ITS Project Charter

Project Name: Server and Storage Consolidation

Information Technology Services

March 2006
Version 1.2

Author: David Klein

Server / Storage Consolidation Project Charter

Document Control

Change Record

Date Author Version Change Reference

2/2/06 David Klein 1.1 Moved older charter information to new

template, added new sections
3/14/06 David Klein 1.2 Changed governance, added Apps as
stakeholder, Separated budget into a
separate file, clarified scope for storage,
added team member names

Contributors

Name Position

David Klein Project Manager

John Hammond Server Admin Manager

How to Use This Template

The purpose of this template is to provide Information Technology Services (ITS) staff with a template to initiate IT project
approval requests. This template is intended to be used in both the Project Proposal and Project Charter lifecycle stages. As
such, specific information in sections of the document is required for these discreet stages.

At minimum, the initial Project Proposal request should complete Section 1 – Project Background.

As applicable, all remaining sections should be completed for the final Project Charter.

Additional information may also be included in the requests. This information will be used to decide if 1) the project request is
approved to move forward to the project charter phase and 2) the project charter receives approval as an approved IT project.

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Table of Contents

1 PROJECT BACKGROUND ............................................................................................... 3

1.1 Problem/Opportunity Description ..........................................................................................................3
1.2 Project Sponsorship ................................................................................................................................3
1.3 Benefits ...................................................................................................................................................3
1.4 Goals .......................................................................................................................................................4
1.5 Risks (see sec 3.1)...................................................................................................................................4
1.6 Estimated Delivery Dates and Budget....................................................................................................4
1.7 Stakeholders and Clients.........................................................................................................................4

2 PROJECT SCOPE ............................................................................................................. 6

2.1 Objectives ...............................................................................................................................................6
2.2 Deliverables ............................................................................................................................................6

3 PROJECT PLAN................................................................................................................ 8
3.1 Risk Management Plan ...........................................................................................................................8
3.2 Project Timeline......................................................................................................................................8
3.3 Dependencies ..........................................................................................................................................9
3.4 Issues and Policy Implications ...............................................................................................................9

4 TECHNICAL FEATURES ................................................................................................ 10

5 PROJECT ORGANIZATION & STAFFING...................................................................... 11

5.1 Team members......................................................................................................................................11
5.2 Governance ...........................................................................................................................................11

6 PROJECT BUDGET ........................................................................................................ 12

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1 Project Background

1.1 Problem/Opportunity Description

The purpose of this project is to develop a state-of-the-art consolidated server and storage
infrastructure that can be used to provide a set of server hosting services to the campus. The goal
of these services is to consolidate the support load of managing the many lightly loaded servers
deployed around campus. The infrastructure must provide for application level flexibility, quick
deployment of applications, quick and easy redeployment of compute resources, high availability
and redundancy, reduced administrative overhead and reduced overall cost.
The infrastructure will also be leveraged to deal with the currently unfulfilled demand for on-
demand services for faculty and staff. These services may include Oracle, mysql, FileMaker and
web servers with varying degrees of dynamic content.
We are faced with the consolidation of a large number of individual servers maintained by
decentralized IT support staff. The current support for these systems is inconsistent, there is no
leveraging of resources or expertise, and there are no standard operating system, platform or
security policies in place. Many of these systems will need to be replaced during the consolidation
process because they are not appropriate for the task or are well beyond their life expectancy.
There are many systems that are critical to the operation of the campus that do not have redundant
or backup systems in the event of a failure. Basically, money will need to be spent whether we
consolidate to an infrastructure or just move systems centrally.
The “single server to single service” model provides for a large number of underutilized systems.
In the past this was considered desirable because it isolated one service from the failure of another.
This was at the expense of higher individual support and overall system cost. This isolation of
services can now be accomplished on single robust systems providing for a much greater utilization
of systems resources and a reduced number of staff to support the services. This model also allows
centralized IT to be much more responsive in the deployment of new services to our customers.

1.2 Project Sponsorship

Name and Title Phone Email

Executive Sponsor Larry Merkley, Vice Provost and CIO lmerkley@ucsc.edu
Project Leader Brad Smith, Director of Core Technologies brad@soe.ucsc.edu
Project Manager David Klein, IT Project Manager klein@ucsc.edu

1.3 Benefits
The benefits this project will be cheaper, more responsive, and more robust server management.
Cost savings comes from statistical sharing of system resources and improved effectiveness of
systems support staff. Improved responsiveness comes from more sophisticated tools for system
deployment, configuration, and resource management. Improved robustness comes from platform
standardization, which facilitates disaster preparedness, hardware redundancy, failover processes,
and security monitoring and enforcement.

