Logicalis - Virtualization on the Inside
The Logicalis IT department realized a 10:1 consolidation ratio and enhanced management capabilities through server virtualization, freeing the IT staff for more strategic project development.BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. - The idea of virtualization can take a little getting used to. Like a lot of IT departments, the old paradigm for the Logicalis IT department was one operating system per piece of hardware, and that typically meant every new application required a new server. There was something comforting in the fact that a server was a physical box that you could touch, feel, push a button on and occasionally kick. It existed in space and time. Even after conducting the research and experimenting with VMware in a development environment, Logicalis Director of Corporate IT Terry Strohecker admits to having some apprehensions about going virtual.
Almost three years later, having committed most of Logicalis’ mission critical applications to a virtual pool of resources that is hardware independent, Strohecker is as comfortable in the virtual world as he was in the physical world.
When a server came in a box, every time someone on the business side wanted a new application you had to spec and order a new server, wait for it to be delivered, drive to the co-lo site, take it out of the box, find a place on a rack for it, plug it in, configure it and install the software. As reassuringly physical as all those steps were, they could easily take two or three weeks to accomplish. In the virtual world, setting up a new server takes less than 30 minutes and it can be done from anywhere. That kind of convenience is winning the hearts and minds of IT professionals around the world.
Pool of Resources
Logicalis Senior Systems Architect Rod Dickerson, who is responsible for the VMware server farm at Logicalis, says being able to manage a virtual pool of resources remotely is enough to justify the expense of VMware by itself. Add to that the savings associated with being able to consolidate the number of servers Logicalis requires by a ratio of 10:1 and the migration from physical servers to the virtual servers becomes downright liberating. Fewer servers require less space, less energy, and less time in the datacenter lugging boxes around and updating firmware and installing BIOS upgrades. The net result is more time and money for accomplishing those strategic business-driven projects that everyone still wants yesterday.
The transformation was not accomplished over night. One of the strengths of VMware, Dickerson says, is that it is possible to implement it incrementally and methodically, building a comfort level with virtualization as you go. There are no leaps of faith required.
Detailed Analysis
Logicalis took its time. The first step beyond initial experimentation was to engage the Logicalis Consolidation & Virtualization Practice engineers to perform a detailed analysis of the entire Logicalis IT infrastructure. Once they knew exactly what they had, they could begin to strategically commit more of their resources to the virtual environment.
The benefits of virtualization extend well beyond consolidation. Increasingly, it is the convenience and efficiencies that are possible managing pools of resources instead of stacks of servers that is capturing the imagination of IT directors and taking the concept of virtualization to a new evolutionary level.
Logicalis provides a case in point. For example, Dickerson says VMware Infrastructure 3 makes it possible to allocate resources to groups of servers, so, for example, “our production pool gets more resources than test/dev machines according to priorities that we set, and we can tweak it on the fly. It is also possible to give developers and admins selective rights so they can have access to virtual servers and even provision new machines using VI3’s graphical user interface.”
Besides being easy to do, the inherent adaptability of the virtual environment makes it possible to avoid the need to overbuy capacity to build in a comfort zone. “I have spent money in the past to over-spec a machine” Strohecker freely admits. “With virtualization you can properly size your investments as you go. It really changes your approach, and in many cases simplifies your approach to disaster recovery,” he adds. “For one thing it requires fewer machines to provide redundancy and resiliency.”
More than 10:1
Dickerson notes that the savings Logicalis realized by consolidating the number of servers it required made it possible to invest in faster processors and more memory for the five servers it consolidated on to. Besides making the virtual environment that much more robust, Dickerson says, “I think we’ll get much more than a 10:1 consolidation when it’s all said and done because our new servers are so much powerful than the servers they replaced.”
Not all of Logicalis’ applications have made it to the virtual environment, and, Strohecker says, some might never be appropriate for virtualization because their vendors won’t support them unless they run on a dedicated machine.
There is mounting pressure on hardware and software vendors to make their products virtual friendly, however. Dickerson notes that VMware is now working with HP, IBM, Dell and others to ship servers with a VI3 kernel on it so that all you have to do is boot it up and give it an IP address and it’s immediately available. “It’s amazing,” Dickerson says. “They’ve turned a server into an appliance. Adding new capacity to the server farm then becomes ‘rack and stack’. You throw it in, give it an IP address and immediately have additional capacity. There’s no configuration required.”
Dickerson says the rapid evolution of management capabilities in the virtual environment continues to liberate him and his peers in IT from many of the mundane, time-consuming procedures that were required before virtualization.
”VMware really clicked with us because it fit the way we manage our systems.” It also worked for Logicalis’ internal customers (employees). “When it comes time for hardware replacement” Strohecker says, “we have minimal downtime. Rebuilding machines, upgrading machines…we can keep our environment up and running while we are performing a lot of the maintenance. And that makes all our customers happy.”
