Don’t Go It Alone Data Center Virtualization Journey
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Table of Contents You Look Lost
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Are You Lost?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Choose Your Own Path
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Server Virtualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Desktop Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Disaster Preparedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Picture This... Education Use Cases . . Government Use Cases . Commercial Use Cases . Healthcare Use Cases. .
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Other Journeys Washingtonville . . . . . Monroe Community College Le Moyne College . . . . Watch Le Moyne’s Journey .
So What? Now What?
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Are You Ready? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Take a Step Forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
About Annese
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A Need. A Network. Annese . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Connect With Our Experts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
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You Look Lost
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Don’t Go It Alone | You Look Lost
Are You Lost? Finding your way through data center virtualization can be
challenging. Our Park Rangers
can help point you in the right direction.
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Howdy y’all! I’m Steve, Your Server Virtualization Park Ranger. I can tell you all about reducing your power consumption and operational costs by consolidating servers into a smaller and more elastic footprint. It’s pretty neat stuff. Hope you wore your comfy shoes.
Greetings. I’m Darlene, Your Desktop Virtualization Park Ranger.
I’m Sam, Your Storage Park Ranger. Pleasure to Make Your Acquaintance.
Ello Mate! I’m Dale, Your Disaster Preparedness Park Ranger.
They say I’m always You may already know If you’re looking to prepared for that virtual desktop better secure and everything… but you solutions are easier and manage the mounds of never can be too careful more cost-effective to data that your company out there in the forest. manage and secure. generates, let me Take a walk with me I will show you how explain my multi-tiered, and I will give you to deliver a high consolidated storage the skinny on how performance virtual management approach. to identify risks and Follow Me! experience to users Walk this way. develop a fool-proof at any location from plan your business can any device. Follow me use in the event of a disaster. Let’s go! and I’ll tell you all my secrets...
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Choose Your Own Path
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Don’t Go It Alone | Choose Your Own Path
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Today, organizations must ask — why virtualize? — and the answer must satisfy the CFO, the CEO, and the end users, just as much as it satisfies the IT support team. Consolidating servers into a smaller and more elastic footprint allows businesses to leverage fewer physical hosts and shared storage. With server virtualization, it is reasonable to virtualize 10 (or more) virtual servers on a single hardware host.
If your child has ever missed the bus, then you understand server virtualization...
Speed of Deployment: Adding a virtual server is a quick task. In fact, virtual servers can be templates that IT can copy and turn on in minutes versus the weeks it typically takes to procure and configure a physical server. Improved Administration: With the configuration and rollout of virtual servers easily standardized and centralized, the reliability of installations and the ease of maintenance improves, as does IT’s ability to meet SLAs and user expectations.
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Server
Virtualization
My little Susie missed the school bus this morning and it sure did send my day into a tailspin! Think of my car as a single, dedicated physical server running Susie to and from school. The school bus (yep, the one that she missed) represents a host running Susie’s classmates to and from school. Each student is still very much an individual, just as each virtual server can continue to support an individual purpose; yet, they are all sharing a ride and better utilizing resources. The financial impact to each household to procure and operate a bus fleet is lower than the impact on time, wear, resources, infrastructure, and frustration that would result from driving each student to and from school in their own car.
Higher Availability: Virtual servers are applications to a host making them easily transportable across physical hosts and across disparate infrastructures. Should a hardware host fail, any and/ or all of the virtual servers running on it can be automatically restarted on another host in that data center or elsewhere. Disaster Recovery: Due to the portable nature of virtual servers and the ability to standardize the virtualization configuration, a DR site can be much more easily and affordably established for a virtualized model than for traditional physical servers. Lower OpEx: Virtual servers enable less power consumption and heat generation, and also reduce the number of physical assets for IT to update and maintain. Coupled with a more efficient administration model, server virtualization will lower overall IT overhead costs.
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Don’t Go It Alone | Choose Your Own Path
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Actually, if you think about it, a one-size-fits-all approach to anything is pretty much destined to fail. Especially when it comes to desktop virtualization because you cannot successfully address all the different needs of today’s workers. Hey, out of curiosity, which type of worker are you?
This is how I like to explain the concept of desktop virtualization to Dale, Sam, and Steve. If you were constructing a 10-story log cabin, the first few floors would be sturdy and rock-solid; but, as you get closer to the top you’ll start to notice that the foundation crumbles a bit or may start to get wobbly. The same thing would happen to your virtual environment if you’re not careful.
