SQL Server 2000 Consolidation: a business case

More efficient hardware

Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, and HP Integrity servers now offer a

superior 64-bit environment that can address dramatically larger amounts of memory so that more

business data can be processed. This means greater efficiency for customers who want to streamline

their data centers.

The HP Integrity servers shown in Figure 4 make excellent choices for server consolidation.

Figure 4. Several examples from the HP Integrity server line

The HP Integrity midrange (rx7620-16 and rx8620-32) and high-end (Superdome) server platforms

are made up of multiple cell boards. Each cell board contains four processor sockets and 32 DIMM

slots. Multiple cells may be combined into larger partitions. Customers can run a different operating

system and different applications in each partition and associate specific I/O cards with that

partition. Because the partitions are electronically isolated, an application failure in one partition

won’t bring down the rest of the system or partitions. This results in a very reliable solution for mission-

critical applications—and, because partitions can be re-sized, the servers are also highly scalable.

For more information on HP Integrity servers, visit

www.hp.com/go/integrity.

Phase 3—migration

Migration is a critical phase, during which the blueprint for the consolidation is acted upon. In this

phase, a decision-making process is carried out to determine which applications will be part of each

group of consolidated servers. Once the hardware specifications and a capacity study on the new

hardware specifications have been finalized, a final migration and consolidation plan is built. One of

the key goals of this phase is to outline a cost-effective, efficient, and minimally labor-intensive

migration path for the consolidation. The outcome of this phase is a detailed consolidation framework

(see Table 10) that is customized for the applications and databases to be consolidated. Another goal

is to see that the long-term scalability and high-availability needs of each application are not

compromised.