Virtual Strategy Magazine - Lights Out and the Path to Enlightenment

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Lights Out and the Path to Enlightenment

By Gail Dutton
published: Tuesday, May 13 2008

Running a lights out, virtualized data center is a bit like the quest for nirvana. It may be a worthy aspiration, but actually getting there takes a great deal of effort and, for most of us, probably won't be realized any time soon. Neither goal is easy. Running lights out or achieving nirvana each require a complex series of incremental changes that, when all goes well, yields improvements that move us another step closer to the objective.

In the case of virtualized, lights out operations, even knowing when you achieve the objective can be tricky because the term is defined a few different ways. It can truly mean lights out with no-one on site, or can be a "dim-lights" facility with a dedicated employee on hand. In some lexicons, lights out can even mean handing off operations to a co-location facility, explains Joe Brown, president of Accelera.

Fact or Fiction?

Whether it's possible or even desirable to run a virtualized, lights out facility depends largely upon whom you ask and how they define lights out. For example, citing automation tools that include robotic tape libraries, desktop printers and remote access to servers and remote power switches, Robert Rosen, immediate past president of the IBM enterprise user group SHARE and CIO at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, maintains that, "a lights out data center is not a goal, it's a reality. The only time we have people go into our data center here (at the NIAMSD) is to do preventive maintenance of the air conditioners or racking and building a new server." Virtualization can minimize even that need.

On the other hand, running a virtualized, lights out data center, "...is an aspirational goal," emphasizes Duncan Campbell, vice president of adaptive infrastructure at HP. "The journey is more important than the destination." But, reaching towards that does help focus IT administrators on efficiency and encourages them to think about ways to optimize operations in terms of both technology and business processes.

Focus on Efficiency

Regardless of whether a true, virtualized lights out facility is possible today, "it should be a goal of any IT operation," according to IT professional John Atkinson. "When it's done right, it will be far less expensive to operate than a ‘light on' facility." It's a matter of architecture, he explains, with layers of virtualization added to the tools that allow the remote administration of servers, storage and networks.

Companies realize that, too. "We're definitely seeing a growing interest among our customers in running virtualized, lights out facilities," Brown says. That interest is driven by the growing constraints of the current operating environment, focused closely around the availability and expense of power and cooling concerns, as well as the need for agility. "You could have lights out operations without virtualization if the business never changes," Campbell continues.

But, business needs, options and opportunities are changing rapidly. Virtualization, preceded by a heavy dose of automation, is a key step towards running a lights out data center.

"What we're really talking about is how to make you more efficient," Jay Fry, vp of marketing, Cassatt Corporation, in San Jose, emphasizes. For a lights out facility to become a reality, data centers must transform themselves to become self-sustaining. One of the biggest challenges is to become comfortable with the notion of extreme automation.

Automation

Many administrators equate automation with relinquishing control, which can be a scary thought. Fry likens it to driving a Prius hybrid car. "At first, you're astonished by what goes on under the hood and you want to watch the display," he says. Eventually, you're comfortable that the technology really does work - even though you can't hear it - and quit watching.

Automation is just like that. So, Fry recommends that IT shops take an incremental approach, automating a specific process that can be measured in ways that show actual results in terms of payback. Server power management is an example of a good early project "because it makes sense to turn off servers that aren't in use," he explains. Then, managers can begin to look at additional ways to use automation to achieve additional returns, perhaps increasing the number of servers managed and, eventually, developing policies to govern a more robust management plan that incorporates power management with application availability so servers can be turned off and on, or applications moved among them depending upon usage.

Starting small is good advice, according to a Gartner Special Report. It recommends focusing on server consolidation first, followed by delivering new services or improving existing services or their speed of delivery. Server consolidation delivers measurable results very quickly. The greater benefit, however, comes from the flexibility and business agility virtualization enables.

IT operations are highly complex but, unfortunately, not especially efficient, according to Keith Millar, vice president of Liquid Computing. "IT shouldn't be a slave to individual computer failures," he says. By implementing "fabric computing" (a concept similar to cloud computing, "we're trying to hit the main pain points," in the move towards lights out data centers.

Liquid Computing is applying the lessons it learned in the telecomm industry to IT. Telecom "has a great ratio of humans to machines. It was very efficient," he says. Virtualization and lights out operations can improve the ratio for IT, too.

