Su!e" S#$yScience Museum: 100% Virtual with VMware vSphere Built on FlexPod from NetApp and Cisco

Customer ProfileThe Science Museum of Minnesota is a regional science museum and nonprofit organization located on the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown St. Paul. The museum’s facilities include a public science education center, research center, collection centers, and an IMAX Convertible Dome Omni-theater. Founded in 1907, the Science Museum offers extensive teacher edu-cation and school outreach programs and is known worldwide for its interac-tive exhibits, dynamic traveling exhibi-tions, and internationally distributed large-format films.

The ChallengeOptimizing a tight nonprofit budgetThe Science Museum of Minnesota plays a vital role in the cultural and educational environment in St. Paul through its galleries, collections, exhib-its, classes, and camps. In one year, the museum provided science educa-tion to more than one million visitors. With world-class exhibits such as “Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs,” engaging classes such as “Chain Reaction Contraptions,” and a 6,000-square-foot “Human Body Gallery,” the museum is “linking our

future to the wisdom of our past and lay-ing a strong foundation for the next gen-eration” (source: 2011 Annual Report).

The museum’s IT infrastructure provides the critical foundation for business operations and museum activities. As a nonprofit organization, the museum needs to deliver efficient IT services in an environment that effectively supports its membership and visitor community.

To meet its revenue and client service needs, the museum adopted the Tessitura Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) system specifically designed for arts and cultural organiza-tions. The museum wanted a single, powerful database to record, track, and manage important patron details.

“Deploying the robust Tessitura CRM system in our existing environment would have required adding eight physical servers and another eight for redundancy, plus massive storage to support them,” says Joel Miles, director of IT at the museum. “It was time to take advantage of virtualization—for the Tessitura CRM deployment and to posi-tion our organization for more efficiency and reduced costs down the line.”

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

IndustryEducation

The ChallengeReplace aging data center and direct-attached storage environ-ment and reduce server sprawl to simplify IT management and optimize lean nonprofit budget.

The SolutionConsolidate the storage environ-ment and virtualize servers and desktops with VMware® vSphere® built on FlexPod® from Cisco and NetApp®.

BenefitsAttain almost 100% virtualized environmentAchieve one-hour RPO for mission-critical data Reduce storage requirements by 80% Enhance security with desktop virtualization and control of remote workstationsProvision and restore desk-tops/laptops in seconds

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“The single, unified architecture of VMware vSphere built on FlexPod has eliminated our previous storage management, performance, and scalability challenges. We’re almost 100% virtualized now, which simplifies management while acquisition and operational cost savings continue to grow.”Joel MilesDirector of IT, Science Museum of Minnesota

The IT team worked with NetApp part-ner and solutions provider Northland Systems and its sister IT professional/managed services company, Xigent Solutions, to develop the right technol-ogy solution for the museum. Flexibility and scalability to meet the changing organizational requirements were key factors to consider. With Northland’s recommendation, the Science Museum selected VMware vSphere built on FlexPod from NetApp and Cisco. “VMware on FlexPod was clearly the right solution to address the Science Museum’s current and future needs and, in addition, cost-effectively ele-vated the museum’s infrastructure to enterprise class,” says Steve Pheneger, account manager at Northland.

The SolutionConsolidating into a unified, highly scalable architectureThe Science Museum leveraged the expertise from Northland Systems to deploy and configure the new solution. “From our experience with FlexPod, we knew data migration and installation could occur quickly and seamlessly,” notes Rod Lucero, chief technology officer at Xigent Solutions. “VMware on FlexPod was the right choice to meet the needs of the Science Museum, both today and tomorrow.”

Once deployed, the solution equipped the museum with a new level of flexibil-ity and manageability in the data center. “Our data center has been transformed into a pool of unified server, network, and storage resources that we can quickly provision,” says Miles. “With an integrated virtualization platform, we have the flexibility and scalability to quickly adapt our infrastructure to seize new opportunities for reducing costs, improving productivity, and better serving our patrons.”

