Take your data center to the next level of efficiency

Data center optimization is not an end result, but a journey. It's a process of continuous improvement. And the next step in that journey depends on where you are today.

Not every data center is the same. Different levels of technology adoption mean a solution that's right for one data center might not be right for yours.

Forrester's Infrastructure Virtualization Maturity model is a great tool to help you assess your own data center–where you are today, and what your next steps might be:

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Stage 1—Acclimation

All organizations pass through Acclimation, where virtualization technologies are tested in non-production environments, typically on a smaller scale. For organizations just starting out with virtualization initiatives, Novell recommends:

• SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server: With Open Source virtualization hypervisors Xen and KVM included, you can quickly, easily and cost effectively create and deploy virtual servers.
• PlateSpin® Migrate: Quickly and easily convert physical workloads to virtual ones, and virtual ones back into physical ones.

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Stage 2—Strategic Consolidation

In the Strategic Consolidation stage, virtualization technologies move out of test and development labs and into production environments. To help with this expanded use of virtualization, Novell recommends using:

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: Deploy production workloads with confidence on the server operating system designed for mission-critical computing in physical, virtual and cloud environments.
• PlateSpin Recon®: Use its discovery and analysis capabilities to maximize server consolidation ratios and eliminate resource contention among virtualized production workloads.
• Novell Operations Center Service Monitoring: Get better visibility of services supported by both physical and virtual infrastructure to avoid service impacting events.

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Stage 3—Process Improvement

Many organizations find themselves trapped in Process Improvement. While taking advantage of virtualization throughout their production environments, organizations need new management processes and tools to avoid falling prey to "VM sprawl" and "VM stall". To help with process improvement, Novell recommends extending and adding:

• Novell Operations Center Service Monitoring: Get end-to-end visibility into resource utilization and identify issues like over- and under-provisioning, sprawl and unused VMs.
• Novell Cloud Manager: Implement template-based workload provisioning with approvals workflow, as well as attach service level targets to business services and workloads.

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Stage 4—Pooling and Automation

The fourth and final stage, Pooling and Automation, is where organizations truly leverage their virtualized infrastructure in a full-featured cloud environment, with advanced technologies like policy-based automation and service level metrics and monitoring. Novell can help you build and manage your private cloud with:

• Novell Cloud Manager: Build a secure and compliant private cloud that provisions pay-per-use workloads automatically through a self-service portal.
• Novell Operations Center Service Measuring: Provide automated service level monitoring based on business rules that can identify breaches before they occur and enable automated remediation to provision, re-direct or balance workloads.

Identifying which stage you're in can help you assess your readiness for different virtualization, monitoring, measurement, management and automation technologies–things that will help you optimize your data center.

Customer Success