2012 Infotec Conference
Leveraging the Cloud to Increase
Availability and Improve Resilience
Presenter
Kevin Swagerty
Executive Director of IT Service Management
2012 Infotec Conference
Company Background
•DineEquity is the franchisor of the Applebee’s and IHOP brands
•There are currently 2019 Applebee’s and 1300 IHOP Restaurants
•DineEquity franchises are located in Canada, North America,
Mexico and Central America
•DineEquity currently Operates 187 corporate owned restaurants
•© 2011 DineEquity, Inc. All rights reserved.
2012 Infotec Conference
The Pre-Cloud Architecture at DineEquity
• Two office building data centers with vastly different architectures and
different disaster recovery ratings
• Over 420 servers with business systems running in both data centers
• Critical applications being accessed by both campuses across a wide
area network with inadequate bandwidth and limited failover
capabilities
• Disparate Exchange environments
• No data replication tools
• No WAN optimization tools
•© 2011 DineEquity, Inc. All rights reserved.
2012 Infotec Conference
What Cloud Solution Made Sense for DineEquity?
•To merge the technology in our two data centers into a consolidated data
center to increase availability and dramatically improve resilience.
•To define a scalable architecture that would support the growth needs of
the business
•Options Evaluated
•
National data center managed service providers
•
Regional data center managed service providers
•
DIY – Do it Yourself option
•© 2011 DineEquity, Inc. All rights reserved.
2012 Infotec Conference
Option Selected
•
Regional service provider offered the best fit for DineEquity
•
Flexibility of the offering
•
Cost
•
Regional proximity offers data replication advantages both in start
up and steady state
•
Regional orientation offered the option of being flexible with
resource allocation
•
Technical maturity was right for our requirements
•© 2011 DineEquity, Inc. All rights reserved.
2012 Infotec Conference
Services Contracted
•
Network Management – intranet connectivity between DineEquity
and data center locations
•
Server Management – ongoing maintenance of servers
•
Storage Management – Storage Area Networks
•
User Access / Active Directory Service Management
•
Email Service Management
•
Data Center Disaster Recovery
•© 2011 DineEquity, Inc. All rights reserved.
2012 Infotec Conference
Current Architecture
Omaha Data Center
Network traffic continuously flows
RecoverPoint Device
through the primary connections to
Information is constantly
the Midlands data center
refreshed between
the two data centers
Backup Connection
RecoverPoint Device
Network Traffic is rerouted through the backup
connections if the primary connections are lost
Kansas City
Data Center
Glendale Support Center
The Recoverpoint Architecture allows DineEquity to
restart our data center capabilities
with less than thirty minutes of data loss
Kansas City Support Center
•© 2011 DineEquity, Inc. All rights reserved.
2012 Infotec Conference
Critical Success Factors
• Thoughtful definition of the to-be architecture
• Project management is a key to the success of this project
• Simplify your current architecture as much as possible before cutover
• Evaluate WAN optimization tools when distance and latency is a factor
• Test your cutover multiple times
• Change Management - Manage expectations throughout the project
• Invest well in your contract and service level agreements
•© 2011 DineEquity, Inc. All rights reserved.
2012 Infotec Conference
Outcomes
• Reduced server counts by 35 percent
• Migrated and consolidated all systems with less than 8 hours of
downtime
• Availability over the last twelve months has been 100 percent.
• Performed a successful disaster recovery exercise in in November
2011
• Failed over to our backup data center for tier zero apps within 30
minutes
•© 2011 DineEquity, Inc. All rights reserved.
2012 Infotec Conference
Q&A
•© 2011 DineEquity, Inc. All rights reserved.