In my previous post I discussed what you need to know about servers, storage and networks when undertaking a Discovery project. Today, I’ll discuss a few more items you’ll need to learn about in IT Discovery: applications, services, middleware and contracts.
Applications, Services, and Middleware
The discovery phase must catalog applications, services and middleware, including documenting functionality and applications that depend on them. Failure to recognize and accommodate the following components when reorganizing a data center may cause critical applications to fail:
- Applications that share information and interact in real-time and are supported by business, core and middleware services.
- Business services, such as a service used to check in an airline passenger, may draw data from several databases and access the functionality of a variety of applications.
- Core services support business applications, technology infrastructure and/or middleware. Examples include domain name services (DNS), directory services, authentication services, and FTP services.
From an end-user perspective, these services operate transparently—as long as they function properly. If a domain name server fails, every application in your organization may be impacted.
- Middleware services are essential elements that support business operations, including services for queuing and transaction management, transporting data, and coordinating data movement and transaction flows.
Contracts
Hardware and software IT assets may have associated documentation that must be tracked, including contracts, warranty protection, maintenance and service contracts. For example, Service Level Agreements often guarantee the performance, reliability and availability of an IT asset or
service.
Keep in mind that a contract may be affected by a data center transformation. For example, if hardware is moved to a new geographic location to centralize operations, that move might impact service agreements. Or, virtualizing multiple servers into one larger physical server may also affect software contracts.
