Server Consolidation and Reduction Strategies

Effective October 1, 2020 USGS will cost recover charges as follows:

  • Local Sites will be responsible for the licensing costs of all Windows Server OS’ and Microsoft application installations (other than Office and Windows 10) in their local environment.
    • Annually a snapshot of the environment will be captured. New installations will be trued up and license costs will be distributed to the responsible cost center.
  • Local Sites will be charged for the CDM (BigFix agent, etc) costs per Windows and non-Windows Server.
  • Windows Server MECM licenses will no longer be supported.  Licenses have been dropped and sites should remove MECM client from servers and use BigFix for all server patching.
  • Sites should continue to upgrade Windows Servers to meet Bureau Operating System Standardization initiative.
  • Cost Centers will see the new charges in the FY2020 Bureau Cost Distribution.

Server Consolidation/Reduction Guidance:

  • Information about Windows Server Licensing per core – how to buy the right hardware
  • Think backup and restore rather than distributed or redundant services on hardware – Consolidate services onto a single server, or VM’s on a server
  • Think virtual rather than physical – can project servers be shared?
  • On premise virtualization – can multiple servers be virtualized onto a single hardware?
  • Center level server consolidation – can services be accessed remotely (Using a remote DHCP/Print/File server)

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