Saturday, January 9, 2010

IT Infrastructure Solution Evaluation

Selecting an IT infrastructure solution is always a challenge. I was listing some of the possible criteria to differentiate solutions. I have seen many such solution selections, some of them are decided on personal/organizational relationships, political reasons :-). Whichever the key decision criteria, some technical backing is mandatory. May be this list (I will keep on adding/modifying it) would help someone in some way.

1. System Requirements and Compliance – Answers are binary type – (Yes/No)

Sample criteria:-

  • Need a certified Unix OS?
  • Need to comply with regulations for digital records (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Securities and Exchange Commission rules 17a-3 and 17a-4 and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA))?
  • Need to comply with "EU Code of Conduct for Data Centers”?
  • Need to comply with "TIA-942 Datacenter Infrastructure Standard”?

2. Solution Architecture Features – Answers are descriptive – (% marks can be given)

Sample criteria:-

  • How far solution logically tired?
  • How far solution physically tired?
  • How far horizontally scalable?
  • How far vertically scalable?
  • How far inter-dependencies between building blocks (servers, VMs, storage arrays/trays ...etc) avoided?
  • How easy to manage the solution?
  • How much control and tracking enabled for the solution?
3. Solution Acceptance (How Well-known, proven)

Sample criteria:-

  • How many professionals/customers approved/implemented?
  • Presence of similar solution implementations?

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