Technical Workshop

Implementing VSPEX in a private cloud

• Geoffrey McGowan

• Solutions Architect at Comsys

• Specialising in Virtualised high complexity

environments

Introduction

Introduction to the Environment

• Medical Imaging Customer based in Ireland

• Main Sites in Dublin

• Provides centralised image datastore for

multiple clinics and hospitals

• Requirement to meet stringent ISO

certifications for data practices and data

retention

Customers Requirements

• Move to a completely virtualised environment

• Virtualise mission critical General Electric Centricity RISi

application

• Increase redundancy and RTO for mission critical General

Electric Centricity RISi application

• Build a modular SAN environment which would form the basis

of a new virtualised environment to replace the current

physical environment.

• Reduced RTO for critical backup restores

Customers roadblocks

• Highly complex application General Electric Centricity RISi

with stringent set of requirements.

• First time that the General Electric Centricity RISi application

would be virtualised in Ireland

• Due to mission critical requirements, multiple vendor support

cases had been an issue in the past (Support Ping-Pong)

• Limited budget

• Small amount of dedicated specialised IT staff

• Short window for project completion

Comsys Proposed Solution

• 4 Phase approach

• Phase 1 - Design

• Phase 2 – Proof of Concept

• Phase 3 – Implementation

• Phase 4 – Go live

Phase I

Design

Phase I – Design steps

• Initial Workshop with customer to details required Service

levels, RPO/RTO, growth levels, support requirements and

datacentre constraints if any.

• Design call with GE RISi architects to ascertain software

requirements and possible Caveats with it running in a

virtualised environment.

• Create a design using the VSPEX approved framework.

• Create service offering with SPoC for all hardware

components, eliminating “support Ping Pong”

• Create and document final design, present to customer and

GE architects for final approval

Phase I – Design overview

• Compute – Customer has existing HP estate, so Comsys

recommended 2 x HP DL380 G7 servers in HA cluster.

• Storage– The customer would like future expansion, as well

as high performance disk. Comsys recommended a VNX 5100

SAN with redundant Brocade 300B switches.

• Software- Comsys recommended VMWare Essentials Plus to

virtualise this workload.

• Backup – Comsys recommended 2 x Data Domain DD160

Appliances for backup. These would be replicated between

sites for high availability.

Phase IIProof of Concept

Phase II Description – Proof of Concept

• Establish Test criteria and sign off requirements

• Create Project Plan

• Implement demo equipment

• Do Live P2V of running GE RISi instance to create test image

• Do online out of hours data copy utilising PowerPath

Migration Enabler.

• Engage GE to do testing of virtual instance.

• Finalise Proof of Concept

Phase IIISolution Implementation

Phase III Description – Implementation

• Final Site survey

• Rack and Stack of all equipment

• Installation and configuration, including VaaI and VaSA

enablers.

• Stress test of environment and final sign off by all parties

• Dial home and reporting setup.

• DataDomain backup and replication policies configured.

Phase IV

Phase IV Description – Go Live

• Full RISi application shutdown

• Final synchronisation of data

• Final testing of virtual machines

• Physical shutdown of RISi servers.

• Moving all virtual machines to production VMNetwork.

• Final testing of access to environment.

• First backup of environment and confirmation of replication.

Project Overview

• Move from physical to virtual environment, increasing uptime,

decreasing physical footprint and management over head

• Solution is a certified VSPEX solution, allowing for single point

of support through Comsys, who in turn utilise support

agreements EMC have in place with major vendors.

• Ability to quickly scale solution to encompass rest of the

environment while keeping complexity and support costs

down