Step 3: Prioritizing Opportunities

I'm on Step 3 of my 9 step process:
Step 1: Measure
Step 2: Develop an action plan
Step 3: Prioritize Opportunities
Step 4: Create "Program of Improvement" with ROI and timeline
Step 5: Obtain approval for your initial project (from the Program of Improvement plan)
Step 6: Implementation Strategy
Step 7: Implementation Partners
Step 8: Communication
Step 9: On-going Operational Improvement based on a "Total Improvement Plan"

Now that you've got an action plan and you're ready to start improving your infrastructure and saving money of the bottom line, how do you decide where to start. The first key is that regardless of what you decide to work on first, the end solution should fit into your larger solution framework. In other words, don't change out your server platform without determining what is appropriate for your entire enterprise once the entire project is complete.

Other considerations you should make before getting started:

• What's the initial investment cost vs time to implement and end result benefit?
• What's the complexity of the activity (will staff need training or will lots of consulting be needed) vs. the time span and ROI?
• What fix will help make subsequent fixes easier to tackle?
• Validate your technology strategy and know how all the parts will fit in your final architecture

Now it's time to start picking the low hanging fruit:

• Server consolidation will probably be the first and best option. You can make the changes will little to no impact to production environments and it's fairly low cost as far as investments go. Also, when you've made some headway in the consolidation of your servers, you might find that working on your other areas of opportunity just got easier.
• Example: If you have inefficient cooling it's very difficult to make serious changes to your cooling strategy while your Data Center is running at or near full capacity. If you've reduced your server count by 50% or more the work will become much easier.
• This process is fairly complex so don't be afraid to bring in someone with infrastructure virtualization experience. The benefits you're looking for from virtualization won't be realized if you don't have the appropriate network and storage infrastructure to support it.
• Depending on whether you're working in existing DC space or have the luxury of building into a new space your opportunities and ability to work on them will vary. The benefit of a new facility is that you can build the appropriate infrastructure from ground up without having to worry about customer impact.
• Additional potential opportunities:
• Dramatically reduced power consumption through airflow management of your DC space. This could be something as simple as plastic curtains that seperate hot and cold.
• Determine the efficiency of old electrical gear some transformers could be costing you 5%+ through inefficiency. This inefficiency directly translates into additional heat that you have to extract from the room. UPS units are another great place to look. If you have high power costs you might be able to justify UPS replacements on the power savings alone.
• Reduce your network footprint and the associated infrastructure of cable and cable management.
• The list goes on.

As mentioned in "Step 1" be sure to capture all the information you can about your current environment before embarking on the change. Having measurements of your space, power, cooling, people & hardware (networking, storage & servers) overhead before your project starts and after it's complete is crucial to getting the recognition your team will deserve. You might even be able to get Public Relations to commit some resource to helping document the transformation. Remember to include your local power company as well, they will probably be more than happy to provide your company a rebate for any power savings you can demonstrate as a result of your project.

Until next week. Happy computing.

Mark