| Most of the discussion in Part 2 focused on preparing and measuring for basic efficiency activities. The topic of the chapters in Part 3 is how to be strategic transforming the basic infrastructure-level efficiency improvements into dynamic strategic business assets. Efficiency is about reducing the time to deploy from three months to three weeks. Being strategic is about using that efficiency and counting on that efficiency to be able to target the release of twenty new services per year instead of five. Being efficient is about using automation to reduce the number of configuration errors by 90 percent. Being strategic is about being able to leverage the hours formerly spent solving avoidable problems to delivering a high-value project with no additional costs for labor resources. Being strategic is about analyzing what is currently being done and looking for costs that automation and efficiency can reduce, and it is about the ability to identify and prioritize your ideas and then implement them quickly. This section presents transformative examples of using the N1 Grid technology to create new business differentiators. The examples present engagement points that establish basic value through efficiency, which are then contrasted with examples that provide more business value when efficiencies are leveraged with strategic flexibility. Blade Servers The N1 Grid Provisioning Server software can provide basic value through the following efficiencies: Capturing trusted build and test methodologies to prepare golden operating system and service images Utilizing uniform provisioning and naming conventions Incorporating network, storage, load balancers, and firewalls Provisioning only the operating system or including image-based applications and services Leveraging specialized blades (for example, load balancers) and heterogeneous environments (for example, SPARC and x86)
The N1 Grid Provisioning Server software can add more business value by leveraging the following efficiencies into strategic flexibility: Rapid repurposing for proactive load requirement conditions (for example, a known service peak at a certain hour) Agile flexibility to respond to new loads (for example, an unexpected spike in web-connection-per-second demand) Reduced time to market with automated promotion through service life cycle Contribute to compliance on regulatory requirements with the ability to store or return to exact former conditions (for example, the test environment three weeks ago) Known build times that enable business continuity hardware to be used for other purposes until the hardware needs to be configured
Developers can offer to provide web connections per second, not number or type of servers their customers request. In addition, blades with the N1 Grid PS software offer a heterogeneous solution because the Solaris OS and Linux are supported, and there are many virtualization options to host Windows software on those Solaris OS and Linux blade environments. Storage The N1 Grid DSP software can establish basic value through the following efficiencies: Simplified administration by centralizing volume and capacity management Flexibly created and allocated volumes from a storage farm through a single management point (for example, volume size support from one gigabyte to two terabytes) Pooled capacity (for example, striping and concatenating storage to build volumes out of multiple LUNs)
The N1 Grid DSP software can add more business value by leveraging the following efficiencies into strategic flexibility: Point-in-time copy (that is, the ability to create offline versions of production data to facilitate backup, application testing, quality assurance, data analysis, reporting, and other functions) Incorporation of multiple operating systems and storage devices into one management framework
Testing and Development Environment The N1 Grid software can establish basic value through the following efficiencies: The N1 Grid software can add more business value by leveraging the following efficiencies into strategic flexibility: Reduced time to market and increased number of services delivered per year Mobility and automated provisioning to ensure that service in the production environment is an exact copy of service in the earlier life cycle phases Introduction of a common design and provisioning framework, replacing the business service developer driven IT environment for an IT department that delivers CTQs instead of server, storage, and network devices
Application Server Farm The N1 Grid SPS software can establish basic value through the following efficiencies: Extension to automated provisioning of non-image-based applications and services Independency of underlying infrastructure creation mechanism (for example, the N1 Grid PS software, the Solaris JumpStart software, Linux, and Windows operating system) Leveraging pre-existing templates for many common industry applications Creating and storing of new services by updating existing services
The N1 Grid SPS software can add more business value by leveraging the following efficiencies into strategic flexibility: Provisioning on hardware, operating systems, and networks in heterogeneous environments (for instance, Solaris OS, Linux, AIX, and Windows) Provisioning or updating the application layer without disturbing the operating system layer Automating inexpensive Java Enterprise System and Java Desktop stacks Supporting frequency differences in rates of change for operating systems (monthly) and applications (daily or weekly)
Service Creation The N1 Grid software can establish basic value through the following efficiencies: Automatic deployment of multiple services to create a metaservice Version control of an entire service Creation and updating of new services by updating existing services
The N1 Grid software can add more business value by leveraging the following efficiencies into strategic flexibility: Increased Density The N1 Grid software can establish basic value through the following efficiencies: Extending deployment-oriented steps to other aspects of control and observability Wrapping and control of application resource usage in conjunction with the use of the Solaris Resource Manager software Preparation for Solaris 10 OS features, such as containers and zones
The N1 Grid software can add more business value by leveraging the following efficiencies into strategic flexibility: Mobility of applications and automated provisioning support Capability for robust service life cycle dependency checks as part of automating the transition to another life cycle phase Creating a safety valve to remove problems if they are encountered with higher densities of tested applications running in the production environment
Utility Computing The N1 Grid software can establish basic value through the following efficiencies: Observability and telemetry provisioned as part of software builds or images Delivering increased capability over time through update mechanisms (for example, capturing the resource usage data, understanding costs, then fully automating charge-back)
The N1 Grid software can add more business value by leveraging the following efficiencies into strategic flexibility: Tight relationships between provisioning and demand curves Leveraging naming conventions to simplify other aspects of management under mobility (for instance, use of service name as resource group, file system root, IP naming, and cluster resource group name)
Grid Computing The N1 Grid software can establish basic value through the following efficiencies: Virtualization of resources for compute intensive workloads Provisioning of the Sun Grid Engine service Developing a policy to allow appropriate sharing of resources according to business rules
The N1 Grid software can add more business value by leveraging the following efficiencies into strategic flexibility: Delivery of grid computing benefits to the entire data center Seamless, transparent, remote, and secure access Extending compute power service by combining with data grids
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