Technical Workshop
Implementing VSPEX in a private cloud
Introduction
• Geoffrey McGowan
• Solutions Architect at Comsys
• Specialising in Virtualised high complexity
environments
Introduction to the Environment
• Medical Imaging Customer based in Ireland
• Main Sites in Dublin
• Provides centralised image datastore for
multiple clinics and hospitals
• Requirement to meet stringent ISO
certifications for data practices and data
retention
Customers Requirements
•
Move to a completely virtualised environment
•
Virtualise mission critical General Electric Centricity RISi
application
•
Increase redundancy and RTO for mission critical General
Electric Centricity RISi application
•
Build a modular SAN environment which would form the basis
of a new virtualised environment to replace the current
physical environment.
•
Reduced RTO for critical backup restores
Customers roadblocks
•
Highly complex application General Electric Centricity RISi
with stringent set of requirements.
•
First time that the General Electric Centricity RISi application
would be virtualised in Ireland
•
Due to mission critical requirements, multiple vendor support
cases had been an issue in the past (Support Ping-Pong)
•
Limited budget
•
Small amount of dedicated specialised IT staff
•
Short window for project completion
Comsys Proposed Solution
•
4 Phase approach
•
Phase 1 - Design
•
Phase 2 – Proof of Concept
•
Phase 3 – Implementation
•
Phase 4 – Go live
Phase I
Design
Phase I – Design steps
•
Initial Workshop with customer to details required Service
levels, RPO/RTO, growth levels, support requirements and
datacentre constraints if any.
•
Design call with GE RISi architects to ascertain software
requirements and possible Caveats with it running in a
virtualised environment.
•
Create a design using the VSPEX approved framework.
•
Create service offering with SPoC for all hardware
components, eliminating “support Ping Pong”
•
Create and document final design, present to customer and
GE architects for final approval
Phase I – Design overview
•
Compute – Customer has existing HP estate, so Comsys
recommended 2 x HP DL380 G7 servers in HA cluster.
•
Storage– The customer would like future expansion, as well
as high performance disk. Comsys recommended a VNX 5100
SAN with redundant Brocade 300B switches.
•
Software- Comsys recommended VMWare Essentials Plus to
virtualise this workload.
•
Backup – Comsys recommended 2 x Data Domain DD160
Appliances for backup. These would be replicated between
sites for high availability.
Phase II
Proof of Concept
Phase II Description – Proof of Concept
•
Establish Test criteria and sign off requirements
•
Create Project Plan
•
Implement demo equipment
•
Do Live P2V of running GE RISi instance to create test image
•
Do online out of hours data copy utilising PowerPath
Migration Enabler.
•
Engage GE to do testing of virtual instance.
•
Finalise Proof of Concept
Phase III
Solution Implementation
Phase III Description – Implementation
•
Final Site survey
•
Rack and Stack of all equipment
•
Installation and configuration, including VaaI and VaSA
enablers.
•
Stress test of environment and final sign off by all parties
•
Dial home and reporting setup.
•
DataDomain backup and replication policies configured.
Phase IV
Phase IV Description – Go Live
•
Full RISi application shutdown
•
Final synchronisation of data
•
Final testing of virtual machines
•
Physical shutdown of RISi servers.
•
Moving all virtual machines to production VMNetwork.
•
Final testing of access to environment.
•
First backup of environment and confirmation of replication.
Project Overview
•
Move from physical to virtual environment, increasing
uptime, decreasing physical footprint and management over
head
•
Solution is a certified VSPEX solution, allowing for single point
of support through Comsys, who in turn utilise support
agreements EMC have in place with major vendors.
•
Ability to quickly scale solution to encompass rest of the
environment while keeping complexity and support costs
down