How to avoid mistakes when managing complex server integration projects?

Facts have proved that even experienced IT staff can easily make mistakes when managing complex server integration projects. How to make fewer mistakes? The following are some different suggestions.
 
Joe Latrell is the IT manager and chief programmer at a real estate data service company in Pennsylvania, USA. He said: "All Aspects of server integration must be taken into account. There may be a minefield, which is quite dangerous ."
 
Server virtualization projects are usually easy to prove their necessity from the financial and operational perspectives, but this does not guarantee that the project can be executed safely. The integration project owner and team members fall into traps in almost every stage, such as inadequate planning, incomplete ideas, or rapid discovery of post-deployment faults.
 
Joe Latrell said: "Every time we think everything is done, we have considered every aspect, but it is always dangerous ." He encountered many difficulties in his project, including insufficient server power supply, misconfiguration, and tight budget.
 
It is not easy to ensure that complex integrated projects can be implemented on time and on budget while avoiding disasters. Joe Latrell believes that it is inevitable to make several mistakes in a project. However, he warned that there may be problems with the project, so you have to be prepared. At the same time, comprehensive planning and learning from others can avoid making major and obvious mistakes.
 
Plan first
 
Although the most comprehensive and serious planning cannot completely avoid project errors, developing detailed virtualization design and deployment policies will help minimize risks. JustinGallagher, a senior IT consultant at KDSA consulting in North andver, Massachusetts, said prior planning was indeed important for server consolidation.
 
Comprehensive Planning provides a roadmap to help managers collect information needed to avoid most serious problems. Jeff Nessen, IT integration business manager at logicloud, a system integrator in Michigan, said: "I don't think people have enough time to consider existing workload issues, and how to migrate these workloads to a virtualized environment, as well as what this means in terms of cost structure, daily costs, and high availability."
 
Justin Gallagher said the integration plan also needs to meet the enterprise's future needs. He proposed: "Let's take a look at what you will do after one year, three years, and five years ." He pointed out that the planning of servers, software and other system components should focus on future growth, "We do not want to finish a major upgrade, we suddenly found that we need more server capacity." Jason Cooper, consultant at C/D/H technology consulting in Falls, Massachusetts, also believes that each integration plan should address scalability. "From the Perspective of server virtualization, the system is scalable and meets the performance requirements after adding workloads. We often encounter the following problem: enterprises either fail to allocate enough storage capacity or are not correctly expected to facilitate the server power supply required for the smooth development of server integration projects ."
 
Experts said that it is extremely common to estimate the ratio of physical server to virtual server integration over a high level. Planning is especially important when you manage outdated data centers with limited budgets. Joe Latrell took over a bunch of messy servers as soon as he took office, including a modified desktop computer and a bunch of independently powered servers and rack servers. So he decided to simplify the pile of machines into a uniform rack server, and in the process, the total number of servers was reduced from 23 to 12. He said: "We don't have a budget for 12 new servers. We can only purchase machines when we can afford them. We planned to implement a machine each time in advance, which worked very well ."
 
Understanding Technology
 
If you have not fully understood the relevant technologies and their needs, you may be eager to integrate the servers, so the project will inevitably fail from the very beginning. JeffNessen said: "I found that people often make the mistake of buying only a few sets of virtualization software, deploying two servers, and then migrating applications to these servers, I call it a free deployment. The environment they face is not satisfactory, and it is not suitable for migrating data centers to it ." Jeff Nessen said the key to the best virtualization environment is to ensure component compatibility and use of widely recognized standards. He explained: "You can achieve maximum success only when you standardize the hardware platform and software environment as much as possible and use the same Virtual Machine Management Program, the same underlying hardware and all those components ."
 
Harvey Morris, president of BL & S Technologies LLC, said his company is currently trying to consolidate 14 physical servers into four or five. The original strategy of the IT consulting firm required an existing server to support a new virtual server. But the results prove that this is impossible. "The old server is incompatible with the 64-bit technology. If you run a 64-bit operating system on the new server, a problem occurs," said Harvey Morris ." Fortunately, the company promptly discovered this error and used another compatible system.
 
