Virtually

Copyright 2004 Northrop Grumman Corporation

Consolidation &

Virtualization

Michael Elkins

Director

Infrastructure Services

Sept 8, 2008


Agenda

 Introductions

 Session Objective

 Consolidation

 Virtualization

 Change Drivers

 Presentation from Panel Members

 Question and Answers



Panel

Moderator – Michael Elkins

Panel Members

 Gail A. Bohan – Director of IT, City of Fairfax

Virtualization and Consolidation in Local Government

 Kevin Cronin – Senior Technical Architect, Virginia

Department of Taxation

Consolidation and Virtualization activities within

Taxation

 Sharon P. Pitt – Executive Director, division of

Instructional Technology – George Mason University

Virtual Computing Lab of George Mason University

Session Objectives

 Discuss benefits, tools and costsaving strategies for effective consolidation and virtualization

 Provide examples of successful efforts in consolidation and virtualization



Consolidation

 All government and commercial entities have made consolidation a strategic objective

 Reducing assets

 Reducing processes

 Simplify infrastructure

 Improve return on investments already made and ensure continued innovation

 Spend wisely to build rather than maintain


Virtualization

 Virtualization reduces hardware and power consumption in labs and datacenters

 Platforms

 System resources

 Applications

 Desktops

 Simplified management of heterogeneous systems


Consolidation & Virtualization Drivers

 Historical growth of applications

 Management of resources

 Meeting customer needs

 Flexible allocation of resources

Rising cost

Poor ROI

Reduced efficiency

Poor manageability

Presentations

Sharon P. Pitt

Executive Director

Division of Instructional Technology

George Mason University



Consolidation and Virtualization:

The Virtual Computing Lab at George Mason University

Sharon P. Pitt

Executive Director

Division of Instructional Technology

George Mason University

Consolidation and Virtualization :

The Virtual Computing Lab at George Mason University

Session Goals

 What’s a virtual computing lab (VCL)?

 BRIEF demo of a virtual computer lab

 The business case for a VCL

 Benefits of virtualization and consolidation




BRIEF demo of a virtual computing lab





About…. George Mason University

 Public research/doctoral institution

 Founded in 1972

 Enrollment: 30,332

 168 degree programs

 Ranked #1 for Up-and-Coming National

Universities by U.S. News and World Report

2009




What’s a virtual computing lab?

 Online, reservation-based access

 Platform agnostic

 Remote and direct access to Blade server(s)

 Online access to existing computer labs


Public

Internet

Management node 1

Web interface

Database


Blade Server

Image Library

Campus Computer Lab

Statewide

Education

Network

Management node N

Blade Server

Image Library



Brief history of VCL in higher education



Public

Internet


Web interface

Database


Blade Server

Image Library

Campus Computer Lab

Statewide

Education

Network

Management node N

Blade Server

Image Library




Why are educators interested?

 Student access to professional software

 Extend research

 Inventive solutions for instructional challenges

 Customized environments for classroom use

 Support learning at a distance


Potential VCL Networks

Local University

VCL Host

Educational Partners

K-12 Participants

Local College



What are the benefits?

 Improved software management

 Reduce the need to add facilities

 Extend life of current labs

 Higher ROI for each dollar invested

 Greener

 Leveraging the partnership

 Promote statewide best practices



Challenges

 Tracking Internet use

 Security

 The culture of software license negotiation

 Innovation vs. status quo

 Excitement

 Governance across a consortium


Gail A. Bohan

Director of Information Technology

City of Fairfax, Va


Virtual Technologies

 Virtual technologies have been around for quite a long time with little fanfare – some examples:

Virtual private network VPN

Virtual local area network VLAN

 Virtual technologies allow us to take full advantage of computing resources by dividing the resource into multiple parts and sharing the basics


What is Server Virtualization?

