Defining Orchestrated IT

- David Hurwitz, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Serena Software (www.serena.com), says:

There’s a new elephant in the room when it comes to DevOps, Orchestrated IT. Serena defines Orchestrated IT as IT management systems that tie together existing tools into a process-driven human workflow. Orchestrated IT streamlines processes to deliver applications faster, improve IT service performance and lower overall IT costs.

Enterprise IT organizations that are forward-leaning and stocked with an abundance of tools need Orchestrated IT to improve the performance of the end-to-end IT supply chain, without throwing out what is working. Serena has arrived as a strategic advisor to CIOs, first with process orchestration within Dev, and now extending this success to Ops and the IT front office, including the CIO and the CIO’s lieutenants. The positive industry response to Orchestrated IT parallels the strong results our customers are already enjoying.

Maximizing the value of Orchestrated IT often involves deploying new functional tools where none currently exists or upgrading from cumbersome or expensive legacy tools, though this is optional. Orchestrated IT spans Dev and Ops, offering particular benefit to the burgeoning DevOps function. Serena’s vision and solutions now also extend into IT front office functions such as service catalog, demand management and IT management dashboarding.

Yesterday, Serena proudly premiered Doug Serena, CIO, a realistic web-video miniseries that follows a savvy CIO as he reaps the benefits of Orchestrated IT to deliver massive economic advantage to his company. The first webisode of Doug Serena, CIO can be viewed at Serena.com/DougSerenaCIO, with all new webisodes to follow weekly through March and into April. Viewers can also follow Doug’s tweets at @DougSerenaCIO.

Additions to Serena’s Orchestrated IT solution set include Serena Demand Manager, Serena Requirements Manager and the Serena Orchestrated IT Dashboard. Major new releases of Serena Service Manager, Serena Release Manager, Serena Request Center, Serena Development Manager and the Serena Business Manager platform further strengthen Serena’s solution set.

The new Serena Orchestrated IT Dashboard brings actionable intelligence to the head of Dev, the head of Ops and to their boss, the CIO. The Orchestrated IT Dashboard provides almost two dozen pre-defined metrics like cycle times, queue sizes, wait times and SLA performance. Super simple configuration makes it easy to draw even more metrics from Serena and non-Serena IT management tools, focusing on Key Performance Indicators and traceability metrics.

The new Serena Demand Manager provides a breakthrough facility for deftly prioritizing all IT work, presenting alternative portfolio scenarios and optimizing resources to fulfill any type of IT demand. Serena Demand Manager’s pragmatic and highly intuitive interface represents fresh innovation in a stale IT governance market that has been hijacked by heavyweight PPM systems.

Serena Demand Manager offers:

• An orchestrated approval process to dramatically streamline prioritization, scoring and resource estimation of all IT requests;
• Executive views to help assess the real effort and costs for all demand, as well as determine the optimal portfolio of IT projects;
• Automated time capture to help increase IT productivity and improve the accuracy of IT costs.

Recently awarded Pink Elephant’s IT Service Management (ITSM) Innovation of the year award, Serena Service Manager is the only ITSM offering on the market today that leverages a process-based approach to tackling the current challenges around flexibility, visibility and usability inherent in legacy ITSM solutions. The new Serena Service Manager 3, packs innovative features that further strengthen DevOps, foster greater collaboration around issue resolution and aid service level management.

Serena Service Manager 3 offers:

• Integrated ITSM and Release Management resulting in fewer failed changes;
• Service Level Agreements tracking to help identify at-risk targets and speed corrective action;
• Innovative application version comparison to enable fail-proof ITSM upgrades.

Serena Requirements Manager debuts as an integrated suite and provides enterprise IT organizations comprehensive capabilities to define and manage requirements, from initial prototype to production release, reducing rework, accelerating development and ensuring complete requirements traceability.

Serena Requirements Manager offers:

• Out-of-the-box dashboard metrics and best-practice KPIs for higher quality requirements;
• Requirements collaboration capabilities for business stakeholders, enabling accelerated review cycles;
• Orchestrated processes for prototype and requirements specification reviews to ensure continuous alignment between IT and the business.

