had mature processes as they started virtualization and now wide the gap. That is simply repeating the mistakes and provides the same outcomes.

Einstein once said: 'The only source of knowledge is experience'. Ultimately the same ITSM processes still apply to the virtualized environments, but should only be upgraded. So start to standarize the view at the architecture by leverage the tools and unlock the knowledge locked in the infrastructure. This ensures no overlapping equipment is purchased without an underpinning business case. Perhaps not so revolutionairy as pushing technology but the first step to manage IT as a business. 

Fair use policy

Using an ‘old fashioned’ cost model whereby cost is charged without measuring the actual usage does not reflect the new delivery model. It also make the next step toward rationalization more difficult because departments will complain about the unfair distribution of costs. Or they leave the 'orphans' active as there is no incentive to clean up.  Without a fair form of chargeback, the real value of IT is never revealed.

Of course virtualization offers benefits such as ease to set up disaster recovery as answer to the long lasting continuity problem in client-server environments. Or scalling out in response to unexpected new demands as result of poor capacity management. But not infrequently they are used as a generic solution so less important services are high available but critical systems sometimes forgotten.


Summarized
Choosing solutions to problems created by the market is ultimately a vicious circle. Server virtualization prior to application rationalization solves only the physical server sprawl. Usually this does not lead to a decrease in the number of entities to manage, actually the opposite is most often true. And with a demand for more IT from the business we slowly move into the Cloud. Guess within next years we see the same server sprawl spread over multiple locations.