Refresh Now and Why Dell?
a QuinStreet Executive Brief. © 2015
In This Paper
• Outdated server infrastructure contributes to operating inefficiencies, lost productivity, and vulnerabilities
• Worse, existing infrastructure often cannot satisfy current and near-future IT service demands
• An infrastructure update will help meet today’s
and new business needs and opportunities
Executive Brief
Introduction
In the last few years there have been radical changes in the ways organizations operate and people work. Explosion of data, increased mobile demands, and the globalization of business in general are making 24/7 access to people and information the norm. Sophisticated cyber attacks are requiring robust systems security designed to counter new threats. And velocity is now essential when delivering new IT services.
All of these factors are driving changes in the data center. Unfortunately, if your organization is like most, you will likely find that your existing infrastructure cannot meet today’s and near-future service demands.
Many organizations have delayed infrastructure refreshes for a variety of reasons. Some have simply not had the budget or IT staff resources to do anything but keep the data center operating at status quo. Others have not seen the need to update systems that have performed well and do the job. As a result, many organizations are relying on server infrastructure technologies that are a decade old.
Outdated server infrastructure can result in operating inefficiencies, the loss of productivity, and vulnerabilities for organizations including:
• Higher hardware management and maintenance costs
• Higher power and cooling costs
• Higher cost of replacement parts
• Lagging performance compared to current server capabilities
• Lower storage capacities compared to current server capabilities
• Lagging applications software and systems software
• Increased security risks and vulnerabilities.
If these are not reason enough to consider a server infrastructure refresh, mainstream and extended support for versions of Microsoft® Windows Server® are coming to an end. On January 13, 2015, Microsoft will remove mainstream support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, ending active development for the product, warranty claims and no-charge non- security hotfixes. Extended support for
Server 2003 R2 will be removed on July 14, 2015 and this will mean:
• No security updates, fixes, or online support
• No safe haven for physical and virtualized instances of Windows Server 2003
• No support for many applications (including those from Microsoft)
• No compliance with various regulations and industry standards (including Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard – PCI DSS)
• No ability to leverage modern cloud options from Microsoft and other vendors
• Added costs for Customer Support Agreement and the need for intrusion detection systems, more advanced firewalls, network segmentation, and other security
© 2015, QuinStreet, Inc. 2 If your organization does not already
have a Windows Server migration plan, or is not well into a migration, time is critical. Microsoft estimates that a server migration will take at least 200 days to perform and 100-plus additional days if there are associated application migrations.
What’s needed and why?
An infrastructure review and update is key to ensuring your organization is aligned to meet both today’s business needs and future changes or opportunities. This involves potential upgrade to server hardware with the latest processors and technologies;
transition to modern enterprise operating systems with new features and enhancements in virtualization, management, and protection; the modernization of legacy applications;
and other potential complementary actions (like flattening the network or evaluating new storage options).
This will allow you to become more responsive to the needs of your organization, ensure security and compliance. Additionally, it will add value and provide agility that supports new ways to deliver IT services.
Furthermore, your organization will benefit from new opportunities, and improve IT operations and stability.
This will all happen while cutting
costs and offering operational improvements via automation, virtualization, improved resource utilization, and a reduced footprint.
Besides the modernization benefits, a server refresh and OS migration will obviously help avoid the problems that will manifest once Windows Server 2003/R2 reaches end of extended service this year.
There has never been a better time to conduct such a modernization.
It will allow your IT department to transform the business. The reason:
the latest Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers offer more performance, lower energy consumption, faster memory, and support for higher throughput and I/O storage. Dell servers include some of the highest density systems on the market and come in innovative rack, tower, and shared converged infrastructure platforms.
Dell server solutions for unified communications and collaboration, database and transaction processing, high performance computing, and virtualization and cloud are optimized to support more users, deliver higher and more predictable performance, and accommodate more flexibility and scalability than was possible with previous generation systems.
Complementing the servers, Dell offers a wide range of top performing storage and networking solutions
“ The end of extended support for Windows
Server 2003 is July 14, 2015.”
designed for today’s data volumes and data center server-to-server traffic.
Adding the latest software, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, will enable your organization to use the new hardware to its full capacity and further reduce server footprint and simplify management. Many of the features that are standard in today’s Windows Server 2012 R2 were not available in Windows Server 2003/Windows Server 2003 R2 or Windows Server 2008/Windows Server 2008 R2. These features include scalable, feature- rich virtualization via Hyper-V®, the addition of network virtualization to isolate network traffic from different business units or customers on a shared infrastructure; low-cost, high-availability storage; improved management; dynamic access control;
and support for hybrid applications protecting existing investments in on- premises applications.
When you refresh with Dell servers running Windows Server 2012 R2 you deliver the value of a modern infrastructure. More powerful hardware and software means:
• Increased performance with improved processing and throughput
• Reduced operational expense by virtue of using more energy-
efficiency systems and employing increased consolidation
• Streamlined management with standards-based compute, storage, and networking management
• Cost-effective support for storage, disaster recovery, and remote access
• Full support with warranties for parts and services
• Innovative service delivery that supports a choice of private, public, hybrid cloud, and IT as a service options
• Ability to enable new business and ways to work by supporting big data, BYOD (bring-your-own-device), collaborative, and social computing.
Where do you begin?
Once you decide to refresh your server infrastructure and migrate to a newer version of Windows Server, there is a general four-step process: discovery, assessment, target, and migrate.
