INF104 Follow Up Actions | Project Management

Must Haves

Recommendation	Action	Responsibility	Status
We must set up the shared technology VMs as soon as possible to enable future projects to make use of the new Infrastructure and incorporate migrations into existing 13/14 project plans e.g STU236 Disability upgrade from Coldfusion MX could be migrated to Coldfusion 10 on New ColdFusion VM.	New Coldfusion 10 VM Infrastructure being delivered by ITSS01 for ECA008 Mini Portfolio Migration project. Other business areas should plan to migrate Coldfusion MX/Coldfusion 9 apps to Coldfusion 10. Coldfusion apps listed in tab 3 of spreadsheet in Appendix A. e.g STU236 Disability upgrade from Coldfusion MX could be migrated to Coldfusion 10 on New ColdFusion VM. Other and Java VM’s will be delivered by 14/15 New Application Tier Replacement project HR VMs will be delivered by “HR Migrate Oracle HR, Payroll and Pensions Application to new corporate servers” project proposed for 14/15.	The INF Programme has a project in place for 14/15 to deliver the new VMs: INF 14/15 Proposals Business areas will have 14/15 or 15/16 projects to migrate applications to new infrastructure.	Heather to arrange for Stephen to prepare list of CF applications
We must ensure work to replace/redesign applications using obsolete software is scheduled as soon as possible. Where appropriate, applications must be redeveloped in advance of the migration onto the new Applications Infrastructure. The SPARC Solaris Infrastructure cannot be kept running to support these applications beyond the duration of the project to migrate the applications in scope.	Spreadsheet in Appendix A should be reviewed by Project Services to Identify Obsolete applications that can be deleted, and more importantly which applications are using obsolete software that require redevelopment. These should be included in 14/15 projects plans if possible. Note that this action will be done by the INF104 project.	The spreadsheet in Appendix A of the INF104 Review Document highlights the plans for business area application migrations.	Maurice to check with Programme Owners that they have plans in place.
We must produce a template Benchmark document to measure and gather stats on application workload/performance to clearly measure benefits of moving to new Virtual Infrastructure.	We should review measurements collected for ECA008 Mini Portfolio onto new VM CF 10 environment and build on this to create standard document.	Service Task – add action to INF Programme Report to review monthly.	Heather will reivew
We must identify if there is high I/O activity in an application being migrated as this may hamper standard VM operations such as snapshots and vMotions and ITI need to be aware of this.	This should be reviewed as individual Applications are migrated onto the new Infrastructure and ITI informed.	Service Task – add action to INF Programme Report to review monthly.	Done
We must investigate ongoing network issues with Virtual Infrastructure and ensure these are resolved.	These should continue to be progressed by Production Management and ITI Virtual Hosting Team	Service Task – add action to INF Programme Report to review monthly.	Done

Should Haves

Recommendation	Action	Responsibility	Status
The VM setup should be automated and specification fully documented to allow for quick creation of servers. The Virtual Server request and build procedures should be reviewed and fully defined. If necessary these should be refined to meet our needs avoiding the requirement for manual pre requisite tasks for routine builds. (information on existing setup in https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/insite/Standard+Linux+server+build).	Dev Tech/Tech Man and ITI Virtual Team should meet to review current procedures and make refinements to current process to avoid manual steps where possible. Priority is to be able to request VMs and get them setup quickly.	Service Task – add action to INF Programme Report to review monthly.	Ongoing Reviewed at montly Apps-ITI meeting
ITI should make sure skills to support VMs are shared among the wider team to prevent bottlenecks waiting for a particular resource to carry out certain tasks.	To be progressed in regular management meeting with ITI and IS APPS. We need to make identify our requirements and agree on SLAs. Ensure we have level of resource available to provide support for our VM requirements. e.g. VM builds, VM replicas carried out within agreed SLA.	Service Task – add action to INF Programme Report to review monthly.	Ongoing Reviewed at montly Apps-ITI meeting
We should investigate tools to assist with automated deployment of software and consistency of environments e.g. Puppet to install and configure Tomcat environments. We should ensure we have processes in place to routinely patch and upgrade versions of the software to keep these up to date and prevent these remaining static after the initial install.	There is an APP004 project in place to implement puppet for a defined task. This investigation should recommend how this can be implemented to automate and standardise routine tasks in IS-APPS.	Statement required from Dev Tech re APP004 project.	Ongoing
We would benefit from having our read only access to the vSphere Client extended to include specific information on the hosts making up the cluster and details of the specific hosts VM’s are residing on at a particular time.	Iain is progressing our access to the VM Infrastructure with ITI. We need access to this information or additional resources in ITI to provide information as and when required.	Service Task – add action to INF Programme Report to review monthly.	Ongoing Reviewed at montly Apps-ITI meeting
We do not currently have a definitive source of information on the applications running on particular servers or a list of all the services that we run. This needs to be addressed.	Production Management to identify requirements. Scope should be fully defined, what details should be collected, how will this be maintained? Will this be satisfied by CMDB, Change control or what else is required.		Project APP004-27 started, to deliver assetts with CMDB in Unidesk

Could Have

Recommendation	Action	Responsibility	Status
As we will potentially have 10’s of VM servers in the Applications Infrastructure we should ensure we have process in place maintain details of the software/applications installed on each VM. This could be added to comments in vSphere Client.	Investigate possibility of updating this column in vSphere client. Determine if the Notes column can be populated with brief description of server.		Done

This article was published on Oct 18, 2016