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Tech Perspective: Server consolidation

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by techperspective

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According to Gartner, reorganizing a Windows NT/2000-based network to reduce the number of servers can be difficult. Have you or are you planning to reorganize a Windows NT/2000 network? Do you believe that the Windows 2000 OS can effectively support mixed workloads? Do you think that IT organizations can successfully consolidate mixed concurrent workloads onto a single NT/2000 server? You can read the related Gartner article, which will be posted 3 A.M. Monday, at https://www.techrepublic.com/article.jhtml?id=r00220001120ggp01.htm.

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by allan

"reduce the number of servers"
This reduction comes from the idea that you will not need as many pdc/bdc's.
"planning to reorganize a Windows NT/2000 network?"
Yes
"support mixed workloads?"
Yes
consolidate mixed concurrent workloads onto asingle NT/2000 server?
Certain amounts of consolidation will occur but this is going to require a server or hardware upgrade.
Reduction of hardware (servers) will not be the main benefit of W2K. The reduction of administration is what is supposedto be the advantage. :-)

by lastsurvivor

I have a slightly different take on this situation. I believe seperating applications and servers if you have the money and hardware can be extremely benficial. This strategy allows problems to be isolated to a particular server and not affect other applications if one application is misbehaving and requires system reboot. Another advantage of distributed servers is that downtime for upgrades can be isolated to one particular server and not affect all applications on a super server. Of course there are tradeoffs but if the equipment is easy to come by or fault isolation is important application distribution and separation is the way to go.

by jheslinga

Yes, we are reorganizing our Windows NT/2000 network to better distribute server workloads.

Windows NT/2000 can support multiple workloads-- we have one server at present running multiple web sites, hosting group file shares, running ColdFusion and a small calendaring app, providing software installation services, and more. The real issue is whether you want to deal with supporting a server that has multiple workloads. Taking the above server down impacts too many services, and I find us on pins & needles every time we even touch the box.

We've made the decision that by distributing the load, we'll provide better service (and sleep better at night). I could see in a larger organization how distribution would be frowned upon, but in that case, you've probably got a huge number of servers no matter what and a little more distribution isn't going to hurt anything.

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