C>Ways Ltd – Innovators In IT

VMware and the Financial Services

The Brief:
Carry out an investigation into the possibilities of significantly reducing the number of physical server at rpmi through the use of modern server virtualisation techniques and support for disaster recovery.

The Method:
c>ways delivered an Enterprise Class virtualisation solution utilising VMware vSphere, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) storage and Avaya Enterprise Networks.

The Solution:
The previous 60+ physical servers, of which 40 were considered business critical, were consolidated down to 6 physical servers plus the addition of a shared storage or SAN infrastructure. There were immediate savings in power costs and carbon footprint, both directly and indirectly through reduced air conditioning requirements.

simple, effective & environmentally friendly solutions… the c>ways’ way

rpmi is an award-winning pensions administrator which administers pensions for over 200 organizations and supports over 500,000 members.

 c>ways were invited by rpmi to carry out an investigation into the possibilities of significantly reducing the number of physical file servers at rpmi, through the use of modern virtualisation techniques. The objective was to demonstrate the potential benefits of adopting server  and storage virtualisation as a method of delivering a real-world point in time business continuity solution which allows IT service departments to deliver on a 99.999% system availability statistic and the utmost in data protection.

As a result of this exercise c>ways delivered an Enterprise Class virtualisation and replicated storage solution utilising VMware Infrastructure virtualisation software, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) storage and Avaya Enterprise Networks. The platform formed the basis of the Pension Company’s Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan. Two locations within rpmi’s Stooperdale Offices mirrored the servers and data for reliable delivery of ICT service. A third remote site hosts a replicated Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity platform which is made up of identical products and made ready to failover at the request of the IT Department. The entire solution is managed by a Central Service.

The solution was designed to provide a real world solution.

c>ways determined that the current 60+ physical servers, of which 40 were considered business critical, could be consolidated down to 6 physical servers plus the addition of a shared storage – SAN infrastructure. There were immediate savings in power costs and carbon footprint, both directly and indirectly through reduced air conditioning requirements.

rpmi had adopted a 4 year capital replacement policy. With the new virtual environment, the need to purchase new server hardware in the future was also much reduced, opening the possibility that, once the initial investment was made, any server capital replacement program or maintenance budget may be reduced by as much as 60% of its current and expected capital replacement cost.

In addition to those savings, virtualising the servers had a huge advantage: the virtual servers running on the 6 physical servers are no more than large files that can be copied to other physical servers running the virtualisation, making backup, disaster resilience and business continuity much less complex and easy to test.

The solution was designed to provide a Virtual Environment that was configured within one central Data Centre and split into three deployable configurations. The primary site pair was located within the Stooperdale offices. The remote site equipment was re-located upon agreement in a secure remote site location. In this way should the main data centre in Darlington suffer a catastrophic disaster, with the virtual server environment, it is possible to have the servers pop back up at another location within a couple of minutes, and in some cases, without disruption to network users.

The protection of rpmi data using tape backup media had grown to a point where the time window for backup and verification was very difficult to achieve. Server creep resulted in a tape backup library of more than 800 tapes and 30 tape changes per day. Server virtualisation SAN infrastructure and an Enterprise scale Tape Library platform allowed rpmi to both gain control of the backup and save operational time and tape costs in addition to further enhancing data integrity.

The implementation of a virtual server environment provided rpmi with a platform that can adapt to the needs of the business rapidly and with greater financial control.

As part of the project deployment, key rpmi personnel were trained to a level which allowed them to ascertain a formal qualificatio in:

• Hitachi Systems Engineer’s
• VMware Professional’s
• Brocade Switch Fabric Professional’s
• Symantec Backup Exec Administrator’s