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BUILDING A BUSINESS CASE FOR

SERVER REFRESH
demand less total power and cut costs.
In todays capricious economy, it
can be tempting to delay a hardware
refresh another few months or
another year. But even if your current
servers are working well, and arent
overloaded, accelerating rather than
delaying a server refresh can prove
benecial. To that, read how one
company approaches server refresh
to gain competitive advantage.
Sylvan Learning

Upgrades Servers
In 2011, Sylvan Learning was ready
to take its renowned tutoring and
education system to a new level.
FEATURE | SERVER REFRESH
See CDW for a server
refresh solution custom
designed for your business.
IT chiefs demonstrating superior ROI will be successful in taking advantage of new data center hardware.
Server refresh expenditures can be
dicult to justify. Yet, the incentive is
being able to do more to support the
mission-critical and everyday goals
of the organization. Te last few years
have seen tremendous advances
in computing devices. And this is
especially true in the area of servers.
Spurred by virtualization, servers
are running faster processors with
JOHN GEISELMAN
Executive Director of Engineering
and Infrastructure Operations
Sylvan Learning
Baltimore, Md.
greater numbers of cores and threads
per processor, thereby enabling greater
computing capabilities. Applications,
for example desktop and application
virtualization, gain from faster server
refresh cycles by oering more robust
capabilities and expanded capacity.
By replacing older, less capable
servers with newer and far more able
systems, a business can perform the
same amount of computing with only a
fraction of the total number of systems.
Fewer physical boxes virtualization
allows a single piece of hardware to
handle workloads that previously
required ve, 10 or more servers
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IT departments are pushed to
increase performance and business
capabilities, often without additional
funds. Industry statistics show that
30 percent of many IT budgets is put
into innovation, and 70 percent goes
to maintenance, says Mike Kendall,
director of product marketing for the
North American Enterprise Systems
Group at Lenovo. IT managers are
trying to change that ratio by utilizing
the advantages of new technology.
2. Capitalizing on new chip
technology: Intel has plotted an
aggressive schedule for rolling out new
chips for servers, going back to the
2013 release of the Xeon E5-2600 v2
processors based on Intels Ivy Bridge
microarchitecture. Te chip family
boosted performance by about 50
percent, along with a 45 percent gain
in performance per watt, a measure
of power eciency. In 2014, Intel
announced it was already delivering
a new generation of chips to server
manufacturers, Xeon E5 processors
(aka the Grantley platform), based
on the new Haswell architecture,
the successor to Ivy Bridge.
Te company intended to launch
SylvanSync, a digital instructional
system combining teachers and
interactive lessons, to hundreds of
learning centers across North America.
Te goal was to take the original
pen- and paper-based instruction
system and virtualize it using iPads
so our students and teachers could
benet from the enhanced interaction
and signicantly reduce the cost
and time required to upgrade center
materials, says John Geiselman,
executive director of engineering and
infrastructure operations for Sylvan.
Of course, this also meant extensive
back-end server and network device
upgrades and enhancements.
But before it could eectively scale
the digital platform from 30 beta
centers to the companys remaining
locations, the 50-person IT sta
at its Baltimore headquarters had
to modernize Sylvans data center
operations. Te IT sta combined the
latest generation of blade servers from
IBM with a new version of Microsofts
Hyper-V virtualization environment.
Te project reduced IT overhead by
shrinking legacy server sprawl by over
50 percent, thanks to more ecient
blade servers, while simultaneously
virtualizing the tutoring platform to
make a widespread SylvanSync rollout
easier. Within a year, SylvanSync
was available at nearly 400 sites, a
number that nearly doubled by 2014.
We were driven to do this project by
the need for modernization, eciency
and most of all to get out from under the
legacy hardware risk, Geiselman says.
Te SylvanSync initiative wasnt the
rst time the company benetted from
a successful server refresh project.
In 2010, the IT sta had been seeing
database performance deteriorate
for users in the eld and in its learning
centers as new workloads came online.
So the sta migrated Microsoft
SQL databases from older servers
to new equipment that delivered
a leap in processing power. In
the two or three months it took to
complete the project, we were able
to remediate all those database
performance issues, Geiselman says.
Rising Demand
Sylvan isnt the only enterprise
that understands how a strategic
modernization of its physical servers
can be the cornerstone for delivering
new services to drive business goals.