The “industry first solution” for application release management, Serena Release Manager 2.0 strikes another industry first with its orchestration with Serena Service Manager. Being the only release management offering on the market today that leverages a process-based approach, it also is unique in providing one window to automate and control the release processes and deployments for mainframe and distributed platforms. The new Serena Release Manager solution is the bridge between Dev and Ops and leverages integrations with Serena Service Manager to achieve true DevOps collaboration.

Serena Release Manager 2 offers:

• Release Calendar shared with Serena Service Manager for scheduling operational and development changes into a common calendar and improving synergies between Dev and Ops;
• Integration with Serena Orchestrated IT Dashboard to present release management KPIs and provide efficient reporting;
• Improved release environment visibility arming Dev and Ops with the ability to track and manage release packages at the environment level.

Serena Orchestrated IT Dashboard, Serena Service Manager 3 and Serena Release Manager 2 are available now. Serena Demand Manager and Serena Requirements Manager will be available in Spring 2012. Pricing for Serena's Orchestrated IT solutions starts at $12,500 for 250 users.

About David Hurwitz, SVP of Worldwide Marketing at Serena
David Hurwitz leads Serena's marketing initiatives, including product marketing, communications, campaigns, sales readiness and field marketing. Mr. Hurwitz has a quarter century of experience in the enterprise software industry, the last decade of which as a marketing leader.

Prior to Serena, Mr. Hurwitz served as Vice President of Corporate Messaging and Solutions Marketing at CA, Inc. He joined CA via its 2005 acquisition of Niku Corporation, where he was Chief Marketing Officer. Under his marketing leadership, Niku's Clarity product became the leading enterprise-class PPM system in IT shops and product development organizations around the world. Earlier Mr. Hurwitz founded and ran Product Lifecycle Management pioneer ConsenSys Software Corporation. He began his software career by creating several MANMAN products as an engineer at legendary Silicon Valley company ASK Computer Systems.

Mr. Hurwitz holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Testing & Exercising Branch Circuit Breakers

- Ken Koty, sales engineer for PDU Cables (http://www.pducables.com/) and former data center facilities manager for Thomson Reuters, says:

Any significant down time at my data centers could potentially cost my company millions of dollars in lost revenue, so I looked for every possible problem area and implemented preventative maintenance measures to ensure that downtimes were either minimized or eliminated. One of these preventative maintenance measures was to pre-test all branch circuit breakers prior to installation.

The last lines of defense protecting your critical servers on the raised floor are the branch circuit breakers that are located in your PDU/RPP’s. Considering how many of these are produced each day regardless of the brand name, you can be sure some of them may have defects. This can lead to several problems. If the branch circuit breaker does not trip on a direct short the next breaker in line will be the main breaker in your 42 circuit panel which can lead to widespread failures of your critical servers on the raised floor. In the event of an overloaded circuit, if the individual branch breaker does not trip, over time it can cause a fire.

I found from my years of experience of testing the branch circuit breakers that we installed in our data centers that between overloaded branch circuits and direct shorts we found about a 4% failure rate. Even though 4% may not seem like a large percentage, in most data centers 4% of the thousands of circuit breakers used can still put a significant number of servers at risk.

The solution I implemented and I recommend to you is, purchase a circuit breaker tester, set up a test station onsite and send some of your people to a training class so you can test all of the branch circuit breakers in-house prior to installing them in your critical environment. If that is not an option then you should consider having a local vendor do the testing for you. For each circuit breaker that passed its test we stickered, dated, signed, and then inventoried them for future installation.

Another very important maintenance practice is to exercise these breakers at least every two years when you have the opportunity to shut down the PDU/RPP for your scheduled maintenance program. I recommend that you exercise each branch circuit breaker by turning them off and on at least three to four times. This will ensure the breaker does not become seized in the closed position which could prohibit them from tripping in the event of a direct short or overloaded circuit which can lead to the above mentioned problems.