Eric Mynster, IT Operations Manager at the menluo charity Memorial Hospital in Michigan, said he had collected valuable information from counterparts in several other regional medical institutions. "We talked with three or four hospitals beforehand and learned some important experience from them," he said ." Two of his experiences were the use of virtualization migration software and portable storage technology to quickly and conveniently transfer data from remote servers to the Agency's on-site systems.
 
Eric Mynster felt lucky because his project started two months after other hospitals completed their projects. "So we already know some traps that allow our plans to bypass," he said ."
 
Maintain coordination
 
If the new plan is not aligned with the daily system lifecycle and business needs, almost any IT project will be in chaos. Server integration requires more attention to daily events, because servers are the core of almost all key business tasks. Harvey Morris said he carefully coordinated the project and server update schedules. He said: "We were considering the virtualization project as early as 12 months ago, but we decided to postpone it and wait until the next server update cycle is ready ." He also wants to start switching in the appropriate time period. This accounting company does not want to switch in the tax season. "We will not consider this switch between February and February," said Harvey Morris ."
 
Eric Mynster strives to ensure that older servers are competent and expect them to run smoothly in the new virtualized data center. "About 50 servers have been used for three to ten years," he said. As long as you start to replace the hardware that has been used for nearly ten years, I will feel a little uneasy ."
 
Before the integration, half of its 200 servers were installed inside the company, and the other half were installed at a third-party vendor more than an hour away from the hospital. Eric Mynster uses Novell's PlateSpin Migrate software to transmit data stored on more than 100 servers at its hosting server vendor to an internal data center. The 18:1 integration ratio allows the On-Site Server to undertake additional load without any problem. This software allows C/D/H, a system integrator of the charity Memorial Hospital, to perform effective virtualization on servers in advance. The company stores Remote Server images on USB storage devices, uses the synchronization process to run images, puts new machines into operation, and then disconnects remote servers. This approach gives Eric Mynster and his team time to check for any potential operational faults.
 
Eric Mynster said that this process "allowed us to perform very rapid migration ." It took less than three months from planning to implementation.
 
Pay attention to future warning signals
 
Without paying attention to error logs and other clues generated by the system, it may be the biggest mistake made after deployment during the integration process. JoeLatrell recalled one thing that happened to his company. He said: "We have a lot of small programs that send emails. Some programs often have to be idle for several months ." One of the programs is not correctly updated during the virtualization switching process. "Someone uses the domain name as the server name, but we didn't find it," said Joe Latrell ." One day, the program was revived and began to send undeliverable emails. "It appears in the error log ." This problem can be easily solved. "We have studied the code, discovered the problem, pointed a group of code to the new server, found all the emails sent by the program, and then manually resend the code ."
 
Due to the small number of servers used, many enterprises may make mistakes in reducing support and backup technologies. In fact, they should enhance security. Fulcrum Group Inc., a system integrator in Keller, Texas, USA. steven Meek, president, said: "When you run 10 virtual machines on a physical server, the power supply must be at a reasonable level and the cooling should be well prepared. A lot of basic work needs to be done before servers are integrated ."
 
Five steps for successful server integration
 
1. Start with the study. In-depth understanding of different integration methods and technologies can help you find the methods that best suit your requirements.
 
2. Set operation and financial objectives. Before you begin designing a system, you need to list the desired targets in terms of scope, performance, and cost.
 
3. Create a timetable. In order to minimize interference with daily business and IT operations, a timetable should be prepared and a clear benchmark should be provided. Make sure to set aside extra time, because the project will inevitably encounter setbacks.
 
4. Implement the document. Documents describing project objectives, system design details, specific integration solutions, server management responsibilities, and other important aspects can help you, your team, and external partners stay on track.
 
5. Seek support. Like any major IT project, IT is important to be recognized by stakeholders for the success of the integration project. Make sure that your business users understand the benefits of virtualization and any traps.