SCU Warts & All Server And Storage Consolidation And Virtualisation experience

SCU Warts & All Server And Storage Consolidation And Virtualisation experience

1. About SCUTopics:

About SCUAbout SCU Technical environmentTechnical environment Server InfrastructureServer Infrastructure Storage InfrastructureStorage Infrastructure VirtualizationVirtualization Next stepsNext steps ??

1. About SCU

2.Technical environment

Topics:


Topics:1. About SCU


3.Server Infrastructure


Topics:1. About SCU



4.Storage Infrastructure


Topics:1. About SCU




5.Virtualization


Topics:1. About SCU




5.Virtualization

6.Next steps


Topics:1. About SCU




5.Virtualization

6.Next steps

7. ?


About SCU


About SCU Campuses located at Tweed Heads, Lismore,

Coffs Harbour, Satellites located at Sydney (Hotel School)

Melbourne (School of Business) Approx. 14K students Approx. 800 staff


Technical Environment


Technical Environment Intercampus connectivity 1GB via AARNET for major

campuses with 100MB for Sydney and 512 KB ADSL at Melbourne,

Networking infrastructure CISCO from edge to core, mix of 6500’s and 3750’s,

Server Operating systems include, Novell Netware, Win 2003, Linux Red-hat, Sun Solaris and some Tru64,

Server platforms Rack mount, HP DL’s, DELL Power Edge 1650 – 1850, HP bl20 Blades, various Sun Ultra-Spark platforms, and some DEC Alpha


Technical Environment Storage platforms; HP EVA 3000, 4000, 56 spool capacity

currently operating 146FC (7TB), MSA 1500’s currently operating 300GB Ultra SCSI, and 500GB SATA,

Enterprise backup; HP Data Protector 6.0 streaming to a MSL6060 LTO2 library,

Virtualisation platform; ESX 2SNP currently operating 8 licenses, environments are a mixture of Novell, Win 2000 – 2003, Linux Redhat.


Server Infrastructure



Server Infrastructure 2002 the Data Centre was fast becoming a bottleneck for

growth as a result of space constraints due to the mishmash of various server configurations and footprints housed by in-locking space hungry shelving.

End of 2002 SCU entered into a lease agreement opening the way for replacement of the entire server fleet equating to approx. 40 physical platforms at the time.

From 2003 – 2006 server growth increased by around 50% to approx 95 physical platforms today,


Server Infrastructure A significant portion of this growth can be attributed to a

normalization of platforms required to deliver services reliably, i.e. impact of deploying N+X tier architectures for high availability etc.

2003 Server platforms were standardized around 19 inch rack mount systems with a combination of DELL and HP platforms,

2005 – 2006 saw the introduction of blade servers, and VMWARE,


Server Infrastructure 2002 – 2005 saw a turn around in data centre constraints

from space to power and cooling requiring additional investment. Power and Air are still not as good as they could be, seem to be playing catch-up,

Server explosion rather than consolidation, there is some light on the horizon with VMWARE,

Status today of the server fleet is services are reliable and asset management is in place.

Storage Infrastructure



Storage Infrastructure 2002 state of play; All services operate with localized or

direct attach disk, some raided and some not, services were constrained as drives reached capacity, costs increased as more array devices were brought in to pluck the gaps,

The writing was definitely on the wall, Total storage under management 1.2TB including

system disks,


Storage Infrastructure We tendered for a “Storage Area Network” for 3.5 TB

with plan for 30% growth/annum and a replacement cycle of 5 years for the SAN.

As a result of the Tender we ended up with a 6TB HP EVA 3000 dual controllers with redundant fabric,

We also had to be back this thing up, so a part of the tender we include a requirement for an enterprise level backup and recovery solution “HP Data protector, & MSL6060 LTO2 library,


Storage Infrastructure Within 6 months and with assistance of the vender we had

consolidated all service storage and backup requirements onto the SAN, “brilliant” with capacity to burn so we thought!

2003 went past, then 2004, then half way through 2005 we were at capacity, remember we only started with 1.2 TB in 2003 now we were at 6TB,


Storage Infrastructure Infrastructure rollover was in 2008 so we needed to buy

time, we added the remaining capacity of 650GB usable this got us to 2006.

2006 Crunch time, the numbers on replacing a shelf of our 146GB FC disks with 300GB FC did not add up in-terms of value.

For the approx. same cost we could obtained a tier 2 HP MSA1500 running 56 Ultra SCSI 3 300GB drives; approx 12TB of usable space.


Storage Infrastructure We are now in the process of migrating around 4TB off

our SAN onto the MSA, services will include File & Print, development environments, and other unstructured data, plus providing a disk to disk backup capacity,

We should now easily make the rollover timeframe of the current SAN,

We believe that a large component of this storage up take was a normalisation of usage as the Organisation had been constrained for so long with legacy infrastructures,


Storage Infrastructure Apart from our capacity issues we do love our SAN…

Virtualisation



Virtualisation Why? Primarily it has allowed us to provision cost

effectively development/testing and less crucial production environments. Covering the shortfall in small project budgets that struggle to fund the necessary infrastructure,

Bigger Picture! As we become more experienced with VMWARE we plan to assess all critical services inline with asset replacement schedules for the virtualisation option,


Virtualisation Story to date; In 2005 we acquired 3 chassis of HP BL20

blades, and 3 ESX 2 way licenses with virtual centre manager,

End 2006 we have grown to 8 ESX 2 way licenses operating approx. 40 mixed environments including Novell, Win 2003 and Linux Redhat. (These are predominately development/test systems),

Early 2007 will see implementation of our CRM system completely in VMWARE, this will also lift the VM profile for all the doubters out there,


Virtualisation As a result of VMWARE we have seen an explosion of

environments however this has can also be attributed to a normalisation of actually environmental necessities,

Provisioning controls; As VMWARE does lend itself well to on demand provisioning controls to regulate growth are crucial, as ideas and whims could easily be acted upon,

Initial challenges; breaking the stakeholder mindsets of physical infrastructure ownership vs virtualisation, expelling internal fear campaigns around performance and capacity, when 90% of the server infrastructure is only operating at 20% to 30%.


Virtualisation Learning Curve; Administrator learning curve is steep,

getting the VM farm architecture right at the start is crucial, understanding the best way to provision storage and networking is essential, (Port, VLAN and LUN provisioning and structures, Firewall nightmares)

Complexity; combination of VM and Blades can add orders of magnitude in complexity when considering blades operate 4 Nics, Dual+ HBAs, and VM trunking can become a trifle complex, (Documentation & Change Management crucial)


Virtualisation Server sizing; crucial to maximizing your license and

service deployments, we currently have operate std 2 way 9GB VM environments this has mainly been due to funding constraints,

Licensing – we have found it cumbersome to manage yearly maintenance contacts for support as they all fall due at different times. We have arrange co-termination with VM but we have to do this with each license purchased is there a better way?


Virtualisation Today, VMWARE is a core component in our architecture

plan moving forward with expected infiltration into more crucial architectures over the next couple of years.


Next Steps


Next Step Determine consolidation and virtualisation targets, Leverage asset replacement schedules to fund the re-

engineering of targeted services with the VM option, Integrate VMWARE into the design and development of

the University IT DRP-BCP planning, Develop a framework for managing, determining and

deploying virtual environments, Continue with the expansion of SAN architecture, Investigate ILM options for unstructured data,


Questions

Documents

SCU Warts & All Server And Storage Consolidation And Virtualisation experience