VMware Upgrade

A Regional Bank
 

Organization Profile

The client is part of a national network of 12 regional banks that provide loans and other support services to approximately 440 member financial institutions such as small to midsized commercial banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and thrifts. 
    

Products Used 

VMware VI3 Enterprise Edition software, VMware Virtual Center Management Server 2.0 software, new and existing HP Intel and AMD servers, existing HP EVA 8000 XCS 6.00 Fibre Channel SAN storage at two data centers, and a StorageTek L700 Tape Library with LTO3 drives for automated tape backup
 

Summary

The client required technical engineering expertise in their VMware virtualization upgrade project, moving from VMware version 2 to the new VMware version 3, which required new HP servers, addition HP SAN storage, and a valid upgrade migration plan based upon tested and proved methods.  This project involved servers and applications for test, development, and production environments at two bank locations, and integrating system backups and staff knowledge transfer on new version features and enhancements.

Situation

The bank needed technical virtualization migration expertise, and a tested upgrade design methodology, based upon industry best practices, for existing VMware servers. Providing documented recommendations on migrating LINUX servers, improving VMware security, understanding projected server growth, as well as performance optimization were also part of the project direction. Integrating their existing Symantec Veritas NetBackup software into the VMware Consolidated Backup framework for data protection was also required. The client had approximately 75 virtual machine guests running on ESX servers distributed between the main data center facility and the backup DR site, located 30 miles south of the primary data center. The IT team at the bank also wanted a virtualization infrastructure health check for both sites. Detailed knowledge transfer and project documentation for the final test, development, and production environments were a requirement for a successful engagement. 

Critical Issues

The bank's IT infrastructure has to be proven stable and reliable, and there was a mixture of not only server hardware with new AMD-based HP servers and existing Intel-based HP servers, but included both RedHat LINUX and Microsoft Windows operating systems in their VMware environment. Multiple data center facilities were also setup for disaster recovery and business continuity replication for various test, development, QA, and production applications. Creating a valid test plan for the VMware upgrades, as well as a back out contingency plan, and integrating corporate data backup policies to the VMware environment were issues that had to be addressed to meet customer downtime requirements for mission critical financial applications and office systems. Storage volumes on the EVA arrays at both facilities were being overtaxed due to high ready time requirements.
    

Solution

New Age Technologies utilized the A.D.E.P.T. methodology for the client, including a VMware environmental assessment of server CPU, memory, disk, I/O, storage, and networking utilization at both bank facilities. The upgrade design and test plan were documented, as well as a migration matrix with a project plan for the upgrade to the new VI3 Enterprise Edition software. The new VMware software included added features such as High Availability, Distributed Resource Scheduler, and VMware Consolidated Backup framework. Knowledge transfer for the new product features was given to the bank's IT team, as well as hands-on migration experience using the bank's storage, servers, networking and application environment.
 

The VMware upgrades included mixing processor technologies across 4x HP DL380 VMware ESX 2.5 servers and 1x HP DL580 ESX 2.5 server, with guest virtual machines at the primary data center. 3x new AMD HP DL585 servers were added into the production VMware farm at the primary data center, as well as creating a test “sandbox” environment using a single HP DL385 server at their primary site. The secondary site’s VMware environment had 3x existing HP DL380 servers running VMware ESX 2.5, and 2x new AMD HP DL385 servers were added into the secondary site’s VMware VI3 farm. The return on investment for the client included: incorporating new LINUX and Microsoft server guest virtual machines, improving turnaround for application developers in test and QA environments, adding virtualization data protection by including current NetBackup into the VMware framework, having a solid foundation for disaster recovery and business continuity between sites for mission critical systems and applications, and improved fault tolerance for planned and unplanned outages. The VMware VI3 upgrade process was accelerated by providing a hands-on training environment for the bank staff, leveraging experienced consultants to reduce risk, and using proven best practices from VMware and Microsoft.