2 march 2015 | jw marriott | hong...
TRANSCRIPT
2 March 2015 | JW Marriott | Hong Kong
Presentation Overview
Virtualisation
• Why would you?
• How did we approach this?
• What information did we take into consideration?
• What benefits were we expecting from virtualisation?
• How did we validate these assumptions?
• Were we “successful”?
• The good, the trade-off and the not so great
Johnson Winter and Slattery
The Firm
• Independent Australian Law firm
• Offices in all Australian Capital Cities
• Deliver high quality specialist services to major
corporations in high-value transactions and important
advisory, dispute resolution and regulatory assignments
nationally and internationally
• 250 Staff
• 110 Practitioners
• 50+ Partners
The IT Team
– 10 Staff (4 Help desk, 2 Trainers, 4 Specialists)
– Provide 24 x 7 x 365 support to the firm
Choices …
So many choices
• Vmware
• Citrix
• Hyper V
• Traditional
• The Cloud
• Hybrid Environment
INFORMATION GATHERING
Information Gathering
Solution Rqmnts
Interviews
Practitioners Secretaries
Back Office
Support Services
SR’s Help desk
Training
Team
Strategic
Executive IT
Water Cooler
Team meetingsCurrent
Environment
Business Needs and Expectations
Front of House Administration IT
Performance Performance Deliver Performance
Work anywhere Cost Management Simplified Management
Consistent experience Stability Uplift Stability
Storage Governance and Control Audit and Control
Expect a “consumerised”
experience
BCP Uplift Operational Monitoring
Stability Uplift Extensible
Cost Management
Summarise the KEY Business Messages by area
Business Challenges for IT (Summary)
• Identify the Gaps between Current Service Expectations
and actual service delivery capability
• Deliver services to cope with the company's recent and
ongoing growth.
• Uplift Business Continuity Capability
• Reassess the current environment across Architecture,
Applications and service delivery
• Establish capability to deliver and support strategic IT
projects
• Deliver a consistent user experience to our staff
regardless of location or device
TO VIRTUALISE OR NOT?
Possible Options for JWS
• Continue with decentralised environment
– Invest in platforms that assist with management
– Increase WAN investment
– Uplift IT capability in remote offices
– Accept that we will not always be able to
meet expectations ….
• Virtualise
– Centralise capability to DC
– Management inherent
– Reduce need for remote IT Capability
– Increase in Control for IT = Less flexibility for Users
• But consistent experience and strong governance
– Enabler for Line of Business Projects
Validating a virtualised desktop path
Proof of Concept
• Purchase hardware capable of supporting POC group
• Created SOE (Base image)
• Application deployment
• Security
Released to test group
• Staff from all areas of the Firm
• Setup feedback process
• Worked through defect reports
POC assessment
• Business Perspective
• IT Architecture
• IT support
POC Results - VDI
Blades Network SAN
VDI Platform
Desktop OS (Gold Image)
With all Apps installed
What we expected and
provisioned in the early
stages of the POC
Blades + SSD Network SAN
VDI Platform
AV in Hypervisor
Desktop OS (Gold Image)
Common Apps installed
Non Persistent Desktops
Printer Management
Profile Management
Application Management
Final POC design
Technical analysis summary
• Completed POC
• Understood the benefits and challenges associated with
Virtualisation from a Technology and Resourcing
perspective
• Establish an understanding from a commercial
perspective and did it make sense to pursue?
Commercial review
RFP
What to include in the RFP
• Proposed users at go live with projected growth (YR5)
• Overview of the current environment
• Number and type of virtual servers anticipated
• Performance expectations
• Storage requirements (IOPS)
• Management expectations
• Compatibility expectations
• Maintenance and Support
• Special user scenarios
Seeking “in principle Approval”
• Prepare an executive summary version of the proposed
Business Plan
• Include;
– Summary of the project goals referencing the key messages
from the analysis phase
– How the project options will benefit or impact the firm over time
– Offer high level budget cost for each option
– Must include options for Current and Virtualised approach
– Should project TCO over 5 years
• Circulate and discuss with the executive within the firm.
• The goal is to seek an in principle budget band and
high level project outcomes as input to the final business
plan
Preparing the business plan (Part A)
Following the POC and Analysis we;
• Went to market with the RFP.
• Analysed responses against overall needs
• Engagement / solution selection process lengthy with
several iterations of configurations
• From this process we were able to select the integration
partner and products that best met our needs
• Budget assessment was not the prime consideration
at this time, understanding the cost of “Technical
nirvana” was the goal
• However, solution options vs budget costs were being
maintained (cost vs. trade-off)
Finalising
• Selected Vendor / Integrator team
• Final cost negotiations. The larger the proposal, the
greater the discounts that can be applied.
• Where possible, talk directly to the vendor in conjunction
with your integrator
• Aggressive negotiation allows the purchase of greater
capacity and capability day one achieving;
– Lower cost over the course of 5 years as any additional
purchases to infrastructure no longer have “Bid Pricing” applied.
