When HP hired Forrester last May to conduct a multi-national survey of data center inefficiencies, the research firm found many companies seriously lacking in information about their IT equipment. (The survey included 185 IT professionals in the US, UK and Australia.)
“A substantial number of our survey respondents were not able to estimate the utilization of their server or storage infrastructure,” the Forrester report stated. “Upon consolidating systems, many firms discover that a portion of their servers are ghosts – servers that are turned on but crashed or abandoned.”
In light of this lack of knowledge, Forrester suggests collecting asset information including business owner, hardware configuration, and utilization before proceeding with virtualization, consolidation, or data center infrastructure changes.