"EllisDon worked with IBM to deploy a private cloud solution comprising IBM System x servers running VMware vSphere virtualization technology, with virtualized data storage on IBM XIV Storage System. To know more about the IBM XIV Storage System, visit: http://ibm.co/PNJ7kr. "

1. IBM XIV Storage Systems Construction / Architecture / Engineering
Case Study
EllisDon constructs a
mission-critical cloud
With the IBM XIV Storage System at the heart
of a virtualized VMware infrastructure
EllisDon is an employee-owned company, founded in London,
Overview Ontario in 1951 and has grown to become a major international
firm completing more than US$2 billion dollars in new construction
The need
The IT infrastructure at EllisDon was projects annually, with approximately US$5 billion in construction
costly, difficult to manage, and was projects underway. With its executive offices in Mississauga, Ontario
failing to keep pace with rapid business and regional offices across Canada and in the United States and UAE,
growth, causing lost productivity due to
performance bottlenecks and service
EllisDon provides services in Construction Management, Project
degradation. Management, Design Build, Public-Private Partnerships (P3) and
General Contracting. Today, EllisDon’s long-term strategic vision
The solution
includes expansion into new growth markets, especially in South
Worked with IBM to deploy a
private cloud solution comprising America and Asia.
IBM System x® servers running VMware
vSphere virtualization technology, with In both geographic and financial terms, EllisDon was growing rapidly
virtualized data storage on IBM XIV®
Storage System. — but its IT infrastructure was unable to keep pace. In particular,
performance bottlenecks in the storage environment were causing
The benefit issues with key business applications, and the company was fast running
Virtualization of storage and server
landscapes has simplified administration,
out of storage capacity.
saving time, cost and effort, and
increasing productivity; XIV delivers “In construction, a combination of demanding delivery schedules
enormous performance gains while
and employees working around the globe means that we require 24/7
cutting energy usage.
availability to business information systems,” explains Joe Jagodich,
Vice President and CIO, EllisDon. “By selecting the IBM XIV Storage
System at the heart of our new cloud infrastructure, we’ve gained
the performance and reliability that we need, together with ample
scalability for the future. Equally, the solution’s unparalleled ease
of management and efficiency translate into low operational costs.
Choosing the XIV system is one of the best decisions I’ve made in a
long time.”
Building a brighter future
EllisDon is engaged in dozens of high-profile construction projects
around the globe. With operations spread over multiple time zones,
and with the EllisDon team playing key roles in time-sensitive projects,
the company relies on data and applications being available at all times.
“High availability has become a vital business need for EllisDon,” says
Scott Regier, Senior Infrastructure Analyst, Ellis Don. “Our previous
storage sub-systems were making it difficult for us to keep vital

2. IBM XIV Storage Systems Construction / Architecture / Engineering
Case Study
information available for project managers. Storage management was
complex and time-consuming, and performance was dropping as we
“We selected IBM XIV added capacity to keep up with demands from the business.”
Storage System as the
key enabler for the EllisDon engaged IBM to design and deploy an entirely new cloud
infrastructure, based around the twin concepts of server and storage
whole cloud concept. It
virtualization. EllisDon’s existing servers were virtualized to run on Red
allows us to get all the Hat Enterprise Linux on VMware vSphere. The VMware landscape
flexibility advantages of runs on a range of IBM System x servers, including the highly scalable
virtualization without IBM System x3850 model, effectively creating a private cloud solution
that is managed using VMware vCenter.
any performance issues:
XIV and VMware fit Using VMware vSphere enables EllisDon to rapidly orchestrate its IT
perfectly together.” resources to meet business requirements without making changes to the
physical IT infrastructure. “To get the most out of server virtualization,
especially around features such as high availability clustering and
— Scott Regier, Senior Infrastructure Analyst,
EllisDon fail-over, it’s vital to have shared virtualized storage,” says Regier.
“We selected IBM XIV Storage System as the key enabler for the
whole cloud concept. It allows us to get all the flexibility advantages
of virtualization without any performance issues: XIV and VMware fit
perfectly together.”
Rapid migration
EllisDon deployed an IBM XIV Storage System with 66 TB of usable
capacity in its primary data center in London, and a second XIV
storage system with 43 TB at its secondary site in Toronto. While
the production XIV storage system is twice the size of the system
it replaced, it consumes just 50 percent of the energy. EllisDon is
using the XIV asynchronous mirroring functionality to replicate data,
providing a rapid and reliable disaster recovery option.
“We thought it would take weeks, with multiple downtimes, to deploy
the new storage,” says Jagodich. “In fact, users saw no impact — apart
from significant improvements in performance for their applications!
While in production, we migrated 27 TB of data to the production XIV
system in less than three days using the built-in XIV migration tool.
That is just an amazingly short time-frame.”
EllisDon is using the built-in thin provisioning on the XIV systems
to maximize utilization of the available storage and to simplify future
capacity planning, while the XIV snapshot capabilities enable extremely
rapid backup and recovery. Snapshots also make it easy to clone existing
virtual servers, creating new test and development environments in
seconds versus days.
“We’re able to take a point-in-time snapshot of data before applying
any major changes,” says Regier. “If anything goes wrong, we can
2

