Insource Case Study: A Virtual Infrastructure Implementation
Project for The Menninger Clinic

Cutting costs was just as important to Menninger as increasing virtual infrastructure capabilities

Background
The Menninger Clinic has used virtualization technologies for several years to reduce the cost and complexity of its infrastructure. In the course of operations, it outgrew its original storage array and the servers running its virtual infrastructure. As more IT server resources were required to power additional applications at Menninger, it became clear that its original virtual infrastructure needed a significant uplift to keep pace with the demand of a growing organization.

During this project, Menninger was especially interested in implementing the latest Storage Area Network (SAN) and virtualization technologies to reduce its operational costs. This has had the benefit of significantly increasing storage while reducing costs, increasing the number of virtual servers per host from 8 to 16, and increasing the agility of the infrastructure to respond to business driven IT requirements. Menninger also looked at this project as a way to make its infrastructure more robust and resilient in the event of an IT based disaster by being able to provide snapshot capability.

After evaluating competing SAN products from five vendors, Insource recommended an enterprise class iSCSI SAN from Dell / EqualLogic. This SAN increased the available virtual storage from 2 TB to 10 TB, for an increase of 500% and provided the same functionality as the other SAN options, yet cost $20,000 less than the other options. As part of the project, Menninger also upgraded its virtual server hosts and updated the software from VMware version 2.5 to VMware Infrastructure 3.

As a result of the upgrade, Menninger was able to greatly increase the virtual storage for its infrastructure and the capacity of the servers running on it.

Insource Approach
Insource, working with VMware, Microsoft, EqualLogic and Dell, developed a three-phased approach to the project. This included the upgrade of the existing Dell server VMware hosts, the deployment of the Dell / EqualLogic iSCSI SAN, and the migration of the virtual environment from the original infrastructure to the new, improved VMware Infrastructure 3.

Insource, working with Menninger IT management:

• Performed a detailed analysis of Menninger’s business needs in relation to server virtualization
• Assessed hardware and software requirements for server upgrades to support the new virtual infrastructure
• Upgraded hardware on four virtual server hosts while incurring no server downtime in the production environment
• Performed an upgrade of VMware Infrastructure from 2.5 to VMware Infrastructure 3.
• Evaluated five SAN offerings that met the Clinic’s storage requirements and recommended the most appropriate solution based on clinic requirements
• Implemented a Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN, including the deployment of a new IP storage network that formed a dedicated, secure network for storage traffic
• Executed the migration of virtual servers from the legacy fiber channel storage to the new SAN
• Implemented new backup processes that ensure that VMs can be archived off site and be restored to any virtual infrastructure for disaster recovery

Virtualization Benefits for Menninger
The Clinic has migrated to a much larger capacity SAN with an enterprise class feature set that is easy to understand and administer. The unit cost for storage has been dramatically reduced in moving from its fiber channel to an iSCSI implementation. This cost savings is reflected not only in the purchase price to the Clinic but also in the ongoing maintenance and support costs – the maintenance for the iSCSI solution is less expensive and fewer specialized technical skills are required.

The performance of the upgraded virtual servers is robust and the infrastructure is resilient. Server downtime has been virtually eliminated. The cost to license and deploy virtual servers has been reduced by using datacenter licensing and by maximizing the number of virtual machines on each host.

With its upgraded virtual infrastructure and greatly expanded storage system, Menninger is benefiting from a highly available, flexible platform that can be used to accelerate the delivery of server based applications. They are benefiting from significant cost savings and operational benefits by pooling servers, networking, storage and other resources that can be shared across development and test teams. Separate development and test servers can now be deployed in minutes and applications be delivered in days. Virtualization has significantly decreased the time required to develop, test and deploy critical Clinic applications.

For more information contact Steve Miller at 281.774.4002 or steve.miller@insource.com