Server sprawl occurs when your team has an excessive amount of servers, creating unneeded complexity. Essentially, it’s an inefficient use of resources because the vast majority of servers are not utilized to their full capacity.
This is caused by poor planning. Planning your infrastructure can be difficult as your business scales, and acquiring and implementing more physical servers can often seem easier than virtualizing servers.
We turned to an industry expert, Jen Martinson, the General Manager for Secure Thoughts, for some insight into server sprawl. Here is what she had to say…
Server Sprawl by Jen Martinson
Jen has some great ideas for dealing with server sprawl. We particularly like her ideas of hiring the best IT talent and consolidating servers. In fact we have an article on interview questions for system administrators you should check out. We have another piece on server consolidation and virtualization here as well that might be of interest.