Had your servers for more than three or four years ? Maintenance bills eating up cash? Maybe you need to upgrade - and save money. In the mid-1990s the e-commerce revolution, coupled with decreasing hardware costs, encouraged even the smallest businesses to embrace server technology. Next came Y2K, and so companies upgraded and replaced older equipment, but now even that machinery is approaching the end of its life cycle, and so another evolution is due. So what should IT managers be looking for from their new systems, and how can the latest technologies allow consolidation of existing resources?
"In the past, customers were buying application servers on a per program basis," said Liam Butler of Mentec, one of Ireland's biggest resellers of Microsoft products. "This spread the load of running the applications over many machines and also limited the effect of crashes. Now the hardware is more powerful and a single machine can handle much of the work previously done over many servers."
Butler says that while the applications themselves have become hungrier for computing resources, the pace of hardware development has far outstripped this increased demand.
"It hasn't been a linear relationship, and the rate of increase in processing power has far outstripped the needs of the latest applications," he said.
"There is also a maintenance saving for businesses wishing to consolidate. Many companies were burned by the wage demands of IT staff a few years ago, and they are keen to reduce their reliance on support staff."
This has seen businesses who previously distributed their IT resources over many locations, move towards clustering servers so that they can all be maintained by a smaller number of on-site technicians. It has not only allowed for wage savings but also facilitated a greater amount of control, as well as helping perform routine activities such as backing up files.
Software producers are engaging in the consolidation process too. Microsoft recently launched its new flagship Windows Server 2003, and its next big campaign will be specifically aimed at consolidation.
The new operating system will certainly go some way towards facilitating interested businesses. Server 2003 offers a significant performance upgrade over previous incarnations. For example, Microsoft claims a 35 per cent improvement over file sharing on Windows 2000 and a 64 per cent leap compared to NT 4.0.This should allow existing hardware to be used to service additional application loads.
The latest Windows also provides a native environment for Microsoft's .NET framework, which allows easy integration of services, a perfect tool for consolidation.
Server 2003's biggest advantage for IT managers looking to consolidate their server infrastructure is the system's ability to support different versions of the same software. In the past, one of the principle obstacles to centralising applications has been the inability of servers to accommodate different editions of a given application.
This meant that legacy applications would not be supported if companies moved to updated versions. Server 2003 addresses this by allowing companies to persist with supporting older systems, while running newer ones simultaneously from the same server.
Of course Microsoft's competitors have not been idle. IBM have been actively encouraging clients to use their hardware and the open-source Linux operating system. Their preferred system runs multiple concurrent instances of the operating system on a single machine, enabling easier management, or as they put it "a server farm in a box". However, the cost of the hardware involved, its most basic z800 server starts at around $350,000, will put the technology well beyond most companies.
Hardware makers are also offering lower cost solutions for smaller businesses. Simon Sparrow at Hewlett-Packard is keen to point out this market is very competitive with a range of financial supports for clients.
"We see our larger clients absorbing the cost of equipment through internal ac-counting procedures, while our smaller clients use leasing arrangements to cover the expense," he said.
"Customers tend to buy the best machine they can afford. This means that in some cases clients buy a barebones machine and then add to it as their needs increase."
Customers have a three year to five-year lifecycle on their equipment - at the moment they are replacing old Pentium Pro 200MHz or Pentium III machines, said Sparrow. "Our advice on choosing new hardware is to examine what it will be used for, how many users will it service and what kind of storage is required. It really depends on the company."
Dell, too, is actively engaging in this market. Over recent years it has aggressively applied its successful desktop sales techniques to the server market and has established itself as a leading competitor in the sector.
Dermot O'Connell, manager of their Advanced Systems Group, says that Dell could not have achieved its current success without helping companies to consolidate the equipment they bought from other vendors. "Quite a lot of companies spread their applications over many servers, with each machine using a different setup and satisfying a limited task," he says.
"We are helping our clients to standardise their platforms so that they can use a common setup to satisfy 90 per cent of their requirements. This allows both larger and smaller clients to reduce the number of machines they need."
Dell lets customers use its `build to order' system to custom design their ideal server. "We allow clients to build systems that match their requirements, both in hardware and in software. We currently ship systems running Windows 2000, 2000 Advanced and Server 2003, as well as Red Hat Linux and also packages with no operating system at all.
"We also help companies to set up their Dell machines, either directly or through our partners at Unisys and SureSkills. Clients can also avail of our various support packages depending on their needs."
New Island Books, a Dundrum based publishing house, has recently gone through a server upgrade. Its systems administrator, Steffen Higel, took me through what they went for.
"We now run two servers," said Higel. "One handles our web proxy and internet firewall, while the other handles email, our web server and file sharing. We decided to keep two separate machines for security reasons, with one handling all of our internal services, while the other only manages access from outside.
" Our main server is a new Dell PowerEdge 600SC. It's their entry-level model, but it has plenty of upgrade capacity with space for significantly more Ram and hard-drive space."
Although the company's employees run Windows on their desktops, Higel opted for Linux on the servers. "I chose Debian 3.0 as the server operating system. As well as being free, it offers all the services we require including web proxies, roaming profiles, an IMAP mail-server allowing fully portable e-mail access and the usual file and print utilities."
The Linux route is not for everyone. While it is free to obtain, there is an ongoing debate over its total real cost. Microsoft claims that while its Windows packages cost money, in the long run they offer better support, cheaper maintenance and a clearly defined upgrade path.
Higel counters this, highlighting Debian's integrated update system and its overall stability. "Unlike a Microsoft based product, Debian allows users to easily update individual packages with a single utility rather than having to upgrade on a per-application basis. It also has a wide range of freely available add-on packages and is easy to administer remotely."
Of course consolidation presents some new worries. Sean Blanchfield, chief technical office of Phorest, has a few. "The main concerns in running various applications or services on the same server are those of availability and security," he said.
"If something goes wrong with one service on the server, it may be necessary to temporarily make the other services unavailable while it is being fixed. Also, from a security point of view, it poses a greater risk if you have multiple services on the same server, rather than on different servers.
"For example, say your company hosts a website and the customer database on the same server. This means that if a hacker managed to gain access to the server through the website, he would also get access to the database, " he said.
As with most business decisions, consolidation will come to down to balancing the risks against the obvious economic benefits. It is clear, however, that the suppliers are promoting it as the obvious next step for IT managers, and with their collective weight behind the drive it will be hard for clients to resist.