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1.4 Goals
Describe the project goals. What will be achieved by this project? This objective will be evaluated at the conclusion of
a project to see if was achieved or not. Be specific providing measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound
goals.
• Provide infrastructure for virtualized Windows or Linux servers, a new ITS service. This
means the ability to provide a standard server configuration to users within 48 hours of
the request. Currently users wait 4-6 weeks to order a new physical workstation and set it
up.
• Provide a scalable infrastructure for centralized storage, a new service offering tiered levels
of storage performance and redundancy. Scalable means adding servers and additional
storage capacity without interruption to existing servers.
• Provide architecture for backup and recovery of data on the centralized storage system.
Recovery times will depend on level of service and criticality of data.
• Reduce server support costs (Gartner estimate of $200K)
• Improved security / risk management – all servers under the control of the new
infrastructure will be patched for security and bug fixes, reducing risk (metric?, # of
intrusions before/after migration?)
• Increased utilization of servers and storage by at least 25 % (metric assumes we can get
current values from the VM assessment)

1.5 Risks (see sec 3.1)

Identify any factors that will affect the outcome of the project.
• Resistance to migration from outside Core tech
• Complexity in managing the VM and SAN environments

1.6 Estimated Delivery Dates and Budget

Provide the estimated start and end dates of the project. Also provide the estimated budget for the project. Both will
be used in initial classification of the project. A more detailed timeline and projected budget is required for the next
step in the project charter.
The project begins late 12/05 and ends 11/06 – 11 months
Estimated Budget (check one):

< $8,000 $8,000-$24,999 $25,000-$249,000 $250,000-$499,000 >$500,000

This cost is primarily for server and storage hardware and VM software.

1.7 Stakeholders and Clients

Who are those people outside of the project who have an interest in the outcome? Who are the people that will be
affected by this project? Who are the people that will be affected if this project is not undertaken?

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Stakeholder Reason Win conditions Lose conditions

CT systems Receivers of Smooth deployment of Complex support

administrators
DL’s and Division
System Admins
IT services and CRM
Faculty and staff
ITS management
Applications Solutions
deployment new systems, excellent
deliverables. Will be training for new
the support staff for environment, ease of
infrastructure adding new capacity,
ease of monitoring
system health
Source of migrated Ability to refer
systems in the future, requests for standard
Users of centralized servers to CRM,
services, must respond transfer of servers to
to user requests for CT, reduced system
servers admin costs and
people, ease of setup
for unusual
configurations
Receivers of the Ability to respond
process deliverables. successfully to server
Will eventually provide requests, ability to refer
the new services unusual requests to DL
directly to end users or CT for analysis /
response, excellent
training on service
components
Requesters for new Standard request is
servers delivered within 48
hours; administration
is as easy as individual
server they would set
up. Server and data
redundancy maintains
high availability
Provide overall Support costs are
support for service and reduced, support staff
existing servers, own can be reassigned to
customer satisfaction other tasks, new
service is widely
accepted
Provides and Image maintenance is
maintains” golden easy, test servers can
images” of standard be deployed quickly
servers, users of and reconfigured
development and test easily; storage for
servers, assists in enterprise applications
evaluation testing is available and easily
configured
tasks, inadequate
training, higher
support costs
Performance is so
poor that migration is
not an option, cost of
new service to division
is too high, inadequate
redundancy results in
lost data
Advertise service but
have inadequate
capacity to respond,
poor training, necessity
to refer all requests to
CT due to complexity
Requests take too long
to deploy, virtual
server is unreliable,
administration is
difficult, costs are too
high, data recovery is
slow or fails
New service fails to
gain acceptance, costs
are not reduced
significantly
Servers are difficult to
deploy or are too rigid,
VM server
performance is
significantly different
from standalone server

