Is anyone out there running multiple applications or databases on
single UNIX systems? Is anyone using UNIX workload management and
partitioning features to cut admin load, hit SLAs, reduce footprints,
and, hopefully, cut costs? Our company, Gabriel Consulting Group, is
running a survey to see if customers in the real world (i.e. you folks)
are actually using these features or if the vendors are simply
whistling in the dark. We would greatly appreciate your participation
in our research project. To respond to our survey, please cut and paste
this entire message into an email and send it (after marking your
choices, of course) to survey1@gabrielconsultinggroup.com. That address
again is:  survey1@gabrielconsultinggroup.com

If you give us your name and mailing address, we will send you a small,
but shabby, token of our appreciation to thank you for giving us your
opinions. We may wish to contact some of you for short follow-up phone
interviews; these people will receive slightly better gifts to
compensate them for their time. Please remember to keep you
expectations low in order to avoid disappointment. We will hold all
responses, email addresses, etc., strictly confidential and will under
no circumstances disclose any identifying information to third parties.
We hate spam just as much as you do. Now, on to the survey...

1. Please tell us which server families you predominately work with
(rank from 1=most closely to 4=less closely)

IBM AIX ________
Sun Solaris ________
HP, HP-UX  ________
HP, Tru64  ________
Other  ___________

2. How big is your entire organization? (number of total employees)

Under 500  ________
500 to 1,500 ________
1,500 to 5,000 ________
5,000 +  ____________

3. In your organization, how many UNIX servers do you oversee or have
some level of detailed knowledge about?

Under 10 _________
10 - 20  _________
20 - 50 _________
50 - 100 ________
100 +  ___________

4. Of the UNIX servers you have knowledge of, how many are running more
than one application or database on a single O/S instance or in
multiple O/S instances on a single multi-processor SMP server?

________ None, virtually all of our UNIX systems run single
applications only

________ Very few (10% or less)

________ Half of our UNIX servers are running multiple applications

________ More than half of our UNIX servers are running multiple
applications

Time to branch! If you answered "None" or "Very few" to
question #4 above, move right on to question #5 below. If you answered
"Half" or "More than half" to question #4 above, then proceed
directly to the PARTING COMMENTS section below.

5. Since you're still with us at question #5, you're organization
does not run multiple UNIX applications on single systems, right? UNIX
vendors have been talking a lot about this capability, and the benefits
if can provide to customers, for the last couple of years. In the next
set of questions, we would like to get a feel for why your data center
has not adopted this new UNIX usage model. Next to each of the
statements below, please let us know on a 1-5 scale if you agree that
the statement explains why your organization does not run multiple
applications on single UNIX servers...

a)  "Lack of knowledge and expertise, our vendors haven't supplied
us with much info"  ______ (5=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree)

b)  "We think combining apps on single servers will compromise
availability"  ________ (5=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree)

c)  "We don't understand how this can or will save money or
management effort" ________ (5=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree)

d)  "Our UNIX apps are running well right now, we don't want to
change anything" ________ (5=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree)

e)  "We simply don't have the cycles to make major changes right
now"  ________ (5=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree)

f)  "Where's the beef? What do we get out of this stuff?"
________ (5=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree)

g)  "UNIX operating systems/hardware are not sophisticated enough to
run multiple apps" ________ (5=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree)

h)  "There's too much political BS in our organization, everyone
owns their own servers and will not agree to move their app onto a box
they don't own outright or have complete use of" ________
(5=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree)

i)  "UNIX management and accounting tools are not up to the task of
metering individual app usage or making sure service levels are
maintained" ________ (5=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree)


PARTING COMMENTS:

We know our simple survey won't capture everything you can tell us
- so please give us any additional thoughts or comments you have on
this issue. If we didn't ask a question we should have asked or asked
a dumb question, here's where you can let us know.
(Comments space)



If you would like to receive the free (cheap, shabby) gift we mentioned
above, please give us your name and mailing address below. The gifts
will be sent out 3-4 weeks after the survey closes. If you would be
willing to participate in a short follow-up phone interview, please
include your daytime phone number. We will keep this information
strictly confidential and not share it with any outside party.
(Contact info space)




Remember to email your completed survey to

survey1@gabrielconsultinggroup.com.

Thank you again for participating in our survey, we appreciate your
time.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]