Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The latter topic was discussed previously in terms of “operational flexibility”; in
this subsection, we will discuss other facets of business agility.
Consider two businesses vying for a competitive opportunity. In this scenario,
the business that can first deploy a service will win the opportunity.
One business plans to purchase a new computer for this service, install an op-
erating system on it, and then deploy the application needed to provide the ser-
vice. This process will take two to three weeks. The other business has previously
prepared for rapid deployment of this application for customers such as this one.
It constantly tracks its spare processing capacity, and has a provisioning manage-
ment system configured to deploy a VE and that application. Service deployment
will take two to three
hours
, including customer-specific customizations and data
download. Which business will win this opportunity?
In this example, the second business has achieved superior business agility in
the data center. Its processes that facilitate accelerated workload provisioning
may include one or both of the following:
Predefined workload templates, sometimes called
profiles
■
Optional “golden master” images of the application and OS, waiting to be
copied and used as a VE
■
Predefined workload templates specify the application needed for a particular
type of workload, an appropriate OS for the application, and, potentially, other
properties such as configuration information for the application and OS, initial
resource controls, and security rules. A template provides all of the initial param-
eters needed to install a VE, including the application.
A
golden master
is an entire disk image of an installed OS and application. It is
a snapshot of a VE, including its applications and customizations. Deploying the
image is usually as simple as copying a file (the image) and then deploying the copy.
The concepts of workload templates and golden masters can be combined. For
example, a template might specify a master image along with resource controls
and steps to be performed immediately before booting the new VE.
9.2.2.3 Business Continuity
In the data center context, business continuity provides an organization with the
ability to perform its critical computing and communications functions after a
disaster disrupts normal computing functions. Disaster recovery is closely related
to business continuity, and includes the method to restore those functions, usually
on equipment that does not normally support those functions. Such equipment
might have another use, or might be sitting idle in another data center.
Sometimes bad things happen—intruders intrude, software crashes, hardware
breaks, electric service fails. For some problems, the simplest solution is restarting
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