Every day, your data center is entrusted with the management and protection of increasing amounts of data. In addition, data centers now have the added responsibility to support communication such as e-mail, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and videoconferencing. And government regulations for data archiving and retrieval have further increased the need for storage space.

In an effort to create server environments with sufficient capabilities and storage, many IT departments have implemented heterogeneous systems that have become difficult to manage and costly to maintain. Tighter budgets and staffing constraints aggravate this problem.

By consolidating with blade servers, you can reduce costs, streamline and enhance management, and utilize your IT investments and staff more efficiently.

Achieve efficiency with blade servers
The speed, flexibility and scalability inherent to blade servers make them the logical choice for optimum performance. Blade servers offer enhanced processing capabilities, high-speed components, faster paths to external storage, high-speed interconnections and improved management software.

Blade servers give you a more efficient architecture for managing multiple applications, databases and storage devices. Shared network cables, switches, power and storage provide better manageability and easy expansion. Blade servers also install quickly and are hot-swappable for easier maintenance and zero downtime. Plus, blade servers provide easy connection to storage devices using widely adopted protocols such as network-attached storage (NAS) and Fibre Channel or iSCSI storage area networks (SAN).

Save space and energy
The rack-optimized blade design results in a smaller footprint capable of reducing the floor space required in your data center significantly. By packing as many as 14 blades (each 7U high) into a standard 19-inch wide chassis and using several chassis in racks of blades, it is now possible to achieve computing power that would have required hundreds of stand-alone servers.

Maximize density with virtualization
Blade servers allow you greater density due to their suitability to virtualization. Virtualization partitions a server into several "virtual servers" that can run within a separate operating system and environment. This moves you away from the "one-server, one-application" model of doing business and toward an infrastructure that allows you to manage your servers as a heterogeneous environment.

Using different operating systems and applications on the same physical server also lets you consolidate the workload placed on each server. If one virtual system fails, another can take over instantly and perform the same tasks, eliminating downtime.

Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO)
Because of shared power and cooling sources, blade servers consume less power than rack-mounted servers. The result is an estimated 20 – 25 percent savings in power costs. Finally, because blade servers are managed via browser, the costs of keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) cables and switches are eliminated. This alone can save you thousands of dollars per server rack.

Plan, implement, manage, evolve: CDW’s four-step consolidation process
CDW has developed a four-step process to help you with server consolidation. In the planning phase, we create a profile of your environment and utilize our Server Consolidation Analysis to generate your custom return on investment (ROI) and TCO evaluation. In the implementation phase, we take a comprehensive approach utilizing multiple service providers and our own technology specialists to deliver a solution that will integrate seamlessly into your environment. The management phase includes 24 x 7 telephone access to certified CDW technicians for ongoing management needs. Finally, we ensure that every purchase you make from CDW can scale as your business evolves.

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