The Fosbury Flop in the Datacenter

So, I asked Barry, "Do you know about Dick Fosbury?" It’s always an adventure when I pull out references pre-1975. While the anchors and connectors are solid in my brain from that era (since I lived it), they can be quickly lost on some of today’s younger IT professionals. They weren’t around for eight-inch floppy disks, punch cards and Dick Fosbury.

"Was that the guy in the leather jacket on Happy Days?" asked Barry.
"No," I replied. "That was Fonzie."
Wrong decade, but a good guess.

I had met with Barry twice about challenges he was facing in the data center. Between meeting one and two, Barry had added another bare metal server. That’s more power, more cooling and more management time for patching and maintenance. Barry was a perfect candidate for a virtualized data center given the growth his company was experiencing, but his concerns were very common.

"I know what I know. I can keep the wheels turning and the end users happy. If virtualization does not work, I don’t want to be looking for a job in this economy. How will I find the time to learn all this new stuff?"

So I asked Barry, "Do you know about Dick Fosbury?
Fosbury won the Gold Medal in the High Jump in the 1968 Olympics. It wasn’t so much that he won, but that his win fundamentally changed the sport forever more. In effort to reduce injuries, the landing area was changed from sawdust to foam mats, no longer requiring jumpers to land on their feet. This change in the "industry" led to Fosbury’s change in approach. While everyone continued to jump in the scissor or straddle kick method, Dick developed the technique you see today, where jumpers go over with their back to the bar, AKA: The "Fosbury Flop." Virtualization of servers and storage are the technological equivalent of the Fosbury method as racks of bare metal have gone the way of the scissor kick.

So let’s look at Barry’s points:

"I know what I know."
Virtualization adds to what you know; it doesn’t replace it. There is training and support to help the learning curve. Don’t limit your company’s progress because there is new technology to learn. There always will be.

"I can keep the wheels turning and the end users happy."
But, at what cost? A burned-out IT manager because of middle of the night patches and failures does not equal happy users. Put down the bricks.

"If virtualization does not work, I don’t want to be looking for a job in this economy." Especially since virtualization skills are becoming requirements and you will not have any. Plus, companies are looking to their managers to reduce costs, which is a big part of the virtualization ROI.

"How will I find the time to learn all this new stuff?"
An easier infrastructure will put time in your day previously spent on system management. There is an upfront cost in time, but it will all come back to you in the future.

I understand how Barry feels. It’s scary the first time you jump over the bar with a different technique. But just as Fosbury changed the sport of high jumping back then, virtualization of servers and storage has changed the IT center of today. One bare metal server per application is dead. Local storage has joined the Dodo bird. Regardless of the size of your organization, embrace virtualization as the way to clear that "high bar" of performance set in your company.

Oh, and the light did go on in Barry’s head. Except now I call him Fonz. It’s all good.