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2 Project Scope

2.1 Objectives
Provide a concrete statement describing what the project is trying to achieve. Be clear about what the project will and
what it will not include.
This project is a prerequisite to providing “server management” services to the campus at large.
The project scope is limited to migration of Core Technology servers to the new virtual
environment and centralized storage in order to validate the Production-worthiness of the new
architecture. Future migrations will be planned, but may not be deployed as part of this project
due to budget limitations.
„ Provide infrastructure and process to support future “on-demand” service for new Windows
/ Linux servers and migration of some existing servers to the new virtual environment
„ Tiered service levels for server configuration and performance (SLA’s)
„ Standard platform definitions for quick server setup (golden images)
„ 24 x 7 Support, quick response time
„ First round of training for support organizations
„ Provide scalable infrastructure and process to support future services for centralized storage
and file sharing.
„ Tiered service levels for storage capacity and performance (SLA’s)
„ Redundancy, backup and recovery, data security
„ Supports Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS file systems
„ Deploy server and storage capacity for Core tech
„ Migrate CT Windows / Linux servers to new environment
„ Migrate CT Solaris systems to new storage architecture
„ Plan for migration of Divisional servers (identify migration candidates only, does
not include actual migration)

2.2 Deliverables
Objective 1 – Evaluate the concept of virtual servers and potential hardware/software vendors

Project Deliverable Work Products/Description

Evaluation of potential • Requirements published
vendors • Dell/VMware assessment of existing systems and their
virtualization potential - report
• Test of “Proof of Concept” system (Dell/EMC/VMware)
• Evaluation plan (test plan and acceptance criteria) published
• Evaluation report for candidate vendors published.

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Objective 2 – develop a clear process to set up new virtual servers and to migrate existing
individual servers to the virtual environment

Project Deliverable Work Products/Description

• Service level design – server and storage SLAs
Server deployment
process and service • New server process document
infrastructure • Server migration process document.
• Training for ITS staff (CT and IT services)
• High-level migration plan for divisional Windows/Linux servers

Objective 3 – Actual migration of Core Tech servers (Windows and Linux) to the virtual
environment

Project Deliverable Work Products/Description

Actual deployment of the
hardware for first group
of servers
• Virtual Server environment architecture design.
• Deployment of new physical computing hardware and
virtualization software.
• Actual migration of Core Tech Windows / Linux servers to new
architecture
• Migration of selected enterprise Solaris systems’ data to central
storage (selection based on current and near future needs)

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3 Project Plan

3.1 Risk Management Plan

Define how risks will be identified and the process for escalation. Identify the expected risks to which the project will be exposed.
Assess the likelihood of each risk occurring (probability) and its impact on the project. Outline a plan for managing the risks;
include risk-minimization measures and contingency plans for recovery and damage limitation. Rate each risk probability and
impact as H(igh), M(edium) or (L)ow.

Risk Factor Probability Impact Risk Management Action

(H-M-L) (H-M-L)
Non-acceptance of the idea of virtual L M Advance approval of
servers by divisions requirements and testing
methods. Benchmarking to
prove performance and
reliability goals are achieved
Non-acceptance of centralized storage by M M Advance approval of
divisions requirements and testing
methods. Clear analysis of risk
after providing redundancy
within the data center. Start
service with non-critical data
to build user confidence.
VM environment does not perform as L H Technology is already in use at
expected other UC sites. We will
consult with them to avoid
deployment mistakes
Budget for deployment is not approved or L H Project has been proposed for
is reduced over a year as part of the IT
consolidation. Main
component of this risk is not
being able to deploy as much
capacity as expected, delaying
these services to the campus
Deployment of this environment is L M Make sure we have clear
complex and difficult to manage requirements – don’t install
more features than are needed
to provide the services.
Provide adequate
documentation and training to
CT and CRM staff to reduce
errors.

3.2 Project Timeline

Using the template provided or project planning software, indicate the tasks necessary to complete the project. The
recommended project planning software is Microsoft Project for Windows or ProjectWizards Merlin for Macintosh
<http://www.projectwizards.net/en/>.
SEE SEPARATE MS PROJECT FILE

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3.3 Dependencies
• IT Services / CRM group are required to accept the virtual server allocation process and
provide the service to the campus.
• Applications group is required to help identify representative applications for testing
server performance and to build the “golden” images, canned server configurations for
standard applications.
• Licensing group within ITS is needed to develop an ongoing scheme for licensing server
OS and applications.
• Divisions (DL’s) are required to review various deliverables, provide a list of candidate
servers for migration, assist in testing, and direct the migration of the selected servers.
• Security is needed to specify minimum security measures for each server and the ongoing
updating process.