First up is a discovery or inventory stage, which is used to get a better understanding of the existing server environment and specifically to identify and catalog all the software and workloads that are running on earlier versions of Windows Server. Dell offers a series of tools
to help with this process and the others that follow. Dell Enterprise Reporter provides a comprehensive pre-migration assessment of your current infrastructure, including Active Directory®, Windows Server, and Microsoft SQL Server® database.
Dell Asset Manager enables you to discover what server applications you have installed on your environment and provides a full inventory list at the start of your migration.
With a detailed inventory in hand, the next step is to assess the applications running in the earlier Windows Server environments in several ways – by type, by criticality, by complexity and
by risk. For many organizations, the assessment presents an opportunity to retire under-utilized or redundant applications, consolidate licenses across the organization, and update older applications to reap the benefits and new features in more current versions of the applications.
After the assessment you can prioritize the applications and workloads for migration to help determine the sequence of updates that need to be performed. For example, an organization might need to perform a Windows Server 2012 R2 upgrade before it updates its Exchange Server or other applications. To determine
“ Many organizations have delayed
infrastructure refreshes.”
© 2015, QuinStreet, Inc. 4 compatibility, Dell ChangeBASE
performs testing and reports on which applications will work with newer versions of Windows Server.
Next, you must consider your
deployment/disposition options for each workload. For example, some applications might be moved to new hardware running Windows Server 2012 R2. Other workloads might be virtualized and their virtual machines run on Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V servers in the data center, or you may deploy and manage your applications within a hybrid cloud environment. This is an optimum time to evaluate if some applications might be moved to a public cloud infrastructure or platform service such as Windows Azure™. The choice will be driven by factors such as security, cost, duration or lifecycle, and desired functionality.
The final stage is to conduct the actual migration. Part of this process includes migrating foundation services such as Active Directory, DNS, File/
print, and DHCP associated with an OS upgrade to Windows Server 2012 R2. Dell Migration Manager for Active Directory facilitates the move from Windows Server 2003/Windows Server 2003 R2 to Windows Server 2012 R2 by restructuring Active Directory, ensuring that users have the same access to
resources after the migration and promoting security and compliance in the new Windows Server environment.
To quickly migrate Windows Sever data, there is Dell Secure Copy, an automated tool that facilitates the movement of data from Windows Server 2003/Windows Server 2003 R2 to Windows Server 2012 R2 file servers. Dell NDS Migrator can help you transition from Novell® Directory Services to Windows Server 2012 R2 and Active Directory. In addition to the directory, the tool also migrates data that resides within Novell Directory Services, allowing you to finally sunset legacy Novell systems.
Dell as your technology partner
Carrying out a migration is a critical and potentially complicated and time consuming undertaking. Every environment is unique; no single plan will suit everyone’s requirements.
Whether you are a do-it-yourself organization, need help jump starting a new migration, or fast forwarding one already in progress, Dell provides assets, tools, software, and support – as much or as little as you require .
A Dell Windows Server 2003 Migration Consultative Workshop can help accelerate your planning in one-half day. At the end of this interactive and customized process, you will have
a blueprint for the migration plan, techniques, and budget requirements.
Dell Services aims to provide customers with the most
comprehensive Windows Server migration services portfolio, including:
• Dell Windows Server OS Modernization Services provide a guide to flexible IT approaches that map out multiple technology options and deliver innovative technology integration, while increasing automation and reducing manual effort
• Dell Datacenter Transformation Methodology which helps accelerate server migration while simultaneously mitigating risk with a step-by-step migration plan unique to each application and workload specification
• Dell Application Management Consulting and Global Application Packaging Factory which conducts a full application inventory during the migration process to examine the compatibility of each legacy application and identify the needed remediation for each.
Additionally, Dell Education Services offers Microsoft training for IT professionals to support your move to new Dell and Microsoft solutions. Dell Financial Services has
“ Outdated server infrastructure can result
in operating inefficiencies.”
a wealth of leasing and financing solutions designed to help make refreshes affordable and help you find opportunities in your IT capital expenditure, operating expenditures and cash flow decisions.
Summary
Aging server infrastructure can no longer meet the demands of today’s modern data center. Explosive data growth, increased mobility, globalization, virtualization and regulatory demands cannot be met with decade old infrastructure. And with the end of extended support for Microsoft Windows Server 2003/
Windows Server 2003 R2 on the horizon, there is no better time than now to refresh your server infrastructure.
The technology available in modern infrastructure will increase your ability to deliver more flexible and efficient data centers, enable the move to virtualization and cloud solutions, helping your organization meet current and future IT requirements..
The latest generation hardware, such as the Dell PowerEdge server, offers increased performance and scalability, cost savings, improved productivity and reliability. A modern operating system, like Microsoft Windows
Server 2012 R2, with advancements in virtualization, storage, networking and automation, will let your organization use this new hardware to its full capacity.
A server infrastructure refresh is something your organization should carefully plan and execute to help reduce the risk of error and minimize operational downtime. Organizations need to consider hardware and software licensing costs, hardware and application compatibility, deployment options, and scheduling to maintain high productivity.
With Dell as your technology partner, your organization can
make a smooth migration to a new server environment. Dell has proven practices, unique tools and flexible infrastructure options designed to help you at any stage of your migration journey –on your terms, as much or as little as you need. These offerings are complemented with world-class Dell services for carrying out a migration including help with project management, disposition analysis, migration planning, installation, configuration, and application modernization.
For more information about how Dell can help with a server infrastructure refresh, visit: www.dell.
com/2003migration
