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There are currently two general purpose approaches for infrastructure optimization: high-availability solutions and server consolidation solutions.
High-availability solutions feature loosely integrated clusters of active and passive servers. With direct failover support, passive servers ensure that systems availability remains high. This assurance is vital for mission-critical systems and key to maintaining business continuity.
High-availability solutions are largely effective when the primary goal is assuring uptime, but present limitations to full optimization and efficiency. The approach fundamentally advocates a rigid active/passive configuration, hindering the ability to establish a flexible infrastructure that can dynamically support changing business needs. It also stunts resource utilization with up to half of all servers relegated to passive standby duty (5 to 15% utilization rates are common). This severely limits the cost-savings and improved resource utilization that true infrastructure optimization delivers.
The second widespread approach for infrastructure optimization is server consolidation and virtualization. Server virtualization solutions, which feature multiple virtual machines running on a single physical server, are effective for delivering flexibility and improved resource utilization—especially for non-critical and low performance applications. However, when it comes to database systems, which are often business critical and require robust high-availability and strong performance, server virtualization too has its limitations. With applications competing for server resources, availability is often substandard. Running database instances on virtual machines often comes at the expense of performance. Virtual machines do not reduce the number of operating system images that must be managed and patched. And database administrators inevitably have poor control over their data structures, as all virtualized data is stored in a flat file and loses its association to the logical unit number (LUN) structure.
As enterprise organizations ponder these traditional approaches for infrastructure optimization, they often find themselves torn between two polar opposite choices: high availability or consolidation and flexibility. Availability comes at the expense of flexibility, utilization and capital costs. Consolidation and flexibility come at the expense of performance, availability, and data control.
Without addressing database and storage systems as core tenets of infrastructure optimization, enterprises will continue to overprovision resources, support high-cost IT operations, endure excessive downtime for systems maintenance and patch each database instance individually. Fortunately, solutions specifically designed for SQL Server databases are available that provide high-availability and optimize server and storage systems in accordance with the Microsoft APO model—without compromising flexibility, availability, performance, or manageability.
For the first time, enterprise organizations have a solution that delivers true infrastructure optimization. Using the HP PolyServe software, HP BladeSystem c-Class and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, organizations can consolidate and optimize both server and storage resources to reach the highest level of Microsoft’s APO model—“Dynamic Infrastructure.”
The solution differs from traditional infrastructure optimization approaches, delivering a shared data platform that provides both high availability and flexibility without concessions. The fundamental idea is to treat hardware resources—both servers and storage—that support a collection of SQL Server databases as a single pool or cluster that can be directed, as required, toward any database. Every server in the cluster has the capability to see all data in that cluster, providing the flexibility to move instances from server to server without having to move data. Known as Dynamic Rehosting, this capability delivers unparalleled capacity management, failover support and server administration.
Central to the solution is HP PolyServe Software for Microsoft SQL Server. Winner of the Windows® IT Pro “Best of Tech Ed 2006” award for "Most Innovative Product,” PolyServe dramatically enhances an IT environment by providing a shared data platform for SQL Server and a centralized utility of computing elements. As a result, total cost of ownership (TCO) is reduced, database administrator (DBA) productivity is improved and organizations achieve return on investment (ROI) more rapidly.
With features such as online systems maintenance, one-click hot fixes and upgrades, Dynamic Rehosting, integrated high-availability services and a single management console for monitoring up to 100 instances, HP PolyServe Software for Microsoft SQL Server has been shown to reduce cluster and administration time by up to 75%. It has also proven to reduce TCO by up to 70%.
HP PolyServe Software for Microsoft SQL Server is the first server consolidation solution to meet the high performance and availability needs of mission-critical SQL Server. Using a shared data approach to virtualization—instead of the performance limiting virtual machine approach—HP PolyServe Software for Microsoft SQL Server provides an ideal solution for consolidating and optimizing database servers. By providing integrated high-availability services, dynamic capacity adjustments and online server maintenance, HP PolyServe Software for Microsoft SQL Server can help IT organizations reduce server counts by 50% or more.
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