If it is continuous uptime you are looking to achieve, along with a good maintenance program, testing and exercising branch circuit breakers is a preventative maintenance measure well worth implementing.

What's Your Preventive Maintenance Strategy? Protecting Against Unplanned Downtime

- Lealand (Lea) Chittim, director of operations at Electronic Environments Corporation (http://www.eecnet.com/), says:

Preventive maintenance of electrical & mechanical systems such as Computer Room Air Conditioners (CRACs), Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems and batteries, and generators is conducted to keep equipment working and should be used as a strategy to improve the performance of one’s assets. Most companies implement a preventive maintenance strategy to protect themselves against unplanned downtime as well as to extend the operating life of the equipment inside their data center.

Preventive maintenance is the best approach a data center can take to get the value and Return on Investment (ROI) out of their assets. It is essential for all data centers that want to maximize these benefits to implement a high-quality preventive maintenance program on the critical environment equipment.

Preventive maintenance should rank in the top three in terms of overall priority in a data center. The 2007 Study of Root Causes demonstrated that two-thirds of downtime events, in a data center, stem from preventable causes. The number one preventable cause was due to insufficient maintenance. Decreasing potential downtime and preventing failures from occurring should be the most critical aspects of a good preventive maintenance program and a high ranking priority within a data center.

According to research done by Forrester Research, Inc., companies are more focused on service continuity, achieving continuous availability, and limiting the amount of downtime on their equipment in today’s critical environments. There is also a strong emphasis on the adoption of standards in an effort to maximize the benefit of a company’s assets. Preventive maintenance is the best approach a company can take to accomplish these initiatives while getting the most value out of their assets. It is essential for all companies that want to maximize the benefits of their assets to implement a high-quality preventive maintenance program on the critical environment equipment such as Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS), batteries, HVAC and generators.

Probably the biggest challenge for data center and IT managers when it comes to preventive maintenance is budgeting for the cost – the first item usually cut from a budget is preventive maintenance.

Understand how much a good preventive maintenance program can save them in the long run. It can not only save you money but it will also extend the life of the critical equipment. Extending the life expectancy of your equipment is a crucial aspect of preventive maintenance because the cost of the critical infrastructure equipment is a major capital investment. Part of managing one’s assets is based on the Return of Investment (ROI) and getting the maximum benefit from the assets based on cost. A standard preventive maintenance program will decrease the total cost of the investment by extending the life and reducing repair costs of the asset. According to a study performed by Jones Lang LaSalle, a preventive maintenance investment not only pays for itself but also produces a substantial ROI. The study shows that a good preventive maintenance program can yield up to a 500% return in some cases. The primary reason that this significant ROI is achieved is because proper maintenance adds years to the life expectancy of the equipment. The delay in replacing equipment allows companies to avoid the expensive capital outlay needed to replace the equipment for years. Basically, the longer the capital expense can be deferred the higher the ROI because the bulk of the return comes from increasing the useful life of the equipment.

Performing maintenance can help equipment run more efficiently, which in turn helps with the longevity of the equipment, but more importantly saves money by reducing the amount of energy the equipment uses. Scopes of Work to help equipment run more efficiently should include regularly checks of the quality of fluids, frequently changing air filters, and power washing condenser coils to name a few. Checking fluids is essential because contaminants can result in diminished performance. Changing filters frequently is important because it will maximize the airflow in the equipment. One of the most important maintenance checks on HVAC equipment is regularly cleaning the condenser coils. Condensers are known to draw in dirt, pollen, and other debris that restricts airflow and reduces efficiencies. Power washing the condenser on a regular basis will ensure that the HVAC equipment will run efficiently and also will help reduce emergency service calls.

If preventive maintenance has not been a high priority, then the critical environmental equipment in a data center has probably experienced a number of equipment failures during the past year. Some of the failures may be random, but the majority are a direct result of not implementing a preventive maintenance program. Preventive maintenance programs are conducted to keep the equipment running efficiently and effectively. Good preventive maintenance programs should include partial or complete overhauls at specific set periods and recording equipment trends to know when to replace or repair worn parts before they cause an unplanned outage.