VMware vSphere built on FlexPod delivers virtualized mission-critical appli-cations for the museum, including the Tessitura CRM system, which enables museum employees such as visitor rela-tions associates and educational pro-gram directors to see a patron’s entire history in one streamlined constituent record. The museum also leverages the solution to virtualize and support many other environments, including payroll and accounting systems, a point-of-sale system, a collections management data-base for its 1.75 million artifacts, an IT ticketing system, Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2, Liquidware Labs Stratusphere FIT, and VMware Zimbra® Collaboration Server, which includes 700 e-mail accounts, and a resilient, growing virtual desktop environment supported by VMware View™.

The museum has enhanced its data protection, disaster recovery, and regu-latory compliance plans with the Flex-Pod solution and additional NetApp capabilities. The IT staff uses NetApp Snapshot™ technology to create hourly point-in-time copies of patron, billing, and exhibit data. End users are newly empowered with self-service capabili-ties using SnapRestore® for quick restoration of inadvertently deleted files and reduced IT support tickets.

The NetApp Data ONTAP® 8 operating system provides the museum a single system management framework for increased operational efficiency. NetApp multiprotocol support enables the organization to leverage existing infrastructure assets. NetApp dedupli-cation is reducing the museum’s stor-age requirements by as much as 80%. NetApp Flash Cache helps boost performance and improve the end-user experience with intelligent caching of application workloads.

To help make sure of business continu-ity, NetApp SnapMirror® integrated with VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Man-ager automatically replicates museum data hourly to the FlexPod solution in the secondary data center. The IT staff can achieve recovery point objectives as low as one hour for critical data on which the museum depends for daily

operations. FlexPod also helps the museum meet its stringent Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) requirements by supporting its log management software.

Business BenefitsA virtualized platform for today and tomorrowWith the cost of running a 370,000- square-foot facility, employing a staff of more than 600 full- and part-time employees plus 1,000 volunteers, and developing the science education pro-grams and exhibits that engage visitors of all ages, the museum is taking advan-tage of the virtualization and cost reduction opportunities provided by the FlexPod solution.

Today the museum runs all applications and data on NetApp storage and Cisco Unified Computing System™ (UCS™) servers on the FlexPod platform. “The single, unified architecture of VMware vSphere built on FlexPod has eliminated our previous storage management, per-formance, and scalability challenges,” says Miles. “We’re almost 100% virtual-ized now, which simplifies management while acquisition and operational cost savings continue to grow.”

End-user computing and IT resilienceThe Science Museum has implemented a desktop virtualization strategy rooted

in the FlexPod solution and supported by VMware vCloud® Director and VMware View 5. This end-user computing environment with 200 virtual desktops for box office, call center, and gift shop personnel is eliminating regular hard-ware replacements in these compute-intensive environments. “We can quickly provision storage and virtual machines and transparently connect users to their original desktops without losing a transaction, and virtual desktops can be backed up or restored in seconds,” notes Miles.

With virtual desktops in the Computer Education Center, the museum has greatly simplified the IT services that support the center. To teach 200 courses covering more than 80 subjects such as Microsoft Windows®, Apple® Mac® OS X, and database design, staff members were required to reimage classroom PCs several times daily to prepare for each class. “Now our instructors have self-service, virtual private data centers for their training environments, eliminating the costly, time-consuming desktop imaging process,” says Miles.

Through desktop virtualization, the museum is also effectively securing remote workstations. “Supplying remote workers with museum-issued laptops and guaranteeing that employees

working offsite will use adequate antivirus support aren’t realistic options for us,” says Miles. “With desktop virtualization enabled by VMware View built on Flex-Pod, the museum data and applications are securely located onsite. Offsite employees can access the systems they need 24x7, home computers can’t infect our systems, and our data remains protected and secure.”