Options

One of the ways to increase that efficiency is to hand-off operations to a co-location facility. These facilities offer the benefit of remote operation, as well as likely cost savings. Co-location facilities, themselves, are primed to take the next logical steps towards virtualized, lights out facilities. As Jordan Jacobs, sales manager for AtlantaNAP predicts, "With the increase in computer performance and decrease in costs associated with the hardware, we are going to see an increase in redundant, virtualized systems, allowing for less immediate hands-on work. This will move someday to the point of a single technician simply driving once a month to the datacenter to pick up broken servers and put working servers in their place."

Another way to increase efficiency today is to virtualize operations. "Virtualization has moved forward so fast," Brown says. "People have broadly embraced it. It's valid, and it's used by the Fortune 100." None-the-less, companies using virtualization have generally virtualized only one or two of the aspects that can be virtualized - often physical servers or storage - and haven't coupled those layers together for a completely virtualized computing operation.

The third method, coupling the virtualized layers to highly automated physical operations to run a virtualized, lights out IT operation, can be an even harder sell. For many companies, that isn't the actual goal. Instead, running lights out is a by-product of the goal of increased efficiency. In some ways, the distinction between the goal and the by-product is academic. "Lights out operations still have a ways to go," Brown explains, before they become practical for most companies. The challenge is partially technological, and partly process oriented.

Hurdles

For some companies, there's also a regulatory hurdle. Martin Quensel, a specialist in systems integration at Qbranch, in Sweden, points out that in high security environments, remote operations will not be approved. "In a high security environment, you need two people," he elaborates. "Some sites require that one administrator alone can't log onto a system, and some sites require that you call a guard who has one key (and the administrator has another.) Otherwise, he says, lights out is the preferred solution.

The technology seems to be available to run lights out, but it can be expensive and may not be simple because of the many layers and components involved. In terms of migrating to a virtualized, lights out IT facility, Brown advises looking at the foundation of the computing environment early on.

Consider virtualization at multiple layers - storage, physical servers and application virtualization - and couple them together to fulfill the lights out goal.

Even when interfaced seamlessly, Brown elaborates, "the current lack of a common management tool to perform most of the management tasks is a major problem. It takes 10, 20, maybe 30 different tools to manage across the operation."Some vendors say they've solved that challenge, yet many others say that running a virtualized, lights out IT facility isn't practical or cost-effective. So, IT operations are focusing upon reducing latency and the cost of heavy human intervention.

Enablers

Whether it's possible to run a virtualized, lights out facility depends on the maturity of a company's computing environment, Campbell explains. In other words, has the company optimized the business processed throughout the company and optimized the hardware and software to reflect the realities of today's business needs in a way that will allow changes with minimal disruption to either IT or the business units.?

"In talking with customers," Campbell continues, "what we've found is that high tech companies often are focused tightly on IT. Companies need to tie IT to business outcomes and thereby develop the next line of business and grow the company." Clearly, such moves involve more than merely technological solutions, but success can vault IT from the backroom to the boardroom.

"Governance, organization structure and management capabilities are all needed to make progress towards light out efficiency," Campbell says. "Virtualization is a key enabler (of lights out IT operations). It's a catalyst for the next generation data center." Additional enablers, he says, are IT systems, process analysis, management security and automation, and they each are important components of HP's adaptive infrastructure. "It's all about how you free resources.

"This isn't just a technological shift, but a business transformation" notes Stephen Fink, senior infrastructure architect at Avanade. Virtualized, lights out environments offer the opportunity to rethink not only how things are done but why they are done that way - or why they are done at all - so simply automating existing processes reduces the pool of potential gains.

Modeling

Determining just what those gains may be and the tradeoffs that may be necessary to achieve them is the focus of Avanade. That firm has developed a solution that helps data centers model the effects of changes - including lights out virtualization. By incorporating some 100 variables from throughout the company - including human resources, finance, network management and IT, "It helps paint a picture" of what a specific company could, realistically expect in terms of operations and return on investment. The application can address the fine scale -- answering, for example, what happens if a particular server is taken offline, or how you know you're reached capacity - as well as the "big-picture" questions such as how specific changes will affect particular users and how a remote administration option would affect operations. Such insights are undoubtedly helpful, but they also require significant input if results are to reflect actual results.

The point of all this, experts agree, is to continually improve operations. If those improvements lead to a virtualized, lights out IT facility, that's wonderful. If they don't, efficiencies still have been made and still have enhanced the business environment. As with life, the joy is in the journey.