Application placement among a set of consolidation servers utilizing license cost and application workload profiles as factors

Abstract

Applications in a data center can be consolidated by identifying different combinations of software executing on hardware. The software can include a set of applications that execute upon a set of servers. The different combinations can have different arrangements of applications running on different ones of the servers. For each of the different combinations, a licensing cost, an operating cost, and a total cost can be calculated. The total cost of operation for each of the configurations can be calculated by summing the licensing costs, the operating costs adjusted for the cost savings for complementary workload patterns, and migration costs for adjusting a current configuration of the applications and servers to arrive at the configuration. The total cost results per configuration can be reported to a user for at least a set of the configurations.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13 / 165,989, filed Jun. 22, 2011 (pending), which is incorporated herein in its entirety.BACKGROUND[0002]The present invention relates to server consolidations.[0003]Server consolidation is an approach to the efficient usage of computer server resources in order to reduce the total number of servers or server locations that an organization requires. The practice developed in response to the problem of server sprawl, a situation in which multiple, under-utilized servers take up more space and consume more resources than can be justified by their workload. When servers are consolidated, physical servers with low utilization loads are often virtualized and consolidated as virtual machines running on a set of physical servers.[0004]Although consolidation can substantially increase the efficient use of server resources, it may also result in complex configurations of data, a...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0006]An embodiment for efficiently consolidating servers can store information in at least one storage medium that details a set of applications running on a set of servers. The one or more storage medium(s) can store licensing data for the applications that includes licensing costs. The storage medium(s) can also store workload requirements for the applications running on the servers. The storage medium(s) can record specifics of computing resources provided by each of the servers. The workload requirements of the applications can be mapped to computing resources of the servers. Dependencies can be determined for the applications running on the servers. The licensing costs for the applications can consider costs consistent with the dependencies. The application workload can include workload requirements for software executing on the servers that are consistent with the dependencies. A first configuration and a second configuration of the applications executing on the servers can be determined. The first configuration and the second configuration can assure the applications are placed within specific ones of the servers,

Problems solved by technology

The licensing cost of the applications can vary in value from configuration-to-configuration, as different arrangements of applications on servers necessary to satisfy an application workload can affect a quantity and cost of software licenses needed for executing the applications per that configuration.

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