1. MLCC ERP Virtualization Story
Anil Sedha
Jeff Franz-Lien
Manager, Infrastructure Senior Server Analyst,
Services Infrastructure Services
MLCC MLCC
VMWare Forum Winnipeg – March 2011
2. MLCC ERP Virtualization Story
Chapter 1 - Wandering in the wilderness: Do we dare to
do this?
Chapter 2 - The hard sell: How dare you do this?
Chapter 3 - Getting it done: A new methodology.
Chapter 4 -The results: Post go-live.
VMWare Winnipeg Forum – March 2011
3. Our Organization
Regulate, sell and distribute beverage alcohol in the
province of Manitoba.
934 employees, >$600M in sales, >$230M to Province.
Retailer through our 50 stores.
Wholesaler to 177 liquor vendors and 8 private wine stores.
Sustainability, social responsibility, workplace quality, and
innovation are strongly held values.
Repeat winner of provincial and national top employer
awards (5 consecutive yrs provincially).
4. Our IT
VMWare ESX 3.5 and VSphere 4.1
(100% of servers virtualized)
80 servers, 400 workstations, 60 site WAN (HO, DR site,
Stores, Inspection Offices).
EMC Clariion CX4 disk arrays, Dell blade servers,
Cisco switches.
ERP Servers (UNIX) with own disk array
($60K/mo lease & support).
ERP – Oracle (JD Edwards).
Database: Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase, MYSQL.
5. ERP Upgrade Project
Phase 1 – ERP platform migration & application
upgrade – Aug 2009 to Mar 2010
Phase 2 – ERP testing & go-live preparation
– Apr 2010 to Jan 3, 2011
6. ERP Platform Migration
Minicomputers to blades or Itanium ????
UNIX to Linux or Windows????
Virtualize or not ????
Rearchitect high availability, disaster recovery ????
Create ERP database
Install ERP application upgrade
Migrate ERP data
Migrate interfaces
7. ERP Technical Team Reaction
(3 ERP Analysts, 1 DBA)
Skeptical
“Virtualizati
on is for
other
servers, not
ERP”
10. CIO Reaction
Supportive
“Just don’t
screw it up!”
11. Making it Happen –
PDQ Methodology (Agile)
1. Daily Scrum meetings with mind mapping tools
2. Agility seeking i.e. maximum flexibility, least constraints in
process, infrastructure, staffing, solutions, development
3. Top-Down Planning – Plan phases & milestones first, then
progressive elaboration and rolling wave
4. Rapid, empowered decision-making with limited info
5. Time Boxing: Fixed time constraint for all tasks
6. Concurrent Engineering: Overlapping activities & early hands
on
7. Dynamic Learning: Rapid, systematic info gathering
8. Kill Switch: Kill tasks or reduce scope where returns are
diminishing
14. Steps Toward ERP Virtualization
Research
One week Oracle assessment
Select Alternative: UNIX, OR Itanium, OR
VMWare/blade/Linux ??????
Build proof-of-concept environment
One week GSI assessment
Build final environment & hand over to testers
Unit test, integration test, performance test, stress test
Go-live practice runs
15. Hurdles - Oracle
Oracle database licensing
– Problem: Oracle does not recognize soft partitioning
– Solution: License one full blade
– Problem: Oracle charges for temporary database licenses
– Solution: Purchase temporary licenses
Oracle stance on supporting VMWare
– Problem: Does not expressly support non-Oracle virtualization
– Solution: Don’t worry, using VMWare won’t void your Oracle
support contract. Oracle just doesn’t support 3rd party
infrastructure.
16. Hurdles – Internal Perception
Internal mis-perceptions
• Myth: Linux is inferior to UNIX
• Fact: Linux is Oracle’s go-forward JD Edwards platform
• Myth: VMWare adds too much overhead for ERP
• Fact: VSphere in particular delivers stellar performance
• Myth: Minicomputers are superior to Intel blades
• Fact: For all MLCC’s mission-critical applications (ERP,
network, point-of-sale, records management, data warehouse)
blades/VMWare are better, faster, much cheaper, and far
more flexible.
17. Hurdles – Cont’d.
Internal mis-perceptions
• Myth: No one else is doing ERP on VMWare
• Fact: We found many companies that have successfully
virtualized ERP.
• Myth: If any major problems arise, VMWare must be the
cause.
• Fact: During our 17 month project, virtualization was often
suspected but cause was always elsewhere e.g. database or
memory tuning.
18. Free Tips
Relationship management (politics):
• Enlist an executive champion that will help calm powerful
naysayers.
• Helpful due diligence -- networking (LinkedIn), consultant
assessments, case studies, and reference calls.
• Be prepared to re-address virtualization phobia with each
new problem.
Team building:
• Use agile project management techniques.
• Get teams to research and try virtualization as early as
possible.
19. Free Tips Cont’d
Technical:
• More assessment whether to use raw partitions for
database or VMDK.
• Performance problems are hard so stress-test early.
Standards:
• Standardize on virtualization and communicate those
standards.
• Make virtualization a mandatory requirement on
application RFPs.
20. Accomplishments
Smoothest ERP go-live we’ve ever had. On time, on budget,
high quality. Earned praise from Executive and Board.
Moving off minicomputers saved about $500K per year in
maintenance and lease costs.
Achieved vastly greater flexibility e.g. rolling upgrades,
mirroring to DR site, and server/resource provisioning.
Reduced server room power and cooling requirements –
eliminated 5 racks of minicomputers at HO and DR.
Given the flexibility of our virtualized environment, the next
ERP upgrade will be a piece of cake.
21. Our Next Virtualization Projects
Complete upgrade from ESX to Vsphere
Desktop virtualization – VMWare View & ThinApp
Automate DR steps – Site Recovery Mgr
Provision test environments – Lab Manager
