CENGAGE LEARNING
Private cloud delivers increased scalability and
performance to online educational offerings
Cengage Learning is a leading provider of innovative teaching, learning, and research solutions for
the academic, professional, and library markets. Cengage Learning brands include Heinle, Gale,
Wadsworth, CourseTechnology, and South-Western, among others. With annual revenues of
approximately $2 billion, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company has 5,500 employees
working in 42 countries.
Essentials
Challenges
• Supporting high-performance demands of
online learning
• Managing rampant server and storage
infrastructure
Solutions
• EMC Symmetrix VMAX networked storage
• EMC CLARiiON CX4 and Celerra NS unified
storage
• EMC VMware vSphere virtualization
solution
Key benefits
• Increased from 150 to 300 servers
without expanding server administrative
staff
• Rapid provisioning of servers and storage
• Five times the performance decreases
check runs from 13 to eight hours
• Automatic failover significantly increased
the availability of virtual servers
Customer Profile
As online learning grows in popularity, Cengage Learning’s digital offerings, such as eBooks
and courseware, have become its fastest-growing segments. In fact, Cengage Learning was
named to EContent magazine’s “list of 100 companies that matter most in the digital content industry.”
“As our business has transformed from physical textbooks to encompass online learning,
demand for processing power and data storage increased dramatically,” says Jim Kunysz, senior
systems engineer, data center operations, Cengage Learning.
“In the last year, we’ve nearly doubled our storage capacity from 310 terabytes to over 700. It was
becoming more difficult to keep hardware expenditures and maintenance costs under control
with this rate of expansion. Plus, we were running out of steam to support our new applications.”
STANDARDIZING ON EMC AND VMWARE
Cengage Learning needed to manage its growth more efficiently while offering increased
performance, scalability, and reliability. Today, the company has done just that by standardizing
on EMC® storage and VMware® vSphere™ for its virtualized, private cloud infrastructure.
As its data repository, Cengage Learning uses EMC CLARiiON® CX4 and EMC Celerra® NS unified
storage for file serving and mid-tier applications and EMC Symmetrix® VMAX™ networked
storage, which houses all tier-one applications, including Oracle RAC, J.D. Edwards finance, and
Microsoft SQL Server data warehouse. Located in data centers in Ohio and Kentucky, EMC storage
is replicated with EMC RecoverPoint for disaster recovery of critical applications.
In addition, Cengage Learning has virtualized 90 percent of its servers with VMware vSphere.
Virtualized applications include web servers, SharePoint, and Exchange, as well as selected
Oracle and SQL Server databases.
RAMPANT SERVER GROWTH WITHOUT ADMINISTRATIVE
INCREASES
Maximizing productivity and efficiency is a top priority at Cengage Learning. Norm Pearson,
Cengage Learning’s systems engineer, explains, “Business has been good but we’re always asked
to do more with less to accomplish our goals. Plus, we’re expected to have better toolsets to meet
changing requirements of the business.”
Virtualization is credited with increasing efficiency of the server infrastructure. For example, the
company runs 250 virtual machines on only 20 physical VMware vSphere servers.
“Since we started virtualizing with VMware, we’ve done a lot of consolidation and shutting down
of systems,” says Pearson. “We’ve gone from 150 to 300 servers, most of which are virtualized,
and still haven’t had to hire additional staff to manage them.”
RESPONSIVENESS TO NEW REQUIREMENTS
Time to administer servers has diminished largely because of increased flexibility and availability
provided by Cengage Learning’s private cloud.
“Private cloud helps us be more agile and cost effective,” says Pearson. “We add a new VMware
server in 30 minutes compared to several weeks to order and build out a physical server.”
Cengage Learning also has used EMC Virtual Provisioning™ with EMC Celerra and VMware and
soon will do the same with CLARiiON. With Virtual Provisioning, Cengage Learning can present a
certain amount of storage to servers, but capacity is actually allocated only as needed. The result
is improved storage utilization and easier scalability to support growth.
Availability also has improved. If a server fails, its virtual machines automatically fail over to
another server host without interrupting user access to the applications.
In addition, Cengage Learning uses VMware to quickly clone a known, fully tested configuration for
moving server changes into production. The result is a controlled move with minimal-to-zero
customer impact.
STREAMLINED CREATION OF NEW FILE SYSTEMS
EMC storage also has contributed to better efficiency. For example, the EMC Celerra system, which
is managing library content, takes less time to manage than the NetApp storage it has replaced.
“EMC Celerra is easier to administer and manage than NetApp. When you create a NetApp file
system, you have to define your aggregates and be cognizant of how disks are related to the new
file system. There are a lot more steps involved,”notes Kunysz.
“With Celerra, creating a file system is as simple as clicking and selecting. You identify the
capacity, choose a name, and you’re done.”
FASTER PAGE LOADS AND CHECK RUNS
EMC Symmetrix VMAX has addressed the learning company’s need for more performance and
scalability.
“We moved from RAID 10 to RAID 5 on the VMAX and saw nearly five times performance,” says
Pearson. “When students are hitting our websites the hardest, we’re averaging only 20 percent
CPU utilization on our database platform. Before, certain processors were pegged at 100 percent
during peak usage, making for some unhappy users.”
“After switching to VMAX, our royalties processing check runs went from 13 to eight hours. And
instead of online course web pages loading slowly, the system is much more responsive,” says
Mike Heinen, Cengage Learning’s manager, Web hosting and Intel databases.
MOVING DISTRIBUTION CLOSER TO THE DESTINATION
With their EMC and VMware private cloud infrastructure, Cengage Learning is better equipped to
take on new business initiatives that are IT-reliant and geographically diverse, such as integrating
video into their offerings.
“We’re already integrating YouTube-type videos into our eBooks and online courseware,” explains
Pearson. “Because video consumes a lot of server and storage resources, it will be more efficient
to deliver that content from a location closer to the customer site. That’s where we’re headed with
private cloud.”
“With VMware and EMC Virtual Provisioning, we’re able to better meet the
demands of our business because of rapid provisioning at a lower cost.”
Norm Pearson
Systems Engineer
Contact Us
To learn more about how EMC products,
services, and solutions can help solve your
business and IT challenges, contact your
local representative or authorized reseller,
or visit us at www.EMC.com.
EMC2, EMC, Celerra, CLARiiON, CX, Symmetrix, Virtual Provisioning, VMAX, and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks
of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. VMware and vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of
VMware, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.
© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. 07/11 Customer Profile H8835
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