Architecting an Agile Datacenter · Lessons Learned •Agility through virtualization has forever...
Transcript of Architecting an Agile Datacenter · Lessons Learned •Agility through virtualization has forever...
Architecting an Agile Datacenter
Tim Hays
Director, IT
Agenda
• Background on Lextron
• In the beginning…
• The challenge
• The process
• Results
• Advice
Lextron, Inc.
Lextron, Inc.
• Industry: Wholesale Distribution + Retail
• Size: + $500 million + 60 locations
• Location: US - Canada
• Products – Services:
– The Lextron distribution network markets products to
veterinarians, farm supply dealers, poultry and livestock
producers.
– Products: pharmaceuticals, grain conditioners, farm and ranch
supplies, plus animal/feed management software and hardware
applications.
• Centralized Datacenter
In the beginning…
What’s the difference between a fairy tale and a war story?
In the beginning…
What’s the difference between a fairy tale and a war story?
• A fairy tale begins with…Once upon a time…
• A war story begins with…There I was…
There I was…
• Ten years ago…new job…
– Racks of servers, racks of storage
– No place to add more racks
– Maintenance costs!
– Power and cooling barely adequate
– ERP system was so slow…“We would have made our sales
budget this month if the computer wasn’t so slow!”
– ERP could hardly process a days work in a day.
Fast Forward…
• We fixed all that…
• Company growth through acquisition
• Twice the size by revenue
• 3 ERP systems
• Virtualization in parts of the data center
• Some experience with VM on staff
• VoIP
• LAN virtualization
• Dread of ERP change, based on mitigated disaster of 10 years prior
The Challenge: SAP
• Merging 3 ERP systems to one
• Hope to double the size of the company
• Solution must scale with the growth of the company
• Limited hardware budget
• Solution must be fast, fast, fast
• No idea how to size the system for speed and growth
• What if we are wrong? ****!!!!!!!!
Big Idea
• Agile Datacenters are virtual
• Agile SAP deployments are virtual
What we had…
• Racks of gear
• Bigger AC
• Bigger generator
• Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance
– $$
– Staff time
• Time spent on legacy system support
• Time not spent on innovation, invention
• We were not agile
What we have now…(part 1)
• VMware: vSphere 4.1
– 4 Proliant nodes
– running HA and dynamic resource balancing
– totaling 450GB of memory and 32 cores
– runs 75 virtual machines, windows and linux (including
Exchange and SQL)
– EMC CX4-120 with 66GB of SSD in FAST Cache and ~90
spindles
What we have now…(part 2)
• HP Integrity
– 4 BL870 nodes
– 32 Itanium cores and 400 GB memory
– running HP-UX 11.3112 HP-UX
– 24 virtual machines, which can be online migrated
between physical blades
– EMC CX4-240 with the ERP Central Instance in SSD and
the rest in ~30 spindles.
Green IT
• 80 % reduction in datacenter space
• 45% reduction in cooling requirements
• 40% reduction in power requirements
Challenge 2: The SAP Landscape
• Avoid the business risk of making the wrong decision
regarding hardware sizing. Must be fast, fast, fast
• Limited budget
• “How do you size this thing?”
• Spend capital over time
• Account for business growth without a forklift change to
data center equipment
• Account for disaster recovery
The Process
• Tried to find a couple SAP reference customers running SAP
virtually in production - There weren’t any!
• Weighed benefits against risks
• Decided to be first
• Rolled the dice and never looked back
Driving Factors
• How did we decide?
– Built on previous experience and success with VMware and HP
virtual servers
– Build on existing talent
– Conducted sizing SAP sizing exercises (3x)
• Ultimately how did we decide?
– Money!
– Estimated year one capital savings $600,000
physical ($1,000,000) vs. virtual ($400,000)
Results
• Just finished implementation of SAP in Feb.
• Consultants tell us it is the fastest SAP system they have ever
seen.
• Project was on time and on budget
• Company acquired a business during the implementation of SAP
(grew 20%) – no problem
• Company just announced plans to acquire one of its largest
competitors, which will double the size of the
organization by revenue and head count.
• We aren’t worried!
Main Point
• Agile datacenters are virtual
• Virtual
– Servers
– Storage
– WAN
Implementation Challenges
• Vendors: “It can’t be done” “must be physical hardware”
• Lack of reference customers
• Staff training
• Vendor training
• New storage platform
• New way to think about storage
• “How big should I make this server?”
• “Where should I put this data?”
Agile Advantages
• Takes the risks out of sizing questions
• Flexibility to tune the system, change your mind, or try things
out
• Cost containment - don’t blow up the budget: spend a little at
a time, grow as you go
• Reduce risk of poor decisions making, poor planning,
unforeseen circumstances
• Business risk avoidance by not having to forklift hardware
Advice
• Hire smart people
• Make vendors plan for 5x growth even if you only intend to
buy 1x now (plan to grow!)
• Monitoring tools – spend the money and the time to be
able to know what’s going on in the box
Lessons Learned
• Agility through virtualization has forever changed how we think
about and scope IT projects
• Virtualization provides the freedom to experiment
• Agility reduces risks
• Virtualization allows IT to flex with the organization
• Agile organizations are cost effective
THANK YOU!
Tim Hays
Director, IT