Demand for x86 servers rose in
the rst quarter of 2014, with a 4.9-
percent jump worldwide in revenues
over the same period in 2013, according
to IDC. Tis comes despite changes
brought on by widespread server
virtualization and cloud computing,
which are causing IT departments to
re-evaluate the number of servers
they need to run business operations.
Analysts say there are a host of
important reasons for keeping an
organizations core server environment
up to date. Every three years, youre
generally getting so much more
computing power and are able to
do so much more work on a given
server, that it just makes sense to
replace the old ones and modernize,
says Joe Clabby, president of Clabby
Analytics. Tis is especially true as
your workloads grow and youre trying
to lower your management as well
as your power and cooling costs.
Yet, building the business case
for a refresh can be challenging,
particularly when IT budgets are
tight and other initiatives demand
resources. Still, refreshing servers
and adopting new technologies go
hand in hand. Here are six important
reasons for refreshing servers:
1. Boosting productivity: Each
new generation of servers delivers
baseline performance gains between
15 and 30 percent, not including the
additional enhancements that leading
server vendors achieve through
their proprietary technologies.
Speed bumps, such as these, are
important because each year most
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THE AVERAGE
RETURN ON
INVESTMENT FOR A
SERVER REFRESH
OVER THREE YEARS
Source: IDC, Te Cost of Retaining Aging
IT Infrastructure, February 2014
150%
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Noting that energy bills are one
of the biggest operating expenses
in data centers, Jim Ganthier, vice
president of global initiatives for
HP Servers, says his company
dierentiates its servers partly
through innovations that cut power
and cooling requirements beyond the
advancements available in newer chip
designs. Between two generations of
servers, we can nearly double compute
performance using an equivalent
amount of wattage, he says.
4. Taking advantage of operating
system advancements: Modern
versions of core server software,
such as Microsofts Windows Server
2012 R2, add further performance and
security benets for IT environments.
5. Shrinking operational costs:
Faster, more ecient servers deliver
benets beyond gains in raw computing
power. Judicious investments in
new hardware contain capital costs
and reduce operating expenses
by shrinking server counts.
Fewer machines mean smaller
numbers of boxes to manage, maintain
and physically house in expensive
data center real estate. When one
new server does the work of two or
three old devices, the environment
becomes easier to manage, and
management is what costs the
most in terms of people resources,
Clabby says. Tats the big return.
A related benet to a smaller server
footprint is a reduction in the number
of maintenance contracts. As we turn
o the old servers, funds to pay for
those contracts just go away from the
budget, says Sylvans Geiselman.
6. Supporting new technologies:
Te eects of higher server
performance and cost savings
available from refreshed hardware
benet numerous business
operations. For example, modern
servers enable new services such as
mobility, unied communications and
collaboration, and Big Data analytics.
For Sylvan Learning, improved
server performance helped it quickly
Te latest servers can address higher
volumes of memory than previous
generations. For example, servers
based on Ivy Bridge architectures
handle 3 terabytes of main memory in
addition to 12TB of ash-based cache.
Te more data you can put in
memory or ash cache, the faster that
data can be processed, Clabby says.
With older servers, youd need more
servers to do the same workloads
as the latest servers, and youd still
be waiting longer for jobs to run.
Bert Shen, director of product
management at Supermicro Computer,
a server manufacturer, says moving
to a new server architecture to gain
an advantage in reducing processing
latencies can be particularly important
for performance-intensive industries,
such as nancial services, where
the speed of trades and other time-
sensitive functions drive business.
We found that by refreshing with
Supermicros Hyper-Speed hardware-
accelerated server architecture,
which incorporates an upgrade
from Intels E5-2600 to E5-2600
v2 architecture, organizations in
the nancial sector saw an overall
performance increase up to 25
percent, he says. Tis was achieved
with minimal changes to application
code, limiting transition impact to only
the capital expenditures for acquiring
the new servers. Tey were able to
take advantage of the performance
increase without overhauling their
entire software platform.
3. Reducing power and cooling costs:
Moving from one server generation to
the next typically results in a signicant
savings in power consumption. Te less
power consumed by servers means
less heat generated and lower losses
for power distribution. Tis also reduces
the cost of heat extraction at the
end of the power life cycle. Lowering
server power consumption, along with
controlling that consumption, may
allow the deployment of additional
servers per rack while keeping
within an overall power budget.
