UNDERWRITTEN BY

Big Data Center Migration Projects

Under the Obama administrations broad strategy to reform federal information technology management, federal agencies plan to close 1,100 data centers by 2015 nearly half of which are to be shut down by the end of 2012saving taxpayers an estimated $3 billion. The consolidation program is aimed at revamping many remaining data centers to take advantage of new virtualization technology that allows agencies to store information more efficiently and cheaply. By shuttering and consolidating excess data centers, officials will be able to focus resources on modernizing services, reduce the governments exposure to cyber threats, increase environmental sustainability and reinvest in transformational technologies. Government Executive recently looked at how five agencies are handling this challenge.

U.S. NAVY To The Navy and Marine Corps operate 150 data centers, but use on average only 10 percent of their server capacity, according to the services top data consolidation official. Rob Wolborsky, chief technology officer of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, said a recent survey of 30 data centers shows some use as little as 2 percent of their server capacity. The Navy plans to close 58 data centers, which will help it realize savings of $1.4 billion. Wolborsky, who also serves as director of the Navy data consolidation task force, predicted the service could exceed that target and achieve even greater savings. While the Defense Information Systems Agency has emerged as the first choice for data and application hosting for the Air Force, Army and the Defense Logistics Agency, the Navy is taking a different path, Wolborsky said. DISA is part of the services data consolidation center mix, but officials intend to use three existing SPAWAR data centers in San Diego, New Orleans and Charleston, S.C., as the core of its data center efforts. The Navy also would like to use space in the Marine Corps massive 74,000-square-foot Kansas City, Mo., data center, he said.

ENERGY DEPARTMENT Energy Department officials turned to a novel procurement toolenergysavings performance contractsto help cut some of its 89 data centers. While many agencies have used the contracting vehicles to fund facilities upgrades that lower energy consumption, Energy was the first to employ the tool to reach sustainability goals through improved information technology practices. Last fall, the department contracted with Lockheed Martin Corp. to prove the concept. A federal energy-savings performance contract has the advantage of requiring no upfront cost to the department -- the contractor assumes the investment costs in exchange for a share of the savings. Jake Wooley, deputy director of Energys IT office, says, we want to be able to operate a highly efficient IT structure, and we want to be able to stop the significant costs of being able to do that.

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY DLA plans to close nearly all its data centers by the end of 2015. It is pursuing an aggressive goal of reducing the number of servers it uses by 75 percent and the number of agency-managed data centers by 90 percent. Agency officials plan to achieve this dramatic reduction by virtualizing existing applications as much as possible and by migrating operations to enterprise computing centers managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency. Its consolidation plans mesh with the Defense Departments broader approach, which increases reliance on core data centers to support critical enterprise services. These core data centers gradually will absorb many of the applications and services currently hosted in data centers the military services operate. According to Defenses consolidation plan submitted to the White House in November 2011, its goals include increased mission effectiveness, increased security and enterprisewide efficiencies utilizing green IT practices. By focusing on these goals and leveraging cloud computing capabilities, the department will define its future computing infrastructure in order to move toward a more secure, sustainable, services-based information enterprise that ensures mission effectiveness at both the enterprise level and the tactical edge.

HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT The IT infrastructure of most DHS components remains primarily aligned with the missions of their legacy agencies. The department created a data center services office to coordinate and oversee the consolidation of 43 primary computing facilities into two secure locations to minimize infrastructure and make disaster recovery easier in the event of an emergency. By the end of 2011, DHS had completed nearly a dozen of these migrations and planned another 10 this year, 15 in 2013 and six in 2014. Funding has proved a significant challenge for the department. In fiscal 2011, several migrations were delayed while agencies coped with the financial uncertainty of operating under continuing resolutions. By standardizing IT acquisitions across components and streamlining maintenance and support contracts, department officials expect to see a significant return on investment over time. When migrations to the enterprise data centers are complete, DHS officials anticipate saving $200 million annually, with cumulative savings and cost avoidance from 2017 through 2030 amounting to $4.9 billion.

U.S. AGRICULTURE DEPARTMENT The Agriculture Department is consolidating its server workload into three fee-for-service enterprise data centers. To help USDAs 32 agencies and offices achieve that goal, IT leaders are standardizing software suites across the department and expanding the portfolio of cloud services, and outsourcing all email. Among the best practices department managers have implemented thus far: Development of a discovery toolkit that includes capabilities for identifying network, server and storage use statistics. Formation of a full-time dedicated team from a broad mix of IT technical disciplines, whose sole function is to migrate and close data centers. Purchase and deployment of a mobile data center that allows the team to physically bring a complete stack of hardware into a data center slated for closure to expedite virtualization of the environment and migrate the newly virtualized applications to the enterprise data center. Development and refinement of scoping documents to be completed by the subagency data center to facilitate the discovery process. USDA has invested nearly $43 million in the consolidation project and expects to achieve a net savings of $75 million over the five-year horizon, according to its plan submitted to the White House last fall.

ZERO OVERTIME ZERO OVER BUDGET ZERO DISRUPTIONS ZERO DATA LOSS ZERO IMPACT ZERO COMPETITION
Data Center Consolidation
Quests migration and consolidation solutions e ciently move and restructure user accounts, data and systems without impacting users or productivity. You can trust us to: Accommodate even the most complex migration scenarios Perform impact assessments prior to the migration Enable true coexistence during the migration Restructure with ease during the migration

2012 Quest Software, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Quest, Quest Software and the Quest Software logo are registered trademarks of Quest Software, Inc. in the U.S.A. and/or other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. ADW-DataCenterConsol-US-KS