Taking on the world with a world class IT
Infrastructure Solution
Adam Zame & Gerhard Richards
Maclean Computing
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Agenda
A d
• Who is our client?
• Prior state of their IT?
• Client’s requirements?
C e s equ e e s
• What Maclean Computing did?
• Then what happened?...
• How we fixed it?
• The future?
future?...
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Af
few questions?
ti ?
• Who has had to press the “BIG RED BUTTON” and
p
initiate a disaster recovery process in the last 2 yrs?
1 = Yes 2 = No
• Do you think virtualisation is still too expensive for a 25
– 75 user small to meduim business?
1 = Yes 2 = No
• Have you moved your data centre in the last 2 yrs?
1 = Yes 2 = No
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Who i th li t?
Wh is the client?
• Southern Hemisphere’s leading textile and interior
p g
design company
• Operates in US , NZ and Australia
• 100 users globally, 6 locations
• Invited Maclean Computing in to assist with technology
p g gy
recommendations and strategy
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Prior St t f
P i State of IT
• Main IT services ran on separate aging hardware, some
p g g ,
servers 4+ yrs old
• Terminal Server dependent g
p globally
y
• Large WAN with limited redundancy
• MS Dynamics NAV site supported by Intergen ISV
Intergen,
Partner
• Limited backup and no Disaster Recovery planning
Business Risk and High Maintenance
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Prior St t f
P i State of IT
Email
Server
Domain
Controller
Terminal
Server
NAV
Server
File
Server
Backup
tape
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Client’s
Cli t’ requirements
i t
• They needed to replace their old hardware
y p
• Also needed flexibility, due to nature of their business
• DR and “Backup and Restore” was critical to reduce
Backup Restore
risk
• Virtualisation and Consolidation proved successful
• Site needed some infrastructure upgrades with regards
to the server room
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What M l
Wh t Maclean Computing did?
C ti
• Maclean Computing p p
p g proposed a p
phased virtualisation
solution to reduce business risks
• IBM x3850 and x3650 hardware, DS3400 SAN, TS3200
, ,
Tape Library and VMware ESX Enterprise 3.5
• DR provided by all p
p y production systems now VMs and
y
easily restored to any hardware
• Solution completed in early Dec 08
p y
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What M l
Wh t Maclean Computing did?
C ti
Email
Server
Domain
Controller
Terminal
T i l
Server
Terminal
Server
File
Server
NAV
Server
IBM x3850 IBM x3650
Virtual Host Mgmt
Fibre
Server
Switch
IBM Tape Library
T Lib
DS3400
SAN
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What M l
Wh t Maclean Computing did?
C ti
• Key technologies
• IBM x3850 Virtual Hosts
• Highly redundant hardware, with built in
remote management
• Vizioncore vRanger Pro
• U d to create backup i
Used t t b k images of VM
f VMs
• Client has a week of backups on disk for fast
p
recovery
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What M l
Wh t Maclean Computing did?
C ti
IBM x3850 Server Overview :
• Mission-critical availability to help prevent interruptions in day-to-
day enterprise operations
• Hot-swap power supplies, fans, memory, hard disk drives and 2 x PCI-
Express adapters.
• Active Memory™ with features such as Memory ProteXion™, hot-add
memory and Chipkill™ memory provide a level of reliability and
availability that helps reduce downtime and maintain data integrity.
• Up to 4 sockets able to be installed and 32 DIMM slots allowing up to
256GB of RAM
• Predictive Failure Analysis® on hard disk drives, processors, VRMs,
fans and memory.
• http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/data/flash/systemx/hardware/enterprise/x3850m2/tour/
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What M l
Wh t Maclean Computing did?
C ti
IBM x3850 Server Overview :
• Ability to upgrade to scalable system with the ScaleXpander
Option kit allowing customers the flexibility to scale as their
business needs change.
• Six-core and four-core processor options with up to 2.66 GHz (six-
core) and 2 4 GHz (four core) speeds with up to 16 MB L2 cache
2.4 (four-core) cache.
• Seven PCI-Express x8 high-performance I/O expansion slots, two
support hot-swap capabilities.
• ScaleXpander Option kit offers customers the flexibility to scale from 4
sockets all the way to 16 sockets.
• Memory options are 4 GB or 8 GB/256 GB max PC2-5300 DDR II
REMOTE SUPERVISOR ADAPTER OVERVIEW
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RSA Sli li II Overview
Slimline O i
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RSA Sli li II Overview?
Slimline O i ?
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Then h t h
Th what happened?
d?
• Air conditioning unit failed and water flooded the server
g
rack
• IBM x3850 hardware, DS3400 SAN, x3650
, ,
management server, tape library and fibre switches all
water damaged
• The impact is company wide, authentication being the
main problem. There was no backup domain controllers
other than those at head office
• Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane couldn't even work with
just locally stored documents
documents.
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Then h t h
Th what happened?
d?
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Then h t h
Th what happened?
d?
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Then h t h
Th what happened?
d?
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How we fi d it?
H fixed
• A replacement server was sourced, the offsite tapes
p , p
were retrieved
• An ESX host was provisioned in 30 minutes.
p
• Vizioncore vRanger Pro was used to restore images to
bare VM’s.
• 5 Servers were restored in less than 5 hours. This
included Exchange 2007, DC, F&P and two Terminal
Servers.
• Client predicted that recovering the 5 physical servers
would h
ld have taken up to 4 d
k days and could h
d ld have cost i
in
excess of $50,000 lost business and productivity
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The F t
Th Future?
?
• Client is discussing the p
g possibility of office relocation
y
• Physical hosting is an option which will reduce risk of
system outages due to p
y g power and environmentals
(water)
• Investing in a second virtual host and fibre switching
g g
when expansion is required, improving redundancy and
high availability further
• Migrations/upgrades are now very easy, testing and
development can be achieved on cloned “live” systems
too
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Thing t t k
Thi to take away
• Virtualisation is affordable and can give instant
benefits
• Management tools shouldn’t be overlooked
shouldn t
• If you are virtualising your systems, definitely
look at imaged based backup solutions
• Phased deployments are achievable but you
need to balance risks and have a DR plan
• Redundancy is key but if you can waterproof
key,
servers that’s better....
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Thank you
o
Questions?
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