3. IBM XIV Storage Systems Construction / Architecture / Engineering
Case Study
almost instantly recover to the earlier snapshot. One great thing about
IBM Solution Components: the XIV system is that all this software — for migration, replication,
thin provisioning, snapshots, performance monitoring — comes as
Hardware
standard with the solution, so we don’t need to pick and choose which
• IBM® System x®
• IBM XIV® Storage System software we can afford based on our projects — it’s all included.”
Software
Freeing the business to grow
• IBM DB2®
• Lotus Notes® With IBM XIV Storage System, EllisDon has gained the performance,
availability and scalability it needs to meet the challenges of global
expansion today and into the future.
“By selecting IBM XIV “With the XIV system, as you add disks, you also add memory and
Storage System at the controllers, and you increase performance,” says Regier. “As we grow,
there are no longer any constraints on the IT side.”
heart of our new cloud
infrastructure, we’ve With the previous storage infrastructure, making changes to storage
gained the performance volumes or deploying new servers was difficult and time-consuming.
The introduction of XIV Storage System has dramatically simplified
and reliability that we storage administration. “What used to take days now typically takes
need, together with ample minutes — the IBM solution has freed us to focus on tasks that deliver
scalability for the future.” more value to the business,” says Regier. “Anybody that asks me about
the XIV system, ‘Is it as good as they say it is?’ — I say, ‘It is even
better’. Whether you’re thinking about administration, performance,
— Joe Jagodich, Vice President and CIO,
EllisDon capacity growth, all the aspects of a traditional storage system are much
better with the XIV solution.”
Extending the business
IT Environment The flexibility provided by the combination of VMware vSphere and
Operating systems IBM XIV Storage System has enabled EllisDon to extend cloud-based
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux services to external collaborators. “Many of the general contractors we
• Microsoft Windows Server work with lack the IT budget to have an in-house application running
Virtualization in a client/server environment,” says Jagodich. “We can now create
• VMware vSphere private hosted environments quickly and cost-effectively, delivering the
application to them as a cloud-based service. This includes complete
security and isolation for their data, thanks to the built-in role-based
security on the XIV systems.”
The XIV storage systems are also key enablers for EllisDon’s rollout
of new 3D business modeling systems. These require large amounts of
data storage and high performance — both of which the XIV storage
systems provide in abundance.
“Selecting the XIV Storage System was a great decision,” says
Jagodich. “The reason is the innovative architecture, which is second
to none. EllisDon loves innovation: applying the XIV technology
to our environment enhanced our ability to deliver services to our
stakeholders and our customers, and made company information much
more readily available.”
3

4. For more information
Contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit
us at: ibm.com/storage/disk/xiv/
For more information about EllisDon, visit www.ellisdon.com
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2011
IBM Systems and Technology Group
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Produced in the United States of America
October 2011
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