Last week I discussed why discovery is important and a few crucial questions to ask before starting the process.
Today’s post is about the details that are most likely to trip up a major data center project. A single piece of seemingly trivial hardware that isn’t moved over to the new environment can shut down a vital system or, because of interdependencies, multiple systems.
The items involved in IT Discovery that we’ll discuss are servers and storage.
Servers
The workhorses of your data center, information collected for every physical server should include
- Manufacturer and model number
- Physical attributes such as memory, CPU, storage, NICs, HBAs
- Firmware
- Location
- MAC addresses
- IP addresses and VLANs
- Configuration settings
- Operating systems or hypervisors
- Virtual servers running on each physical server
- Applications or services running on each physical/virtual server and known interrelationships between servers.
Keep in mind that not only are application and database servers important, but crucial infrastructure servers that support under the hood functionality areas are as well.
Storage
The cost of storage has dropped dramatically over the years, which means the cost of storing each gigabyte of critical data is a small fraction of what it once was. The downside is that low cost has encouraged data proliferation, little of which is ever deleted.
Critical data storage information that must be documented includes:
- Where are all of the storage units and what data is stored where? What makes and models are in service?
- Is the data structured or unstructured?
- Which applications will be affected if some storage units are shut down for maintenance?
- How is data backed up? Is all data backed up to the level warranted by its criticality? What, if any, archiving plans are in place?
Next time I’ll discuss discovery and networks, applications, middleware services, and contracts.
(See, “Success is in the details – Part II”)
Virima features can automatically discover and map your critical IT resources and the interconnections that link them to one another, your applications and services, and your users.
Virima is here to help. To get started, contact us today to schedule a demo and explore the possibilities!