3.4 Issues and Policy Implications

Generally speaking, the virtual servers present similar policy issues as individual servers. These
include:
• Software licensing – possible changes due to virtual environment.
• Initial and ongoing funding for server hardware and storage capacity – how money is
allocated to Core Technologies to add capacity
• Security policies related to HIPAA and PCI can be more easily administered.

For complete list of issues, see separate Issues Log for the project.

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4 Technical Features
Provide a broad description of the features of the proposed application, database or technology. If specific products are being
considered or have been selected, please indicate. Also indicate whether you technical direction is consistent with campus of
UCOP standards.
The key technology features of this project are the introduction of a virtual server environment –
the ability to host multiple “servers” on one physical platform – and the use of a Storage Area
Network (SAN) for centralized storage.

Virtualization
Virtualization is an abstraction layer that decouples the physical hardware from the operating
system to deliver greater IT resource utilization and flexibility.
Virtualization allows multiple virtual machines, with heterogeneous operating systems to run in
isolation, side-by-side on the same physical machine. Each virtual machine has its own set of
virtual hardware (e.g., RAM, CPU, NIC, etc.) upon which an operating system and applications are
loaded. The operating system sees a consistent, normalized set of hardware regardless of the actual
physical hardware components.
Virtual machines are encapsulated into files, making it possible to rapidly save, copy and provision
a virtual machine. Full systems (fully configured applications, operating systems, BIOS and virtual
hardware) can be moved, within seconds, from one physical server to another for zero-downtime
maintenance and continuous workload consolidation.

Storage Area Network (SAN)

A storage area network (SAN) is a high-speed special-purpose network (or subnetwork) that
interconnects different kinds of data storage devices with associated data servers on behalf of a
larger network of users. Typically, a storage area network is part of the overall network of
computing resources for an enterprise. A storage area network is usually clustered in close
proximity to other computing resources such as IBM z990 mainframes but may also extend to
remote locations for backup and archival storage, using wide area network carrier technologies
such as ATM or SONET .
A storage area network can use existing communication technology such as IBM's optical fiber
ESCON or it may use the newer Fibre Channel technology. Some SAN system integrators liken it
to the common storage bus (flow of data) in a personal computer that is shared by different kinds
of storage devices such as a hard disk or a CD-ROM player.
SANs support disk mirroring, backup and restore, archival and retrieval of archived data, data
migration from one storage device to another, and the sharing of data among different servers in a
network. SANs can incorporate subnetworks with network-attached storage (NAS) systems.

UCOP
There are no UCOP standards for this type of architecture. VMware environments are up and
running enterprise-level server applications at UCSB and UCB.

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5 Project Organization & Staffing

5.1 Team members

ROLE NAMES & CONTACT RESPONSIBILITIES TIME

INFORMATION
Executive Larry Merkley, Vice Provost Project duration
Sponsor and CIO
lmerkley@ucsc.edu
Project Brad Smith, Director of Core provide support to the project Project duration
Sponsor Technologies manager and project team,
nurture high-level contacts and
brad@soe.ucsc.edu
champion the project to provide
exposure, and monitor the
project's overall performance.
Project David Klein, IT Project planning and ensuring that the 40% for project
Manager Manager project is successfully completed duration
on time, within budget, and to
klein@ucsc.edu
the client's scope
Project Team Shawn Duncan Server expert – Windows
and
Members Roel Flora Server expert – UNIX
Gail Greenspan Storage SME
Bomi Patel, Bob Vitale DL reps
John Hammond Server Manager
TBD IT Services
Christi Bengard Applications specialist
Advisors and David Stihler Networking SME
Resources
Steve Zenone Security SME
Steve Hauskins Additional DL’s for reviews
Ken Garges Mac OS SME
Katie Perry Purchasing
Raji Sabbagh DB expert
Eric Mitchell Library Services SME

5.2 Governance
This project is under the auspices of the ITAIC, chaired by Brad Smith, which in turn reports to
ITC.
Senior Management Team (SMT) approval is required to transition from phase 1 (evaluation) to
phase 2 (deployment)

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6 Project Budget
SEE SEPARATE SPREADSHEET
Budget was moved to a separate file to allow this Charter to be posted on the public web site.

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