• The Pavement Pounder: Are you a remote worker highly reliant on your laptop and mobile device to connect to your colleagues and corporate data? • The Power Player: Do you work with demanding applications that require a high level of security and accessibility? • The Task Twirler: Is juggling multiple projects common for you? Do you need a centralized network that allows you to securely access, store, and exchange information in real-time? The challenge for IT is implementing the right kind of desktop view, applications, and services to support each user, while containing cost and addressing security and management concerns. To that point, many organizations have elected to replace their desktop PCs with simple client terminals and have, as a result, experienced measurable hardware cost savings. No lie! Stabilizing your infrastructure for desktop virtualization will allow you to roll your virtual environment out to scale and build on top of it with features like:
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Hi there! I’m so happy you decided to learn all about desktop virtualization with me. But before we begin, can I just ask you… How ridiculous do I look in this uniform? Seriously, how do they expect us all to wear a one-size-fits-all? Good golly.
Application Virtualization: According to Citrix, on-demand applications can reduce application management costs by up to 50%, improve application and data security, and accelerate application delivery. Bring Your Own Device: Survey after survey has shown that employees are happier and more productive when they are able to use their own computers, tablets, iPads, and smart phones at work. Sounds simple right? WRONG! IT is now tasked with ensuring connectivity and protecting employer data. Proactively preparing for the big BYOD sweep will centralize and streamline IT resources to successfully foster a productive “work-your-own-way” experience for employees. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure: Simplify secure access with single sign-on, deliver a high performance virtual desktop experience to users at any location from any device, and ensure network and application security.
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Employees like yourselves are anxious to get their paws on today’s big business trends—video, mobility, cloud computing, virtualization—problem is, before you can start playing with these shiny new toys, you need to make sure your playroom can properly maintain what you already have, and accommodate more.
Did you know that a typical American office worker produces 1.8 million megabytes of data each year?
What you really need is a unified storage management approach that includes disaster recovery, high performance, high availability, and takes into account utilization, power, space, and cooling. That way, you have a foundation sturdy enough to scale, and you never have to worry about all that corporate data you have floating around. It will be stored, protected, and optimized.
The amount of data generated in the world reached 2.8 zettabytes in 2012. And that number is projected to double by 2015. -MIT Technology Review
Here are a few other things to keep in mind when building your storage foundation: Archiving: Archival solutions can help if you implement them with storage that includes the right level of performance, data protection, and data retention to achieve: • rapid access to data for discovery and litigation support, • flexible data retention that helps enable compliance, and • less complexity with lower costs.
Storage
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Backup and Recovery: Safeguard critical data and drive operational efficiencies by reducing backup time, improving data recovery, and cutting infrastructure and administrative costs. This solution will allow you to: create disk-to-disk point-in-time backup copies in native format, • reduce backup times from hours or days to minutes, • reduce disk capacity requirements by up to 90% (NetApp), and • speed data recovery. Replication: Replicate powered-on virtual machines over the network from one host to another to:
• reduce bandwidth needs, • eliminate storage lock-in, and • build flexible disaster recovery. Welcome! Glad you chose to explore this path with me. Hey, you have kids? I tell ya, I’m always barking at my son to keep his room neat and orderly. He’s got so many darn toys laying around. Although, that sure doesn’t stop him from pestering his mother and me for more. Maybe you can relate.
It’s time to stop wasting time, money, and resources. A storage management approach will help you better manage what you have and enable you to fill your “toy box” up with more goodies.
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With reliance on computer networks and online services growing exponentially each year, the susceptibility to threat can be a paralyzing concern for businesses whose critical data files, applications, and systems are hanging in the balance. While you may not be able to prevent an unforeseen disaster from striking, you can effectively prepare for one.
Here are some statistics to get you shaking in your hiking boots:
Maintaining business operations in the event of the loss of a main location requires some type of a remote Disaster Recovery (DR) site. Sites may be divided into “Hot,” “Warm,” or “Cold.” A hot site allows for the most rapid recovery time to meet the shortest Recovery Time Objective, or “RTO.” Cold sites have the longest recovery time, and a warm site is somewhere in between the two.