 Definition : “a method of running multiple independent virtual operating systems on a single physical computer”

( http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878 Aug 24,2008)

 Ideal for applications that require less server power and fewer users

 Allows consolidation of servers


Virtualization in Virginia Localities

 A nonscientific survey done of Va localities shows that most of us are at least investigating virtualization

 Reasons for considering virtualization: backup and recovery, domain controllers, file servers, print servers


Localities by Users Supported

Small (200-395) Medium (400 – 895)

City of Bedford Albemarle Co

Large(900+)

City of Chesapeake

Town of Blacksburg

Campbell Co

City of Fairfax

Franklin Co

City of Manassas

City of Danville

City of Newport News

Spotsylvania Co

Stafford Co

City of Staunton

City of Suffolk

Chesterfield Co

City of Hampton

Loudoun Co

City of Lynchburg

Roanoke Co

City of Virginia Beach

27



Virtualization in Va Localities

Applications

 Real estate appraisal

 Fire investigations

 Help desk software

 GIS

 Email

 SharePoint

 McAfee

Applications

 MS SQL database server

 Lotus Notes

 Blackberry Enterprise

 Linux

 Apache

 Faster

 Documentum

Recent National Statistics*


* From CIO Insight Research, Emerging

Technologies 2008

Virtual Products

Operating systems in use:

 VMware ESX used by 90%

 MS Virtual Server

 SuSE Xen; Parallels Virtuozzo


Benefits

• Improved disaster recovery

• Time saving when deploying servers

• Reduced time when replacing physical servers with virtual servers

• Easier and faster to set up test systems

• Server consolidation

• Lower power and cooling consumption

• Reduced hardware and maintenance costs


Cautions

 Storage management more complex

 Not compatible with all applications

 Watch out for licensing issues

 Revise backup procedures

 Higher level of trouble shooting required

 Difficult to contain virtual spread

 Do not neglect staff training


Presentations

Kevin Cronin

Senior Technical Architect

Virginia Department of Taxation



VA TAX Business Case …

 Expand to support 2008 Individual filing season processing

 Additional servers needed for application upgrade

 Capacity on demand for peak season

 HVAC and power issues with leased facility

 Potential building move

VA TAX Business Case Continued

 Consolidation of agency data center to

Commonwealth Enterprise Service Center

 Server hardware refresh

 Remote worker pilot program

 Expansion of agency disaster recovery


VA TAX Legacy Infrastructure

 35 Image Capture Application Servers

 Mix of HP DL380s and older

 5 Electronic Filing Servers

 HP DL380s and workstations

 40 Physical Legacy Servers

 Spread across 4 x 42U racks



VA TAX New Requirements for 2008

 9 new servers required to support 2008 individual filing season

 11 new servers required for upgrade to imaging capture system

 30 virtual workstations required to support remote worker pilot

 20 new servers and 30 new workstations


VA TAX Engages VITA and NG

 TAX develops a Virtualization and Consolidation technical proposal

 Proposal explains business opportunity and proposed solution

 VITA and NG agree to the proposal

 NG Virtualization Team sizes environment

 Agree to increase scope to both Agency data centers


Implementation

 Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversions primarily took place off hours

 Significant late night work from both NG

Virtualization Team and TAX staff

 Applications and Development staff needed to verify P2V before online production day

 Completed Image processing well before

Individual filing season

 “Virtually” flawless implementation

VA TAX Virtual Host Infrastructure

Data Center Processing Primary

Hosts 1 x HP C Class

Enclosure

7 x BL 685 full height blades

4 x dual core processors

32 GB of memory

Physical Space 10U (18”)

3 x DL585

4 x dual core processors

64 GB of memory

12U (21”)

Physical Servers

Replaced

42U Racks

Emptied

60

4

71

6


VA TAX Goes Green in the Process

Category

UPS Power

Requirements

Heat Output per hour

Cooling

Requirement

Legacy

Infrastructure

55 KVA

Virtual

Infrastructure

6 KVA

180,000 BTUs 16,000 BTUs

15 tons 1.3 tons



VA TAX Lessons Learned

 Not all servers are good virtualization candidates

 Don’t virtualize your primary and secondary

DNS servers!

 Virtual servers have limitations on virtual disk they can address

 Be prepared to go back to the physical server

 Don’t assume the P2V worked, test everything

Questions

Q & A


Contact Info:

 GMU

 John Savage - Director, Advanced Academic Computing jsavage@gmu.edu

Sharon P. Pitt – Executive Director, DoIT spitt@gmu.edu

 Department of Taxation

 Kevin Cronin – Senior Technical Architect

Kevin.Cronin@tax.virginia.gov

 City of Fairfax

 Gail A. Bohan – Director of IT, City of Fairfax gbohan@fairfax.gov

 Northrop Grumman

 Michael Elkins – Director Infrastructure Services michael.elkins@ngc.com


Virtually

Consolidation &

Virtualization

Sharon P. Pitt

Kevin Cronin

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