Data Center
Consolidation
How Cisco IT Achieves
Consolidation and
Standardization in the Data
Center
A Cisco on Cisco Case Study: Inside Cisco IT
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© 2007 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
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1
Overview
ƒ Challenge
Current siloed data center structures create problems. They
can be solved by creating a highly automated, efficient, cost
effective and secure data center environment.
ƒ Solution
Consolidate, standardize and optimize five operational data
centers where all resources are virtualized, and allocated
through an Intelligent Network Fabric based on structured
business goals.
ƒ Results
Lower TCO, improved business agility, enhanced business
resilience.
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2
Overview (Contd.)
ƒ Next Steps
Continue the consolidation and virtualization phases for further
gains.
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Background: Current Cisco Data
Centers
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Background: Four Data Center Tiers
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Challenge: Data Center Silos
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Challenge: Data Center Silos Cause
Problems
ƒ This silo model is inefficient, expensive, and difficult to
manage for several reasons:
ƒ Vertical, per-application infrastructures were often built
with proprietary point products, making standard
management and consistent security nearly impossible
ƒ Diverse maintenance, management, and training
requirements increased the total cost of ownership
(TCO) of each application
ƒ Applications cannot scale easily when built on isolated
islands of computer and storage resources; scaling
resources requires downtime;
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Challenge: Data Center Silos Cause
Problems
ƒ Processing and storage resources assigned to single
applications significanlty reduces resource utilization
ƒ Divergent, nonstandard applications made it extremely
difficult for the various applications to communicate and
share data between each other
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Storage Utilization and the Storage
Lifecycle
Physical
Storage
FY03
Utilization*
Cumulative
FY04
Utilization*
Cumulative
FY05
Utilization*
Cumulative
Presentation_ID
Configured
Storage
Addressable
Storage
Logical
Volume
Application
Allocation
Unit
Used
Storage
100%
100%
67%
67%
70%
47%
82%
39%
86%
33%
60%
20%
100%
100%
85%
85%
80%
68%
87%
59%
86%
51%
60%
30%
100%
100%
97%
97%
77%
75%
87%
65%
86%
56%
60%
34%
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Challenge: Data Center Optimization
Consolidate, Virtualize, and automate a Service Oriented
Data Centre providing:
ƒ Intelligent Management Fabric for easy management
ƒ On demand utilities
ƒ Rapid deployment of services
ƒ Optimization of storage, servers and applications
ƒ End to end security
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Solution: Three Phases of
Reengineering
Original
Data Center
• Infrastructure
aligned to
business group
Consolidated
Data Center
• Infrastructure
aligned to project
Virtual
Service-Oriented
Data Center
Data Center
• Infrastructure
aligned to service
function
• Infrastructure
aligned to service
• SAN virtualization
• Active SAN/NAS
virtualization
• Manual patches
• Automated
patching
• Optimized physical
data center
• Utility model
• Heterogeneous OS
• Common OS
• Common OS
• Low utilization
• Improved
utilization
• Policy-based
management
• Automated
purposing
• Self-purposing
• Integrated
management
• Fabric
management
• Storage silos
• Element
management
• Automated
application
• Optimized TCO
• Low TCO
LEGACY
2004–2006
2005–2007
2006–2008
| Consolidation Phase |
| Virtualization Phase |
| Automation Phase
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Solution: SODC Architecture
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Results so far: Agility, Resilience, Cost
Savings
ƒ $10 million annual storage cost savings
ƒ Improved business resilience
ƒ End to end security
ƒ Rapid utility provisioning
ƒ Faster services deployment
ƒ Easier management
ƒ Less data center downtime
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Next Steps: Continue Data Center
Reengineering
ƒ CONSOLIDATION PHASE. Consolidating isolated
resource islands and disparate networks into
enterprise wide networks.
Consolidating SANs – mostly done
Consolidating data centers – just starting solution
ƒ VIRTUALIZATION PHASE. Virtualizating computing,
network, and storage resources to be dynamically
partitioned, provisioned, and assigned with ease to
different applications.
Virtual storage from a storage pool – mostly done
Virtual servers from a server pool – just starting
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Next Steps: Continue Data Center
Reengineering (Contd.)
Application oriented networking to guide application
requests to resources – just starting
ƒ AUTOMATION PHASE. Flexible service automation, to
rapidly and automatically detect and respond to the
applications’ changing needs, and to provision
processing and storage and security resources as
needed.
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To read the entire case study, or for additional Cisco IT case studies on a
variety of business solutions, visit Cisco on Cisco: Inside Cisco IT
www.cisco.com/go/ciscoit
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