• The average cost of downtime for a midsize company is $70,000 per hour (Gartner) • 70% of companies that experience a major data loss go out of business within a year (PricewaterhouseCoopers)
A Cold Site is little more than a configured space in a building, and may include a subset of servers, workstations, and associated infrastructure to continue business. Software may need to be installed, patches applied, and images loaded. The delay from a cold backup site to becoming fully operational can span several days or even weeks which many companies cannot afford. Hot Backup Sites have a virtual mirror image of the current data center with all systems installed, configured, patched, and running, and can often be brought up to full production in no more than a few hours by loading the latest databases and images. Companies can also load balance between the DR site and the main site using Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB). Some of the business critical applications—e-mail, IP phone systems, voicemail/ auto-attendant, and IP contact/call centers—may actually be in production in parallel with the main site. The recovery time for those applications is actually “zero” since they are already in full production.
Disaster Preparedness
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Now, I’m not trying to be an alarmist here, but I do subscribe to the better-safe-than-sorry rule. That is why in my knapsack you will find bear spray, bug repellant, iodine tablets, crew socks, headlamps, energy bars, and bandaids—the ultimate Park Ranger survival kit. Should I find myself in a threatening situation, you can bet your blue bonnet that I’ll be prepared. I hope you feel the same way about your business.
In the event of a main site outage, the GSLB Server will sense that the main site is unavailable and will redirect all traffic to the DR site. At a branch office, the local IP phone gateway would also sense through keep-alives that the call processing or voicemail system is down at the main site, and phones would register to the DR site automatically. Similarly, any call center agents could log into the remote site and continue taking customer calls without interruption. Provided call center personnel have Internet connectivity, business can continue as usual from any location until the main site comes back online.
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Picture This...
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Don’t Go It Alone | Picture This...
Educational institutions across the country are up against constrained budgets, scarce resources, and stringent testing mandates. With more and more students bringing their own devices onto campus, the role that IT is forced to play is becoming increasingly complex.
Caught between shrinking budgets and a growing need for modern technology, government IT departments need a more agile and cost-effective model for computing—one that allows them to achieve greater efficiency, contain costs, and respond faster to the needs of policy makers, agencies, and constituents. Server Virtualization provides government organizations with a clear path to cloud computing that preserves existing IT investments, security, and control, enabling them to:
Virtualization is alleviating cost, risk, and labor, while enhancing the overall learning experience. IT departments are able to manage a diverse range of applications and data from a centralized location and quickly provision them to users on an as-needed basis. Specific software programs and applications can be sanctioned to certain machines based on the needs of individual classes or users. With virtual desktops housed in the data center, assets can be better managed and secured. No sensitive information—such as student records—would need to be stored at the end-point, alleviating the risk of data loss from a computer virus or damage to hardware.
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• Reduce capital costs • Increase energy efficiency • Require less hardware while increasing the server to admin ratio • Ensure enterprise applications perform with the highest availability and performance • Improve service levels through automation A prime example of this: The U.S. House of Representatives Office of the Chief Administrative Officer consolidated 450 servers to fewer than 100, reduced power consumption by 45%, and improved resource utilization.
K-12
According to VMware, the Federal government today alone, maintains approximately 2,100 data centers, with a mandate to reduce that number to 800 by 2015. Through virtualization, this goal is achievable.
Many educators have opted to take advantage of their virtual experience from home and create lesson plans or upload assignments in advance which students can access anywhere. Students are becoming more efficient too. With a single sign-on, the student can launch their personalized desktop environment when they log onto their machine from a virtual computer lab saving valuble teaching time. Both K-12 and Higher Educational institutions can yield cost savings from desktop virtualization through: • less maintenance costs on hardware, and • Longer refresh cycles with traditional PCs.
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Don’t Go It Alone | Picture This...
Small and mid-size organizations face unique IT challenges. Deploying critical business technologies can be challenging when your IT staff is small and resources are limited. A virtualization strategy is ideal for IT managers to provision, update, or troubleshoot multiple machines remotely, and all from a centralized location. Large-scale enterprises are also using virtualization to wring the most value out of their technology dollars. Today, businesses of any size are looking to virtual servers to drive more efficient use of resources, lower maintenance costs, and faster server deployment. Other key benefits include: • Protecting data with features that automate business continuity and provide security. • Simplifying IT and saving money which can be reinvested on more strategic projects. • Consuming less power. • Complying with mandates and regulations. • Empowering employees by delivering anytime, anywhere access to the corporate network.
