Virtualizing Elite Systems Presented by: Jeff Carroll, Enterprise Applications Engineer Polsinelli Shalton Flanigan Suelthaus PC Luuk Postuma, Manager, Applications Goodmans LLP Ryan Schlunz, Director, Technology Services Crowell & Moring LLP Virtualizing Elite Systems - Agenda Firm Overview / Reasons for Virtualizing Elite Configurations Before / After Virtualization Results / Issues / Lessons Learned Goodmans LLP Company overview Goodmans is a Canadian law firm with One main office (Toronto) and smaller Vancouver office 600 employees 200 timekeepers 1
Goodmans Reasons for Virtualizing Elite Hardware Life-cycle hardware was 4 years old Reduce amount of physical servers Looking for better stability, redundancy and Disaster Recovery scenarios Goodmans migrated to the new virtualized Elite setup on July 14/15, 2008. Crowell & Moring LLP Company Overview U.S. based law firm with offices in Washington, DC; New York City; Irvine, CA; London and Brussels 900 Total employees 425 Attorneys Crowell Reasons for Virtualizing Elite Hardware Life-cycle hardware was 5+ years old Reduce amount of physical servers New Disaster Recovery solution Crowell migrated to the new virtualized Elite setup mid-september 2007. 2
Goodmans Elite Configuration: Pre-VMware The Elite configuration at Goodmans, prior to virtualizing Elite was as follows: Elite 3.4, Webview 4.0, IQ Reports, Whitehill, Metastorm, Workflow, etc. 6x HP DL360 (3GHz, G3 w/ 2GB RAM) to host Elite, Webview and Whitehill 2x Elite application servers 2x Whitehill servers 2x Webview servers 1x HP DL580 (3GHz, G2 w/ 5GB RAM) to host Elite DB Goodmans Elite Configuration with VMware The Elite configuration at Goodmans, following virtualization of Elite servers: Elite 3.7, Webview 5.3, IQ Reports, Whitehill, Metastorm 2x HP Proliant BL680c G5 Servers with: 8x 2.4 Ghz CPU s, 40GB RAM. Server roles: 1 server = 1x Virtual Elite Database server 1 server = 2x Virtual Elite applications servers, 2x Virtual Whitehill servers, 2x Virtual Webview servers. Goodmans Config w/vmware, cont. Using VMware ESX 3.5 2 Blade Servers, SAN connected in a BL7000 enclosure using Fibre-channel. Separate SAN Disk group for Elite 12 Fibre-channel 15,000 RPM drives with 146GB capacity each Using HP EVA 6000 SAN SQL DB Server: Windows 2003 Server 64-bit running SQL Server 2005 Enterprise 64-bit 3
Goodmans Config w/vmware, cont. VMware Cluster for Elite Servers: Goodmans Config w/vmware, cont. esxeliteapps Specs: Goodmans Config w/vmware, cont. esxelitedb Specifications 4
Goodmans Config w/vmware, cont. DR Site Configuration 1x DL380 G5 Server 6x 146GB, 10K drives No SAN, F/C connectivity Goodmans Config w/vmware, cont. Setting up DR Site One-time shut down of Elite production servers Used VMConvert to copy VM servers to DR site Now, nightly replication of database using CDR (a host-based replication solution) Will look at VM replication in the future Crowell Elite Configuration: Pre-VMware Elite 3.5, Webview 5, CarpeDiem, Billback, IQ Report, FRx, Extend, Whitehill 1x Dell 6450 (Quad Xeon w/ 4GB) - SQL 2000 DB Server 2x Dell 1550 Elite application servers (w/iqr & Extend) 2x Dell 1550 - Elite application servers (w/iqr & Extend) 1x Dell 6450 - Webview server 1x HP DL360 Billback server 1x HP 3000 CarpeDiem servers 3x Dell Optiplex PCs FRx, 2x Whitehill 1x Dell 2550 Training server with DB/App and Webview 5
Crowell - Elite Configuration with VMware Elite 3.5, Webview 5, Billback, FRx, IQ, Extend, Whitehill 2x HP DL385 Servers with: 2x 2.6 Ghz dual core CPU s, 16GB RAM Server roles: 1 server = DB, App1, Webview, Whitehill1 (FRx pending) 1 server = App2, Billback, CarpeDiem, Whitehill2, Training Crowell Config w/vmware, cont. Using VMware ESX 3.0.1 2 FC SAN attached DL385s (Clariion cx3-40) Separate SAN Disk groups for Elite 300gb 10k drives for OS/Apps/DBs/Files 146gb 15k drives for SQL Logs SQL DB Server: Windows 2003 EntEd SQL Server 2000 EntEd App Servers: Windows 2003 Standard Crowell Config w/vmware, cont. VMware Cluster for Elite Servers: 6
Crowell Config w/vmware, cont. Dcesx8 Specifications: Crowell Config w/vmware, cont. dcesx9 Specifications Crowell DR Config w/vmware, cont. DR Site Hardware Config is identical 2x HP DL385 FC SAN Attached (Clariion cx3-40) VMware 3.0.1 7
Crowell DR Config w/vmware, cont. Replication / Recovery Configuration Use fabric splitter (EMC s RecoverPoint) Entire VMDK file and RAW drives replicated in realtime to remote site SAN When failure occurs, boot up the production Elite servers on the remote site servers Clients get new IP of production server Results / Issues / Lessons Learned Comments: 5 weeks after the upgrade, have seen no problems with our setup at all. Performance is fantastic. Backup speed of production database cut to 50% Restore speed 20% faster No end-user complaints CPU usage on servers appears to be running on average at less than 10% Results / Issues / Lessons Learned Other Advantages: More effective load balancing using VMware Use VMware HA (High Availability) between VM hosts, not using DRS (Dynamic Resource Scheduling) Can recover from outages much more quickly Can swap in new hardware much more easily As long as SAN available, recovery is simple 8