The primary goal of preventive maintenance is to prevent failures before they occur and avoid any consequences. Long term benefits include: improved reliability, decreased cost of replacements, decreased downtime, and more efficient equipment. Companies should work with their maintenance provider to develop a scope of work and then standardize that scope throughout the company. With the exorbitant cost of downtime, a strong preventive maintenance program is not an option, it is a must.

Decontaminating Your Data Center: A Plethora of Benefits

- Hector Gallardo, Senior Account Manager at Plenum Cleaning Services (www.plenumcleaning.com), says:

Data center cleaning is useful in today’s enterprise data centers for several reasons. Decontaminating a data center in accordance with ISO Standard 14644 (Class 100,000 .05 micron particles per cubic foot of atmosphere) has the following benefits:

1. It eliminates harmful contaminants and debris that can clog the hardware and equipment cooling airways resulting in hardware malfunction or thermal shutdown
2. It improves the air density in the data center and removes dust, pollen, mold, bacteria and airborne particles with a size of 0.12 microns or larger
3. It reduces the static electricity in the data center
4. It improves the hardware and equipment operating efficiencies
5. It prolongs the life of the high pressure laminate floor and equipment
6. It improves aesthetics

Data center and IT managers should care about the data center cleaning because they can reduce or eliminate potential costly downtime associated with thermal shutdown or system malfunction due to dust and debris in the cooling airways, exhaust fans and circuit boards as well as static electricity.

Data center cleaning should rank high on the priority list because it’s an essential preventative maintenance function that can eliminate potential system malfunction and costly downtime as well as increase the performance and lifetime of the high pressure laminate floor and equipment. A professional data center cleaning company is an extra set of eyes that will inspect the data center, especially the plenum as they provide the service and report any potential hazards such as heavy rust, bare wires, uncovered electrical junction boxes, frayed cables, etc.

The biggest challenges for data center and IT managers in regards to data center cleaning include:

1. Differentiating between janitorial services and data center services
2. Justifying the costs
3. Locating an experienced professional data center cleaning company
4. Understanding the benefits of properly maintaining the data center by performing scheduled preventative maintenance cleaning services

The data center and IT managers can overcome these challenges by consulting an experienced professional data center cleaning company that can answer their questions, provide them a cleaning demonstration and customize a cleaning schedule to meet their business and budgetary needs.

The best advice that I would give a data center and IT managers that have a plethora of similar solutions to choose from would be to:

1. Ask and check for customer references
2. Ask for a demonstration
3. Ask for a Scope of Work
4. Ensure that the data center cleaning company is not using un-trained temporary employees
5. Ask for a customer satisfaction guarantee
6. Ask as many questions as you feel necessary

Additional Information
There is a significant difference in janitorial cleaning and data center cleaning that includes the type of equipment, materials, cleaning technique and insurance. As a result, the pricing is significantly different because of the amount of labor hours involved as well as the cost of the equipment, materials and insurance. In order to mitigate risk, professional data center cleaning companies should not introduce liquid or machines that require liquid to operate in to the data center.

3 Ways Third Party Maintenanc​e Services Reduce Costs

- Ken Barhoover, Interactive Marketing Manager at Park Place Technologies (www.parkplacetechnologies.com), says:

Third party hardware support and third party maintenance (TPM) enable four types of business value – cost reduction, cost avoidance, business agility, and risk reduction. We’ll cover all of these over time on our blog, but this blog post will discuss cost reduction.
TPM services enable organizations to reduce their direct (budgeted) costs for IT labor and outsourced maintenance services. Here are 3 ways this happens:

Lower third-party maintenance costs. The benefit of TPM services most often cited by IT managers is a lower maintenance service price, which can range from 30 percent to 60 percent less than OEM pricing. This can be a significant savings given the cost of OEM pricing and the yearly increases that are typically incurred.