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The healthcare industry is amidst a period of rapid transformation. The delivery and consumption of patient care is evolving with initiatives like Electronic Health Records and Meaningful Use. Data Center Virtualization solutions are vital to ensuring a healthcare facility’s infrastructure is stable enough to: • store and protect patient records, • improve the accuracy and speed of diagnoses, and • ensure that critical information is readily available. Healthcare professionals can access their applications and data securely through a wide range of devices, allowing them to be highly mobile and collaborative wherever they are and fosters: • A collaborative atmosphere where more professionals are involved in data interpretations and patient care, and • The transition to a digital environment by eliminating manual paper and analog media.
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Other Journeys
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Objective: To virtualize 1100 desktops across three elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school.
Timeline: January, 2011 - March, 2012
Summary: Washingtonville implemented a virtualization strategy to position itself for long-term return on investment.
Benefits: • Provide remote access to virtual desktop on any device • Extend lifespan of existing equipment • Promote efficient use of IT time and resources • Reduce PC replacement resulting in long-term cost savings
“Annese’s commitment to the technological needs of the Washingtonville School District is unprecedented. It has far surpassed any previously seen with other vendor partners. They have demonstrated the importance of customer success by creating strong and enduring relationships through persistent dedication and hard work.” —Justin Schaef, Ed.D. Director of Data Management and Technology
Don’t Go It Alone | Other Journeys
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Virtualization Strategy Positions District for Efficiency Gains
College Upgrades Network to Support a Secure BYOD Learning Environment
Virtual Desktop Integration (VDI) Deployment
MCC Leverages Technology to Kick-start College’s Growth Plan
Washingtonville Central School District was ready to replace over 700 campus workstations as part of their regular equipment refresh program. This antiquated method of ensuring that students and faculty maintain access to modern technology came with a heavy pricetag.The District began to explore different ways to allocate those funds in exchange for a long-term return on investment. Washingtonville made the decision to adopt a desktop virtualization strategy across three elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. By making this kind of investment in the infrastructure, as opposed to merely replacing the desktop hardware, Washingtonville was positioning itself wisely for significant cost savings down the road by extending the lifespan of existing workstations, as well as setting the foundation for a more efficient use of IT time and resources. Annese implemented Cisco UCS Servers, an EMC2 storage area network, Cisco core switching infrastructure, VMware View 5 software, and Trend Micro agentless antivirus software. The project has scaled to support approximately 1000 workstations (including PCs, zero clients, and Chromebooks) connecting to their virtual desktop environment.
Monroe Community College (MCC), one of the largest community colleges in New York State in terms of student enrollment, made a significant investment in its core network infrastructure not only to support the needs of current students but accommodate growth down the road. “We needed a system that would increase our network speed, add intrusion prevention, and provide true redundancy; we wanted to build everything in parallel,” said James Clement of MCC.
Objective: To deliver a high-speed, highly available, reliable learning environment experience for MCC faculty and students.
Timeline: August, 2011 - February, 2012
Summary: MCC, Annese, and Cisco upgraded 50 data closets to Cisco 2960 switches, virtualizing the UC environment and swapping out 125 access points for centrally managed wireless.
Benefits: • Increased network resiliency and performance • High-speed throughput across campus • Intrusion prevention
MCC, Annese, and Cisco worked together to build the network architecture by upgrading 50 data closets to Cisco 2960 switches. The result: Increased network resilliency and performance. “This increased our network speed by a factor of 20,” said James.
• Highly available, redundant infrastructure
“Through each project phase, we worked with a member of the Annese team to track equipment, replace end-oflife products, and ensure that we got the most value out of our investment. This implementation has enabled the College’s growth plan to scale.” —James Clement Associate Director of Communications and Network Services
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Don’t Go It Alone | Other Journeys
College Invests in Creating a Technology-Rich Environment and Thrives Amongst Competition Objective: To implement a robust data center and VMware infrastructure capable of supporting a campuswide Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployment.
Timeline: July, 2012 - August, 2012
Summary: Le Moyne elected to provision the campus data center to expand VDI which could support 300+ virtual desktop users, eventually scaling to 1,200 machines.
