Govt agencies fatten Linux, Unix server environments

The Federal Government has revealed a 6.4 percent increase in the use of *nix servers among agencies that spend over $2 million a year on IT.

Graphs and trends

The increase occurred exclusively in larger agencies between 2008-9 and 2009-10, according to an iTnews' analysis of figures [xls] contained in a new benchmarking study [pdf].

The study involved a mix of undisclosed large and medium-sized agencies.

By the end of 2009-10, surveyed agencies were using a total of 3039 physical machines running *nix software, including Unix, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD "and related platforms".

Large agencies deployed 996 new *nix servers between 2008-9 and 2009-10, while medium-sized agencies retired at least 45 *nix units over the same period.

Breaking down *nix use

The study of Government ICT expenditure, released this week, provides some insight into 13,199 physical servers used by large agencies and 2162 at medium-sized agencies.

In larger agency environments, *nix server usage increased across all surveyed categories of use - development, test, production and dedicated disaster recovery.

Most of the 996 physical *nix boxes added by big agencies in 2009-10 went straight into production environments.

Nix boxes in production environments went from 1124 servers in 2008-9 to 2021 in 2009-10.

The increase in *nix boxes deployed for test or development purposes was more modest - an increase of around 40 units each.

Only for dedicated disaster recovery was growth in *nix servers fairly flat year-on year, with an increase of seven physical units between 2008-9 and 2009-10.

What about Wintel?

The majority of physical midrange servers were still Wintel machines, which used Intel processors and Microsoft Windows software, and accounted for 80 percent of all boxes in use.

But the physical number of Wintel machines in use was declining.

Larger agencies shed a total of 1355 Wintel boxes across all usage categories between 2008-09 and 2009-10.

Meanwhile, medium-sized agencies increased their use of physical Wintel machines over the same period, deploying 98 more machines year-on-year (though it is unclear for what purpose).

Development and production environments within large agencies appeared to shed the most Wintel boxes, although the use of Wintel boxes in test environments also fell.

The only area where large agencies deployed more physical Wintel boxes was for dedicated disaster recovery. The number of servers for that purpose grew from 434 in 2008-9 to 505 in 2009-10.

Read on to page two for reasons for the Wintel decline and hard Terabyte figures on the Government's booming storage demands.

Clearly, virtualisation is one reason that the number of physical Wintel servers may be on the decline.

The benchmarking study indicated that the number of operating system instances per physical server rose sharply over the period, from an average 1.43 to 1.95 instances on each server.

That means:

• There were 22,265 operating system instances on all physical servers in 2008-9.
• There were 29,954 instances on all physical servers one year later.

Put another way, 7689 virtual instances were created on physical servers between 2008-9 and 2009-10.

So although fewer physical servers were deployed, the density of those in operation increased dramatically, which could explain the decline in physical Wintel numbers.

The macro view

The benchmark study shows the Federal Government is a major consumer and producer of ICT, spending $5 billion a year on average.

The report suggests ICT expenditure increased only marginally between 2008-9 and 2009-10 in real terms but decreased as a proportion of departmental operating costs.

ICT accounted for about five percent of agencies' total operating costs in 2009-10.

Special Minister of State Gary Gray said the Government was investing in enhancing and extending its ICT capability.

About 30 percent of expenditure was dedicated to new projects in 2009-10 as opposed to 70 percent allocated to 'business as usual' expenses.

Thin clients are on the rise, accounting for four percent of desktop devices in 2009-10, compared to two percent the year prior. Traditional desktop computers fell two percent over the same period.

Perhaps the biggest single change among agencies related to storage systems.

Overall growth in storage capacities grew by 75 percent over the study period, from 44,804 to 78,277 Terabytes.

A big winner there was in offline/offsite/ tape storage. The need for it grew 84 percent, from 33,604 Terabytes to 61,698 Terabytes over the study period.