Internal IT labor costs. Organizations can reduce their internal IT labor costs by outsourcing storage, inventory, installation, and testing tasks related to replacement hardware and spare parts. This can give an organization tight on budget savings from salary and employee overhead expenses which rise every year or can eliminate the need to hire additional personnel during periods of growth.

Consolidation of multiple support vendors. Historically, OEMs have preferred to take on mixed support contracts only when their own equipment is the largest element of the overall IT infrastructure. Add to this the propensity of modern data centers to utilize hardware from multiple vendors and the result is that IT organizations are likely to carry multiple OEM agreements, each of which incurs overhead. A single TPM provider can reduce this extra overhead by consolidating data center hardware and services under one contract.

**ParkPlaceTechnologies is a regular contributor on Data Center POST

Data Center Maintenance & Upkeep: Top Problems To Avoid

- Mike Leib, product management director for DecisionOne (www.decisionone.com), says:

Failure to perform preventative maintenance.
Preventative maintenance (PM) keeps the data center running smoother and longer. Data Center managers do not want to interrupt availability to users or shut down a portion of the system, but most PM can be performed with the system running. Many companies put off PM until there is a failure – but an ounce of prevention leads to a pound of money saved in the long run.

Procrastination of service calls lead to failure of redundancy.
High-end data center equipment is redundant in nature; therefore, it doesn’t have to be repaired immediately. Once a portion of it fails, it is no longer redundant. Oftentimes, we see a situation where a call was not scheduled on the initial failure and the entire systems goes down once the redundant system also fails. Don’t wait too long to place a service call.

Lack of predictive maintenance and use of call-home features.
DecisionOne has a proprietary call-home system that enables us to identify a failure and pre-configure a part for replacement. It also tells us when certain devices are on the verge of failure. For example, an OEM has pre-defined end of life cycles. When unit faults or errors reach a certain level, we are notified by the call-home feature and can replace a unit on the verge of failure with minimal to zero downtime. The bottom line - call-home systems allow you to find and resolve problems faster extending the life of your technology investments.

DecisionOne provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), outsourcers, and resellers and their clients throughout North America with local, reliable, cost-effective technology support and professional services.

We are a single source, multi-vendor provider with integrated onsite, field, and logistics services capabilities. Our footprint of service locations and centralized support capabilities throughout the U.S. and Canada enable us to provide local, reliable, cost-effective solutions that address needs at every point along the technology support lifecycle — from initial planning to installation and maintenance to asset disposal and/or reclamation.

DecisionOne's Data Center/High Availability Services include:

• Full Maintenance
• Labor-Only Maintenance
• IBM Back-line support
• IBM Self-Maintainer Support
• Deployment/IMAC

Data Center/High Availability Technologies Supported

• IBM Mainframes
• Midrange Systems
• High-End to Entry-Level Servers From All Tier 1 Manufacturers
• Tape Storage Facilities
• NAS/SAN/DASD Storage
• High Availability/High Volume Printers
• Peripheral Devices (Controllers, Monitors, Modems, etc.)

Data Center Upkeep: Air & Blades

- Michael Petrino, Vice President of PTS Data Center Solutions (www.ptsdcs.com), says:

Air mixing – When air mixes between the hot and cold aisles this reduces the effective cooling of your CRAC systems. We implore that blanking panels be utilized in all open “U” locations inside of an IT rack and areas where there is an empty spot in the row of racks we add clear plastic air blocking material to create a barrier between the hot and cold aisle.

Where to deploy new servers, especially blades and virtualized machines – We recommend having a CFD baseline of your data center done by a consultant. Once you have an accurate model it is possible to have scenarios run to decide where the best and safest location in the room exists to add heat load. New devices can be modeled in your existing space reducing the occurrence of hot spots and the need for having to rerun cable or fiber to a different location when you deploy incorrectly. By doing the planning up front you deploy more accurately with predictable results and improved performance. Very often we come across high density machines deployed in a legacy data center followed by box fans in the hot aisle to reduce and move the heat, this is not a planned and reliable approach.