Benefits: • Cost savings: $200,000+ per year on hardware • Time savings: IT is more accessible to work with students and faculty directly • Longer hardware lifecycle: PC refresh cycle is roughly two years longer • Faster software updates: Can be completed in as little as three hours • Heightened security: Anytime, anywhere access to campus network resources
“Annese has been instrumental during this process. We wouldn’t be where we are today without their unmatched level of professionalism and experience. As a result we hope for a long-lasting partnership.” —Shaun Black Acting Director of IT
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Watch Le Moyne College’s Journey
Le Moyne Scales to Greater Heights with Virtual Desktop Technology Le Moyne College, which was named one of the best undergraduate educational institutions in the nation on the 2014 Princeton Review, started a campus-wide desktop virtualization initiative in the summer of 2012 as a means of rewriting the role that IT plays in the academy. Le Moyne, not unlike many colleges and universities today, is deriving tangible benefits from technologies like server, desktop, and application virtualization, as well as virtual desktop infrastructure, which facilitate a consistent user experience among administrative staff, faculty, and of course students, who bring their own devices onto campus. As Shaun Black, Acting Director of IT at the College, explains, IT should be working hand-in-hand with the students and faculty in order to provide the best overall learning experience. Shaun notes that the department’s focus traditionally has been on troubleshooting and supporting desktop technologies as opposed to working directly with users. That role is continually evolving since moving over to a virtualized environment. www.annese.com/lemoyne
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So What? Now What?
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Don’t Go It Alone | So What? Now What?
Are You Ready?
Find out if you’re a good candidate for these solutions. Ask yourself: Server Virtualization
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Storage
1. Is your current storage solution resilient enough for your business?
2. Do you struggle with data replication and backup?
1. Are you looking to consolidate your data center and reduce the number of physical servers to manage?
2. Do you want to add more resiliency to your servers and applications?
Disaster Preparedness
1. Is your business at risk for data or productivity
losses caused by servers and application downtime?
Desktop Virtualization
2. Are you struggling to meet your RTO/RPO metrics?
1. Is your desktop environment a challenge to manage?
2. Are your users looking to work from a variety
of devices without compromising their experience?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, request a meeting with an Annese Account Manager to explore the paths in front of you. www.annese.com/meeting
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Don’t Go It Alone | So What? Now What?
Watch this video to see how it all comes together!
Take a Step Forward To help you chart a well-defined roadmap to guide your journey, a data center infrastructure assessment is imperative to identify where you’ve been, where you want to go, and the path you’re going to take to get there. Choosing the right partner to help you assess, analyze, and achieve your data center virtualization goals today and as your IT environment grows, is step one. Annese offers two levels of assessments based on project scope.
www.annese.com/DCVvideo
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About Annese
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Don’t Go It Alone | About Annese
A Need. A Network. Annese.
Meet Tom, Annese’s DCV Expert!
Annese’s Core Focus Areas
Any VAR can sell you a new technology, but it takes a highly certified team of trusted experts to deliver an end-to-end IT experience. Withisa in full-circle approach integrating communications systems, Annese wraps Professional and Managed/ Annese the business oftomaking Cloud Services around Infrastructure, Collaboration, and Data Center Virtualization solutions. Our business is the art, science, and passion of connecting devices to networks, people to people, and ideas to action. Learn more at www.annese.com. We connect devices to networks, people to people, and ideas to action.
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Support dynamic, real-time collaborative experiences.
Infrastructure
Voice Video Messaging
Power network automation and intelligence. Security Wireless Routing and Switching
Data Center Virtualization Enable the transition to cloud based computing Server Virtualization Desktop Virtualization Storage Disaster Preparedness
Have a DCV Question? Tom Gdula began his love for digging into parts and understanding how things worked from a very young age. As a child, Tom could be found either racing his bike around town or experimenting with his collection of bike parts to find ways to build more speed.
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Collaboration
Tom Gdula, Practice Manager www.annese.com/asktom
and Cloud Se d e rvi ag d Services | M c aint an ervices | Clou ena e nc M ed S e g na
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Tom studied at SUNY Geneseo graduating with a degree in Management, yet he wound up returning to his “Mr. Fix-It” ways by landing his first job building computer networks from component level parts. Tom enjoys hiking the Adirondacks, touring wine country (with a preferred taste for reds), and cheering on his kids at their sporting and/or music events.
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With over 21 years of industry experience under his belt, Tom leads a team of highly trained and certified Solutions Architects and Systems Engineers committed to providing state-of-the-art data center virtualization services to solve customers’ business challenges.
s u l t a ti o n | I n s t a ll a ti o n
Data Center Virtualization Practice: Zoomed In Server Virtualization
Desktop Virtualization
Data Storage
• Server Consolidation
• Application Virtualization
• Archiving
• High Availability
• Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
• Recovery
• Infrastructure as a Service
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
• Backup • Replication
Disaster Preparedness • Proactive disaster plan • reactive disaster response
Still need more information?
www.annese.com/expertlibrary