The document summarizes a presentation given by Adam Zame and Gerhard Richards of Maclean Computing. It describes a project where Maclean Computing virtualized the IT infrastructure of a textile company with locations in the US, New Zealand, and Australia to address risks in the company's aging systems and lack of disaster recovery capabilities. After the new virtualized infrastructure was implemented, a flood damaged the physical servers, but Maclean was able to restore all virtual machines from backups within 5 hours, avoiding significant downtime and costs. The client is now considering further improvements such as physical hosting and additional redundancy.

1. Taking on the world with a world class IT
Infrastructure Solution
Adam Zame & Gerhard Richards
Maclean Computing
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2. 2
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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3. 3
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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4. 4
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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5. 5
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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6. 6
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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7. 7
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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8. 8
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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9. 9
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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10. 10
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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11. 11
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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12. 12
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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13. 13
RSA Sli li II Overview
Slimline O i
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RSA Sli li II Overview?
Slimline O i ?
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15. 15
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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16. 16
Then h t h
Th what happened?
d?
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17. 17
Then h t h
Th what happened?
d?
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18. 18
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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20. 20
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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22. 22
Thank you
o
Questions?
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