Avoid investing in thin air and prepare your IT for the future
WHAT IS RIGHTSIZING
Server rightsizing is an approach to the efficient usage of computer server resources that aims to reduce the total number of servers or server locations that an organization needs. The practice is developed in response to the problem of “server sprawl”, a situation in which multiple, under-utilized servers take up more space and consume more resources than can be justified by their workload. Having scanned more than 30.000 servers, our experiences show that many installations typically run at 15-20% of their capacity, which is an unsustainable ratio in the long run. Because of the tasks involved in maintaining and upgrading servers and systems, this leads to considerable amounts of wasteful spending.
The illustration above shows how limitations in proper capacity management in enterprise IT often tend to large amounts of un-utilized equipment for extended periods. The limitations are also, in part, due to the rather long and in-flexible procurement time frame.
HOW TO RIGHTSIZE
Rightsizing serves is an approach to hinder or minimize under-utilization of your IT investments. As a tool, rightsizing can be used for two outcomes for your organization: rightsizing through optimization or rightsizing through migration.
Rightsizing through optimization:
Here, rightsizing serves as a helping hand to identify and define areas of improvement in the IT-landscape for decision makers. Scanning your local server environment for workload, patch compliance, security and future risk is the best practice approach. But localizing and tagging servers and server environments can be a costly and resourceful affair – setting up optimization criteria and targets even more so. We recommend using server scanners to define application dependencies, workload peaks and network communications in building your case for rightsizing.
Rightsizing through cloud migration:
Rightsizing through cloud migration is an investment in future IT compliance. Whereas most IT departments today suffer from being overloaded and understaffed, a strategy towards rightsizing via cloud migration will help free resources to take care of core IT tasks. A cloud migration helps freeing resources from monitoring and patching endless amounts of servers and application environments – resources your can invest in building your future business. What’s more, the cloud allows for automation processes to ensure compliance and better utilization of resources. Staying on track with these procedures is a rightsizing best practice which also eliminates technical debt.