Database Consolidation: Understanding the process

Blogger: Marcus Collins

The ever-changing business environment is forcing organizations to continually reevaluate their existing IT landscape. Consolidation is one approach that many organizations are adopting to improve efficiency. Databases are a major component of the operational IT budget both in terms of manpower (e.g., database administrators or system administrators) and hardware (e.g., database servers). Therefore, the consolidation of databases and database servers is a priority for CIOs. But databases are also core to the business processes and informational needs of the enterprise, so consolidation should be approached in a methodical way. Therefore, organizations should adopt a more structured approach when undertaking database consolidation to assist with the analysis phase of the initiative.
Database consolidation should not be thought of as a purely technical activity concerned with database migrations or virtualizing database servers. There are a number of other factors that should be considered as the consolidation activity is planned:

• An application-decommissioning initiative should be conducted alongside the database consolidation initiative. Applications are sticky—they are far easier to create than to decommission; this drives up operational complexity, business risk, and cost. The cheapest and most straightforward consolidation approach is decommissioning!
• A comprehensive application portfolio should be developed and should include:
• • Business context: The relationship between database, application, and business process, and the service level required by the business process
  • Technical context: The relationship between database and the supporting hardware; internal database structures, version, and feature usage
  • Operational context: Both current and historical workload and usage statistics and forward-looking capacity planning data.
• Database consolidation is a continuous process because it is driven by the hardware refresh cycle and the evolving nature of businesses (e.g., entering new markets, mergers, and acquisitions). The supporting processes (e.g., application portfolio management and technology refresh) should be an integral part of the IT processes.
• The key to any consolidation initiative is standardization at all levels of the technology stack and within the associated IT processes. Standardization reduces operational costs, reduces business risk, and enables business agility. The standardization should be defined in concert with a strategy of tiered service levels.
• Consolidation is a series of tradeoffs and compromises with no correct answer. The degree to which a consolidation initiative will be successful is directly related to the understanding of the organization’s priorities for cost reduction, service levels, and risk acceptance. A tiered set of service levels, with each specifying detailed availability and performance constraints and scalability requirements, will simplify the tradeoff analysis and improve the chances of success of the standardization initiative.

In a recently published document - Structured Approach to Database Consolidation, Burton Group Senior Analyst Marcus Collins explores the various approaches to database consolidation. Each approach has its benefits and drawbacks and the document details theses. Adopting the approaches outlined in the document will allow organizations to develop a roadmap for the successful reduction in operational complexity.

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