FEATURE | SERVER REFRESH
With Microsofts support for
Windows Server 2003 slated
to end in July 2015, millions of
physical servers across the
United State are scheduled for an
upgrade. To ease the transition,
Microsoft is coordinating eorts
with HP, Lenovo and other server
vendors to oer programs for
support, training and nancing.
While these server refreshes
will require upfront planning
and capital investments, the
upside will be more ecient IT
environments and enhanced
security. For example, Microsoft
Windows Server 2012 supports
virtual machines that can host
the most demanding applications,
which often suered from limited
performance in older servers,
according to Mike Kendall,
director of product marketing for
the North American Enterprise
Systems Group at Lenovo.
Te new operating system also
leverages the security hardware
features of Intel Xeon processors,
to speed encryption and improve
overall security. In addition,
combining the latest operating
systems and physical servers
will meet security requirements
specic to certain vertical sectors.
Servers running Microsofts
Windows Server 2003 in
healthcare organizations may
not be compliant with the
Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act, or if an
organization is in retail, it will no
longer comply with the Payment
Card Industry Data Security
Standard, Kendall says.
SAY GOODBYE TO
WINSERVER
2003
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need the most ecient machines,
Clabby says. Otherwise, it will cost
more money, because well need more
individual servers, plus the manpower
and electricity to power and cool them.
Te paper argument can be compelling
10 servers versus 20 servers, and
the associated cost savings.
Next, IT decision-makers must
look beyond the initial savings. CEOs
and chief nancial ocers will have
questions about TCO, so dont focus
just on acquisition costs, Ganthier
advises. Plotting capital and operational
expenses over the expected lifespan
of the new equipment will help justify
the decommissioning of older hardware
and show why purchasing higher-priced
devices may be a wise investment.
Many people make the mistake of
going with the most cost-eective
option upfront. Unfortunately,
they may ultimately pay dearly
in higher power and cooling bills,
excessive administration time and
poor performance, he explains.
IT managers should also show
senior leaders how they plan to replace
essential servers with minimal disruption
to the production environment. Old
servers should be decommissioned
on a planned basis, and new servers
brought online in a phased approach.
One eective strategy is to target
processes that will see the biggest
immediate benets from the latest
technology. Identify applications
that need expanded capacity and
target those particular servers for
modernization, says Kendall. Also, look
at applications that can be virtualized
and thus oer opportunities for reducing
the amount of hardware youre running.
Geiselman used a similar strategy
when he requested funding for higher-
performing hardware to overcome
database workload problems. It
became a real slam dunk, he says.
implement its SylvanSync initiative.
Every time we brought another
SylvanSync-enabled learning
center online, we added load to the
database, Geiselman says. Tese
new loads slowed down project
velocity at one point. Te refresh and
modern virtualization freed pent-up
demand, and now we eectively have
unlimited headroom, because the new
architecture is scalable, he says.
Sylvans modernized environment
also achieves higher levels of
availability. Virtualization, made
possible by the latest servers, will let
the company replicate its production
systems to a new data center near
Denver for business continuity and
disaster recovery. We also have the
option of moving workloads to public
cloud partners someday, if we decide
that makes sense, Geiselman says.
We are well-positioned for the future.
A Refresh Strategy
Modern servers oer a range of
benets, but to help senior business
leaders understand the potential payo,
IT managers must build a convincing
business case. A good place to start
is by gathering data to demonstrate
a clear return on investment (ROI)
and long-term advantages in
total cost of ownership (TCO).
To estimate ROI, IT managers can
plan to recoup the capital costs of
modern servers in less than a year,
according to technology research
rm IDC. Te returns come from
improved performance, reduced
power and cooling costs, and simplied
administration, says Lenovos Kendall.
While servers have become much
more powerful, acquisition costs and
energy requirements for power and
cooling have dropped dramatically,
according to Te Cost of Retaining Aging
IT Infrastructure, a report from IDC.
IT managers should also use the
need to balance new services and tight
budgets to their advantage. Tey can
make the case that if their departments
are getting much more work to do, they
ERIC WENCK
Chief Technology Ocer
JOHN GEISELMAN
Executive Director of Engineering
and Infrastructure Operations
Sylvan Learning
Baltimore, Md.