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VMware VI3 Installation
and Lab Manager Jumpstart
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Interactive Intelligence
This VOIP company develops and offers a unified IP communications solution for 2,500+ clients world-wide.
Products Used
VMware VI3 Enterprise Edition, Virtual Center Management Server, Lab Manager Bundle, Lab Manager, Virtual Center and ESX hosts, VMware Converter, Dell PowerEdge server hardware, and EqualLogic storage
Summary
Software and device driver development are the key technologies that bring in revenue for Interactive Intelligence, and having over 200 physical servers to manage was a growing challenge for their test and developer teams. Based on their experience with application development and enterprise best practices, New Age Technologies was sought out to provide a proof of concept, installation, and knowledge transfer for VMware’s virtual infrastructure and Lab Manager product for the programmers at the company.
Situation
Interactive Intelligence's environment consisted of over 200 Dell and HP Windows-based servers, with a few servers running VMware GSX server and five servers using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 in production. The challenge was showing a return on investment for VMware’s ESX Server product vs. the Microsoft Virtual Server solution. The C++ and C Sharp development teams needed to rely on virtualization features such as utilizing templates, snapshots, plug-ins for Firefox, and integration with Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange.
Critical Issues
Justifying the purchase and procurement of a new virtualization solution was a major challenge, as this client was using the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 product, which was included at no charge as part of their corporate-wide Microsoft ELA agreement. The high availability features and VMotion from VMware were not of added value to the development team, which was a key differentiator between the Microsoft and VMware products. There were also concerns about VMware ESX making low level device driver calls to a third-party system board from Intel that required fine timing adjustments for their in-house developed software application. Having programmers located in eight international locations and six United States locations also posed a challenge due to product development workflow and preserving the integrity of software intellectual property.
Solution
The onsite engagement included an interactive and collaborative proof-of-concept workshop focusing on VMware VI3 Enterprise Edition, Virtual Center, and VMware Lab Manager administration, operations, and troubleshooting.
New Age Technologies assisted in the installation of VMware Lab Manager using VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 Enterprise Edition on two VMware server hosts and one Virtual Center Management Server. The delivery included best practices sharing from Microsoft and VMware, product knowledge transfer, and a guided tour of an onsite installation for six Interactive Intelligence engineers. During this engagement, New Age Technologies detailed the differences in the virtualization technologies from VMware and Microsoft, showing the developers and programmers the rapid server deployment using gold image templates, creating ISO repositories on VMFS file shares, writing to the MAPPI protocols of a virtual machine, and using the single console management GUI. Also, migration of the existing Microsoft Virtual Server machines into VMware through the Enterprise Converter product was explained and tested, as well as how to expand new virtual server resources on the fly.
Thorough testing was also completed for the third-party VoIP card from Intel inside of a VMware Virtual Machine during the proof of concept process.
This yielded a tangible ROI in improved turn-around for application developers in test and QA environments across the U.S. and international locations, as well as a created a built-in foundation for future projects such as disaster recovery and business continuity. Having an environment with high availability features and fault tolerance for planned and unplanned outages was of critical importance. VMware Lab Manager and VMware ESX Server software enabled the test and development teams to reduce the amount of equipment they were using in the test lab, saving rack space and environment costs for power and cooling, eliminating repetitive and time-consuming system provisioning tasks, and enabling closed-loop processes with better collaboration and workflow between developers, QA, and the IT support teams.
Testimonial
"Our Lab Manager implementation replaced a phalanx of older physical systems, reducing the space, electrical, and cooling needs considerably. Lab Manager has enabled us to streamline our new-build deployment process and we now enjoy much more flexibility in managing the numerous images and configurations required for our development work."
- Jeff Gerardot, Director of Development, Interactive Intelligence