Business Plan for Virtualization and Storage

It's been year since I walked into my new job and noticed to my surprise that we were still pairing a single APP to one OS to one Server (hardware).  The IT department was rolling out thick clients and the project was a mess.  This would have been a great oportunity to start to implement cloud services with thin clients (VDI).  Since my new job including SDLC (system development life-cycle) planning I was in the perfect position to propose the technical solution and accompanying business case for moving to a more "cloud"-focused architecture in our enterprise.

The pitch included a hypervisor based on VMware (although if I had my way I would have conducted a feasibility study and proved out a KVM-Linux based hypervisor...thus reducing costs).  Also included in the business case was a 3-year refresh of our servers and how the upfront costs of a virtualized system would more than pay for itself.  We also had requirements for security appliances such as firewalls, IDS/IPS, VPN and packet capture devices that could be virtualized.  Add to that the upcoming trend in network virtualization (whether NFV or SDN, you choose) and the savings is obvious.

Now that we have everyone on-board, the first task was the upgrade our EMC SAN from an older CX to a newer VNX platform.  Which brings me to this posting.  I've been managing the team and acting as techinical advisor on this upgrade.  The VNX is a complex platform allowing for a number of flexible configurations.  This leads one to a number of possibilities when planning for the network and primary/backup DR sites.  Just look at how many "processing engines" comprise the VNX series and the number of connections coming out of these guys.

Good news is we're almost there.  Most of the design considerations and site planning is complete and we're about ready to deploy.  Transition planning involves replication from old to new SAN and arranging for a failover to our DR site before cutting over.

After the SAN is done, we move forward with building out our VMware hypervisor environment at the primary and backup site with full VMware high availability, site recovery and vMotion capability ensuring 99.9999% uptime.  Then on to the OS/APP projects where we will stand up a new security system based on the Nessus scanner and passive packet analyzers as well as a SPLUNK SIEM.

Note of interest.  We interviewed a company named Nutanix.  They have a very interesting proposition with "virtualized storage" utilizing a "pay as you grow" model.  I personally would have conducted a trial with their system had it not been for the fact that we have been with EMC for a number of years.  Keep an eye on these guys, they are on FIRE!