Standard spare part margins are applied
– Locking in Maintenance contracts for 5 years negates the annual
increases and the need to manage contract on annual basis
My thoughts on Vendors and SI’s• Vendors
– Proven track record in the area of execution
– Look for a vendor to take leading position in engagements
– Flexibility – Don’t allow their corporate process to mandate their client
engagement approach
– Choose a vendor with a proven track record for execution and monitor
their progress closely.
• Systems Integrators
– Honestly … I actually don’t like having to deal through the middle
person… but I get it!
– If you need to engage with an SI, they must be fully endorsed by the
vendor
– SI technical resources to be certified and current
– SI backed by strong references
• Vendor SI partnerships do not prove themselves during the sales
phase … this happens at install or post install time. Cohesion during
sales engagement process is critical to build “commitment
confidence”
Business Plan (Part B)
• With the size of investment it is critical that a long term
cost assessment (TCO) is undertaken comparing;
– Projected costs based on current model
– Projected costs based on proposed model
• Costs projections must include operational costs such as
hardware refresh, maintenance, software assurance and
internal support.
• Costs calculations should be developed in conjunction
with Finance team
• Set your final budget conservatively allow for
contingency – be prepared!
Our Results
Category 1 Year
Current $
5 Years
Current $
1 Year
Proposed $
5 year
proposed $
Hardware $XXX $XXX $XXX $XXX
Software $XXX $XXX $XXX $XXX
Maintenance $XXX $XXX $XXX $XXX
Support Costs $XXX $XXX $XXX $XXX
Total $YYY $YYY $YYY $YYY
• For JWS - more cost effective to replace existing
hardware over a 5 year term than to extend current
platform
• This gives us the opportunity to green field and
accomplish greater impact for the business
Business Plan Submission
• Business Plan (BP)
– Simple in layout
– Dollars upfront
– Background next
– Detail at the back
• Clearly identify the benefit of
the investment of $’s
• Identify Risks
• Gain approval from 60 Partners
(owners)
– Each with their opinion on the
best way to approach, or “I
have a colleague” you should
chat to..
• The Litmus approach…
The Solution
• UCS
– Configured for dual workload
– 2690 Blades with Fusion IO cards for VDI
– 2670 Blades for Application server workloads
– “Single Pane of glass management”
• EMC
– VNX series SAN
– Full set of replication software technologies
– FCOIP
• VMWare
– VDI desktop virtualisation
– Site Recovery Manager for BCP automation
• Cisco Nexus 5000 Data Switch
• Zero Clients (Currently testing VXME on Wyse)
Server and VDI Infrastructure
Single Chassis
Blades - No SSD
Network SAN
Virtual Server Environment Virtual Desktop Environment
Blades – With SSD
VDI Management and performance
monitoring
vSphere vSphere
Redundancy
Array Based Data replication
SRMSite Recovery Manager
DCA
Site Recovery Manager
DCB
Project Delivery
Preparing the environment
• VDI requires a solid networking foundation
– Must implement QOS on WAN segments
– LAN must be stable and as error free as possible
• WAN Redundancy
– Consider your options carefully
– No LAN / WAN = no VDI
– Internet GW is a viable option
• Structured and Unstructured user data
– Get a head start on users organising their files not stored in the
DMS
– Including local HDD’s
Build and Commission
• Pass all “set and forget” tasks to the Integration partner
– SAN configuration, VM Networking etc.
• Develop SAT, UAT, BAT program that validates all VDI
features
– Performance
– Failover
– Nnn.
• Create Gold SOE from scratch
• Test application management and deployment
Project Delivery
• Project rollout timeline – 12 Months
• Rolled out in 3 phases with feedback and tuning in each iteration
• Main deployment to Practitioners completed in 2 Weeks including
training
Migrating Users
• User migration in two steps
– Address unstructured data prior to migration (Data owner)
– Train and transition
• Survival training delivered to all staff
– Access new system
– Office 2010 training
– Where to get support online
– How to connect from home
• The Safety net
– Stratodesk
The Good, the Trade-off and the Otherwise
• Fantastic response to VDI Work anywhere at anytime
from any device.
• Remote offices
– Hardware setup and support simplified
• Single Point Image management
– We now fix issues once and apply globally
– Changes to environment effective within 15 minutes
• Controlled SOE desktop platform
• Security and AV patching and reporting
• Application deployment
• New System testing
• IT Team – support focus
Trade off..
• WAN redundancy or alternate connection path (via
Internet) must be taken into consideration
VDI is not the answer for all staff
• Mixed environment still exists for;
– Road warriors (3 – 5)
– Communications and Marketing
– Media / Content creators
Otherwise
• Printing
– Out of the box Win7 printing issues can be “enhanced” by VDI
depending on the client OS running VDI
• Video and collaboration
• USB redirect
– More support required
• VDI Client OS support
– VDI Client releases across OS platforms are not consistent in
features or capabilities
– No windows OS clients generally lag
Virtualisation and IT Team impact
• Virtualisation is a specialised skillset to establish and
maintain
• However;
– most IT staff can “follow their nose” to establish out of the box
capability
• Maximising virtualisation benefits requires qualified
expertise in server and desktop Virtualisation, storage
and networking technologies
• Virtualisation will test your IT teams knowledge of your
desktop OS and enterprise environment
Be prepared to upskill existing staff or recruit the
required skillset(s)
