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Upgrade VMware ESX Server 2.5 and Virtual Center 1.0 to VMware VI3
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Private Non-Profit Healthcare Provider
Company Profile:
Having over 8,000 employees including 1,000 affiliated physicians, the company is a private, not-for-profit healthcare provider in the midwest. The company leads the market with a health system network that includes regional acute care hospitals, medical centers, psychiatric and rehabilitation centers, home health care agencies, nursing homes, childcare facilities, and physician practice management.
Products Used:
VMwareVI3 Enterprise Edition, Virtual Center Management Server 2.0, existing IBM 3850 and x-series model 8-way and 4-way servers, existing IBM ESS2105-800 SVC FC SAN storage with McData Fibre Channel switches.
Summary:
As the client’s VMware servers and Virtual Machines were running in a production environment since 2004, they required experienced engineering resources to assist them with a phased virtualization infrastructure upgrade approach for their existing VMware ESX IBM servers and IBM SVC storage in both their primary and secondary datacenters.
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Situation:
The company had approximately 172 Virtual Machine guests for test, development, and production environments, running across 13 physical servers using VMware ESX Server version 2.5.2 and 2.5.4, and one dedicated physical VMware Virtual Center Management Server. The new VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 upgrade plan needed to use documented best practices for hot and cold migration methods for the various servers, applications, and operating systems, to meet specific Service Level Agreements [SLAs], which required scheduled downtime for their VMware environment. Knowledge transfer for the client's IT team, and documentation on final configurations and migration details were also required as part of this project.
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Critical Issue:
The client and New Age Technologies were waiting on the final certification and support from VMware for the IBM SVC SAN storage hardware platform, which added time to the project scope and engagement schedule. Also, these servers were production systems, and required a very detailed migration and project plan with documented back-out path(s) if there were issues encountered during the production upgrade delivery.
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Solution:
The solution included detailed planning and design before the upgrade migration and collaboration with the client's IT team in understanding specific change control processes. VMware certified engineers accelerated the VMware VI3 upgrade process by providing a documented upgrade and migration plan, mitigated any project risks by leveraging experienced consultants, and used proven best practices from VMware, IBM, and Microsoft.
The client received a VMware Infrastructure Upgrade Design Plan and Review, Production Migration and Upgrade Matrix, Production Migration Project Plan, VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 Upgrade using the Jumpstart Workshop delivery combined with the New Age Technology A.D.E.P.T. consulting methodology, and a best practices knowledge transfer for their production VMware Virtual Infrastructure environment.
The Systems Analyst for the client, stated that VMware has provided maximum efficiency and flexibility for their IT infrastructure, as well as given a valuable reduced cost of ownership. “We are able to complete projects faster, and they are completed under budget,” says the analyst. “We can put as much as we want in our data center because we know our virtualization platform will support our growth.”
The Systems Manager, added “The solution has broadened our capabilities while reducing costs and administrative tasks, going above and beyond our original goal of server consolidation.”
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