Visionaries in science and technologyThe Science Museum of Minnesota has a long history of educating and inspir-ing visitors through its interactive and traveling exhibits, collections, Omnithe-ater films, classes, and camps. Its worldwide recognition is clear, being one of only a few museums in the United States to exhibit The Dead Sea Scrolls, giving visitors the opportunity to explore one of the greatest archaeo-logical discoveries of the 20th century.

Through IT innovation that includes server virtualization and desktop virtual-ization made possible by VMware on FlexPod, the museum is able to elimi-nate the limitations and management complexity of siloed systems and server sprawl. FlexPod scalability will enable the museum to deliver additional IT services as needed to support exciting new educational programs and research endeavors moving forward.

Figure 1) The FlexPod solution in the primary data center is composed of a NetApp FAS3210A storage system, Cisco UCS B230 M1 Blade servers, Cisco Nexus 1000V Series switches, and VMware vSphere 5 and vCenter for virtualization. A similar FlexPod solution resides in a secondary site for disaster recovery. Virtualized applications include Tessitura CRM, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, and VMware Zimbra Collaboration Server, in addition to 200 virtualized desktops running on VMware View 5.

Primary Data Center

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)

B230 M1 Blade ServerNetApp SnapMirror

VMware Site Recovery Manager

NetApp SnapshotNetApp SnapRestoreNetApp Deduplication

VMware vSphere 5

Virtualized Desktops

VMware vSphere 5

Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches

NetApp FAS3210HA

V

Virtu Virtualized Desktops

Secondary Data Center

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)

B200 M2 Blade Server

NetApp FAS3140HA

Virtu

VMware View 5VMware vCloud Director

VMware Zimbra Collaboration ServerMicrosoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Tessitura Constituent Relationship Management

VMware View 5VMware vCloud Director

VMware Zimbra Collaboration ServerMicrosoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Tessitura Constituent Relationship Management

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© 2012 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions of this document may be reproduced without prior written consent of NetApp, Inc. Specifications are subject to change without notice. NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, Data ONTAP, FlexPod, SnapMirror, SnapRestore, and Snapshot are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft, SQL Server, and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. vCloud, VMware, vSphere, and Zimbra are registered trademarks and vCenter and View are trademarks of VMware, Inc. Cisco Nexus is a registered trademark and Cisco Unified Computing System and Cisco UCS are trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. Apple and Mac are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. CSS-6557-0512

“We’re constantly looking for new ways to leverage technology to better meet the needs of our staff while helping to further differentiate the museum as a visionary institution,” says Miles. “The FlexPod solution from NetApp and Cisco frees up our IT budget and resources for IT innovation, while virtu-alization has allowed us to evolve our IT environment into a dynamic data center that can quickly and cost-effectively respond to changing business needs. We’re pushing the technology envelope and, by doing so, extending our com-mitment to science and technology.”

“With desktop virtualization enabled by the VMware View built on FlexPod solution, museum data and applications are securely located onsite. Offsite employees can access the systems they need 24x7, home computers can’t infect our systems, and our data remains protected and secure.”Joel MilesDirector of IT, Science Museum of Minnesota

SOLUTION COMPONENTS

FlexPod ComponentsNetApp FAS3210A and FAS3140A storage systems

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) B230 M1 and B200 M2 Blade Servers

Cisco Nexus 1000V combined with 5000/6000/7000 Series Core Switches

Virtualization Components VMware vSphere 5

VMware vCloud Director

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM)

VMware View 5

NetApp SoftwareData ONTAP 8.0 system operating in 7-Mode

Flash Cache

Snapshot technology

SnapRestore

SnapMirror

Deduplication

Third-Party ProductsLiquidware Labs Stratusphere FIT

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Tessitura Constituent Relationship Management

VMware Zimbra Collaboration Server

Trend Micro Deep Security

PartnersNorthland Systems www.northlandusa.com

Xigent Solutions www.xigentsolutions.com

Solution delivery partner: