IT PAIN RELIEF FOR MIDMARKET BUSINESSES THROUGH END TO END INFRASTRUCTURE VIRTUALIZATION

Transcription

1 IT PAIN RELIEF FOR MIDMARKET BUSINESSES THROUGH END TO END INFRASTRUCTURE VIRTUALIZATION HP s Converged Infrastructure Meets Midmarket Virtualization Needs An AMI Partners White Paper Melissa Chong Sponsored by HP January 2010 (ALL CONTENT IN THIS DOCUMENT REPRESENTS AMI PARTNERS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND CANNOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT FROM AMI PARTNERS) Table of Contents AMI PARTNERS, partners.com th Avenue, New York, NY (212)

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction... 4 II. Midmarket IT & Business Pain Points... 5 III. Virtualization As A Potential Solution to Alleviate Midmarket Pain Points... 7 IV. End to End Infrastructure Virtualization (Server, Storage & Networking): A Comprehensive Approach for Midmarket Firms... 9 V. Midmarket Pain Points Mapped to HP s Offerings VI. Summary VII. Appendix: HP Virtualization Smart Bundles FIGURES & TABLES Figure 1: Worldwide Midmarket Storage Usage... 5 Figure 2: Worldwide Midmarket Server Virtualization Usage... 7 Table 1: Midmarket Pain Points & Solutions Mapped to HP s Offerings AMI PARTNERS,

3 HP s pre configured, pre tested bundled offerings meet the immediate virtualization needs of midmarket firms at a lower cost while their vision of Converged Infrastructure provides firms with a long term roadmap for achieving comprehensive, end to end virtualization to meet their future needs. Melissa Chong, AMI Partners AMI PARTNERS,

4 INTRODUCTION Midmarket firms have matured significantly in their IT usage and benefited from increased adoption of various hardware and software technologies. However, this incremental adoption of servers, storage devices, storage capacity and networking capabilities has often resulted in fragmented, even sprawling infrastructure, underutilization of hardware devices and an abundance of IT management complexities. Virtualization at the server, storage, networking levels is one of the most talkedabout technologies addressing many of these IT pain points. Midmarket businesses have started looking at and using various types of virtualization usually beginning with servers and then moving on to storage and networking. However, given their interdependence, virtualizing individual components of the infrastructure with point products introduces its own set of problems. These include incompatibility among different types of virtualization solutions and determining the optimal allocation of storage and bandwidth for virtual servers. Thus, an unplanned, incremental approach may cause unnecessary complications in the future and limit the benefits that businesses receive from using these technologies. This whitepaper is intended for IT and business leaders who are looking to simplify their sprawling IT infrastructure and reduce their IT costs while maintaining flexibility for future growth. The paper starts by describing the current state of IT adoption among midsized businesses and how virtualization is helping them deal with some of their IT challenges. The paper then discusses the new challenges that point virtualization solutions create and how HP s comprehensive, end to end infrastructure virtualization approach can help businesses deal with these new challenges, including better management of physical and virtual environments, reduce operational cost and increasing agility and responsiveness. The paper also explains how HP s Virtualization Smart Bundles can help midmarket firms get started quickly and easily on the road to end to end infrastructure virtualization. AMI PARTNERS,

5 MIDMARKET IT & BUSINESS PAIN POINTS In recent years, a growing number of midmarket businesses have come to consider IT an indispensible business resource rather than a necessary evil. Within a short time these businesses have acquired an intricate mix of hardware infrastructure and software application to support. As a result, many of their IT environments have become more sophisticated but complex at the same time. To illustrate this, consider the following business and usage trends that are placing greater demands on the IT environments of many businesses: Increasing types and brands of server, storage and networking hardware devices, complicating compatibility issues. A typical midsized business operates 8 to 10 servers, although larger businesses may own as many as 30 to 50 servers, and most likely on a multi brand basis. While one third of these firms use DAS as their primary storage solution, NAS, iscsi and FC SAN have gained traction due to technology maturity and acute price drops (refer to Figure 1). AMI s 2009 Worldwide Medium Business Study reveals that around one in five firms plan on adopting SAN solutions in the next year. At the same time, the number and types of networking devices are steadily increasing. The variety of brands and device types acquired over time set off compatibility issues and keep hardware utilization levels low. Figure 1: Worldwide MidMarket Storage Usage AMI PARTNERS,

6 34% 21% 11% 8% DAS NAS iscsi SAN FC SAN Growing volume and range of applications and data to process. These days businesses are storing, collecting and analyzing more information and data as a result of investments in business applications such as ERP, CRM and Business Intelligence. This dependence on applications is likely to increase further as a growing number of businesses deploy new applications to improve their sales and customer satisfaction. Businesses need solutions that will help them swiftly deploy servers to meet and manage existing and new application requirements. Need for applications and data to be available whenever, wherever. A typical midmarket business has close to 250 employees, spread across five to six business locations. Close to 4 in 5 of their employees are mobile and travel for business at least 4 to 5 times per month. As a result, many of these firms require 24x7 data availability whenever, wherever in order to keep them productive and have less tolerance for downtime. At the same time, the economic downturn has intensified the need for businesses to resolve these complexities and streamline IT operations. AMI s quarterly Q Pulse study since first quarter of 2009 shows that more than half of midmarket firms have experienced restricted cash flows and decreased revenues since the downturn started. These business pressures have forced them to look for ways to cut IT costs and maximize asset utilization. Many CIOs and IT managers are looking for solutions that can AMI PARTNERS,

7 help them move their high cost, frequently incompatible IT islands to low cost pooled assets and optimize their IT environment. AMI PARTNERS,

8 VIRTUALIZATION AS A POTENTIAL SOLUTION TO ALLEVIATE MIDMARKET PAIN POINTS Many midmarket firms have started looking at server, storage and network virtualization as a means to address their IT pain points. However, each of these solutions introduces a new technology for the midmarket CIOs to learn and manage. Apprehensions about making these technologies work together seamlessly also generate reluctance among businesses to adopt these solutions. As a result, virtualization across server, storage and network levels remains rather limited. To date, server virtualization is the most commonly used type of virtualization solution. The act of reducing the number of physical servers through virtual servers produces numerous immediate benefits: reducing excess capacity (improving utilization, reducing additional capex), reducing power and cooling costs and improving responsiveness to different business needs. AMI s research with more than 2,400 midsize businesses worldwide shows that 23% of have deployed or are currently testing server virtualization. However, a drill down is much more revealing: 7% are using server virtualization on production servers, 2% are in a testing phase with intention to use it to support production applications, while the highest percentage, 14%, are in a testing phase with no concrete plans to invest (refer to Figure 2). Figure 2: Worldwide Mid Market Server Virtualization Usage 22.9% 6.6% 14.4% 1.8% Use on Production Servers Testing, Plan to Use Testing, No Plans WW Midmarket Server Virtualization Usage Detailed Usage Breakout AMI PARTNERS,

9 Why does actual adoption of server virtualization usage remain low despite high levels of interest in using it? First, virtualization is still perceived by these businesses as experimental and something that enterprises do. Midmarket firms are generally riskaverse and prefer to let enterprises work out the kinks of technology and wait for the solution to mature further. Virtualization is also often perceived as a complex, costly and drawn out process. These firms often lack adequate internal IT resources with the full time IT staff to employee ratio hovering around 50:1. Most IT staff among these businesses are IT generalists and strapped to adequately test, select, plan, implement and manage a virtualized environment. This skill and resource gap, coupled with tight IT budgets makes virtualization a non starter in most midsized businesses. Jeremy Sherwood, VP at Opus Interactive, an HP partner observed: Most SMBs don t have the time and expertise to implement the [virtualization] environment themselves and to learn the technologies out there. There is still a knowledge gap. Currently less well understood is that many benefits associated with server virtualization require flexibility in allocating storage and bandwidth. Virtualized servers run more applications than non virtualized physical servers, significantly increasing the number of storage and network requests and increasing the risk of bottlenecks and processing delays. When delays occur, productivity falls and usually impacts the company s profitability. For service level processes, such as back up and disaster recovery, delays magnify the company s exposure to risk. CIOs and IT managers should understand the added demands server virtualization places on storage and networks to ensure storage space, memory, network bandwidth and other service level processes are keeping up with (virtual) server deployments. In addition, virtualizing a single component such as servers without considering the inter relationships among servers, storage and networks in the technology stack may lead to a multitude of challenges, including greater complexities due to device incompatibilities, numerous siloed, point solution management tools, incompatibility between virtualization solutions, time consumed by trial and error as well as increased costs from ad hoc expenses that may balloon beyond the planned budget. Thus, incremental adoption of point virtualization solutions may severely limit the benefits that businesses draw from their investments. AMI PARTNERS,

10 END TO END INFRASTRUCTURE VIRTUALIZATION (SERVER, STORAGE & NETWORKING): A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH FOR MIDMARKET FIRMS The previous section illustrated the benefits of virtualization, but reasoned how piecemeal virtualization efforts can lead to unintended complexities in the future as well as added direct and indirect costs. End to end infrastructure virtualization on the other hand, orchestrates virtualization across servers, storage and networking, and assimilates them in a logical way to maximize the benefits of a virtualized architecture. In fact, these virtualization solutions are synergistic, working better together than separately. Just as server virtualization breaks apart the hardware from the O/S and applications running on it and pools the physical resources for reassignment to application as needed; storage virtualization creates one shared virtual storage pool out of existing storage technologies to be reallocated as needed. AMI s 2009 Worldwide Medium Business Study reveals that close to one third of server virtualization users have also implemented storage virtualization. Similarly, network virtualization enables a firm to partition and run multiple networks at once. Each partitioned network can be customized in terms of allocated bandwidth, policies, QoS and security in order to operate optimally in a specific virtualized environment. Virtualizing storage and networks enhances server virtualization by turning these hard wired devices into shared resources that can be dynamically reallocated. A truly virtual architecture in this manner allows firms to rapidly provision new applications, dynamic load balance, perform live storage migration leading to efficient business continuity and disaster recovery processes. Thus, virtualization projects defined and planned on a holistic basis are much more capable of yielding greater benefits than virtualization of individual components. The holistic approach allows businesses to optimize the entire IT infrastructure, simultaneously providing IT a centralized view of the entire IT environment, reducing time and resources dedicated to administration and maintenance. This leads to lower costs as well as makes it easy to manage the virtual infrastructure efficiently and effectively. How can a midmarket business get started on the path towards end to end infrastructure virtualization? CIOs and IT managers should start their planning by AMI PARTNERS,

11 mapping their businesses goals and needs in the medium term to their IT capabilities (as far as the company is able to project, at least 3 years out). During the assessment phase, IT managers should also pay attention to the total cost of ownership (TCO) and any other future costs and license fees that will impact expenses in the longer term. In addition, business and technical decision makers should not underestimate the change management required in configuration, process and coordination to ensure the virtualization initiative yields the anticipated results. HP believes that a comprehensive, architected virtualization approach is the stepping stone towards next generation of IT optimization, which HP has termed Converged Infrastructure the converging of virtualized compute, storage and networks into a single shared resource. To this end, HP has designed pre configured bundles and reference configurations to help midmarket customers deploy end to end virtualization quickly, with minimal technical skills and eliminating the need for any trial and error. Each bundle is made up of four essential components, including virtualization software (from industry leading vendors such as VMWare or Microsoft), HP ProLiant servers, HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN Solutions as well as HP ProCurve Gigabit Ethernet switches. A number of preconfigured bundles are available (the entry level bundle starts at around US$6,000) and most are scalable depending on the number of virtual machines needed. HP has taken the headache out of compatibility testing by verifying and optimizing the performance of these components. These pre configured, pre tested bundled offerings meet the immediate virtualization needs of midmarket firms at a lower cost, while the vision of Converged Infrastructure provides firms with a long term roadmap to meet their future needs. Gradwell, an SMB VoIP company based in Bath, England, has witnessed the benefits of an end to end virtualized approach. After deploying server and storage virtualization on HP equipment, it now has the ability to accommodate 3x the workload at 50% less power usage. Payback on this project is less than a year, but more importantly, our customers have quite a lot more confidence in us, and they re spending more money with us, said Peter Gradwell, founder and managing director of Gradwell. AMI PARTNERS,

12 MIDMARKET PAIN POINTS MAPPED TO HP S OFFERINGS Even though virtualization usage is still evolving among midmarket businesses, it has the capability to grow rapidly given the right circumstances. AMI believes an essential growth driver would include industry suppliers offering integrated solutions that are easy to implement and manage. HP s bundled offerings are a step in this right direction (refer to Table 1). While the entry level bundles are within reach of most midsized businesses, HP also has advanced bundles for businesses with more sophisticated needs. Table 1: Midmarket Pain Points & Solutions Mapped to HP s Offerings Midmarket Pain Points Potential Solution HP Offering Pain Points Solved by Virtualization Server Underutilization due to dedicated servers running different applications Disaster recovery and data back up Virtualize servers and reduce number of physical servers Use virtualization to create a full mirror of the data HP offers leading industry virtualization software from VMWare & Microsoft Hyper V, pre tested and optimized to work on HP servers Recovery (including testing and configuration) on virtual servers is faster than on physical servers, where the IT manager would need to provision and reconfigure a completely new server Siloed, non interactive storage technologies, brands and device types that cannot interact Storage virtualization allows disparate storage systems to be viewed as a single system HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN solution enables a shared storage environment and simplifies storage deployment and scalability AMI PARTNERS,

13 Midmarket Pain Points Potential Solution HP Offering IT Staff Limitations especially with regards to virtualization skill sets Pre configured virtualization solutions with easy setup and maintenance HP Virtualization Smart Bundles are pre configured and pretested to work together. HP s vast network of channel partners can also help in designing and implementing such comprehensive solutions. (For a more extensive list of partners, please refer to resources under the appendix section) Pain Points Solved by End to End Virtualization Server virtualization increases storage and network traffic, and the risk of I/O traffic & bottlenecks Apply virtualization across network and storage levels; creating pooled and consolidated resources and a quick way to add resources and remove I/O bottlenecks HP Virtualization Smart Bundles are made up of server, storage, networking and virtualization software; enabling a midmarket firm to swiftly implement an optimized virtual environment Piecemeal virtualization gives rise to greater management inconsistencies An end to end virtualized environment supports centralized pooling, provisioning and management HP Virtualization Smart Bundles includes management software to assists IT managers with monitoring and management of their IT environment Server virtualization introduces single point of failure High available (HA) shared storage for failover and disaster recovery HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN solution has a storage clustering architecture enabling high availability without physical SANs AMI PARTNERS,

14 Midmarket Pain Points Potential Solution HP Offering Lack of Compatibility & Interoperability among components in a virtualized environment Select an end to end virtualization solution where the components are designed, preconfigured and pretested HP Virtualization Smart Bundles remove guess work & trial and error and work optimally with one another Scalability can be an inhibitor to move forward on virtualization projects Scalable solutions with clear product roadmaps Most HP Virtualization Smart Bundles are scalable depending on the number of virtual machines SUMMARY Virtualization at the server, storage, networking level is one of the most talked about technologies that potentially offer a solution to alleviate many midmarket technology pain points: underutilization, complexity, availability and high energy costs. However, the interdependencies among server, storage and networks in a virtualization environment require that these components be virtualized simultaneously and consistently in order to realize the maximum benefits. Midmarket firms can now take advantage of end to end infrastructure virtualization by adopting solutions such as those offered by HP through their Virtualization Smart Bundles. HP continues to push the boundaries, said Jeremy Sherwood, VP at Opus Interactive, an MSP and HP Partner. This holistic approach will help SMBs understand that virtualization technology is [already] here. From a hardware perspective, there are fewer roadblocks to implementing it. AMI PARTNERS,

15 APPENDIX: HP VIRTUALIZATION SMART BUNDLES Additional Information from HP For additional resources or to look for an HP business partner please visit HP is also supporting its channel partners to deliver services to midmarket businesses by offering 24/7 infrastructure monitoring services through Insight Remote Support. These and other services ensure HP s channel partners provide high availability and performance to their midmarket customers. For more information, please visit remotesupport/overview.html For information on HP s Virtualization Smart Bundles, go to AMI PARTNERS,