Datacenter Architecture

• Basic Info:

  In late 2007, the KPBSD datacenter housed numerous different business and instructional systems, each managed as an independent unit and having unique network, storage, compute, and administrative requirements. I recognized that this model was not going to scale effectively, as each additional system brought into service had to be independently added to backup systems, and a number of administrative processes were unnecessarily duplicated. In addition, storage or compute resources couldn't be easily re-allocated between systems as needs changed.

  An effort was launched to architect, procure, and deploy a highly-dense blade computing system capable of virtualizing these physical servers onto high-performance servers running on the VMware ESX/ESXi platform. This immediately returned value in removing aging architecture and allowing dense consolidation of server resources - what previously required multiple servers could now be accomplished with a single server. Today, this system easily runs the equivalent of 100+ servers on a total of 14 physical systems.

  In addition to the compute virtualization, a storage-area-network (SAN) was introduced. This allowed for storage to be allocated to systems as needed, effectively balancing the demands of growth forecasting with the reality of changing business requirements.

  The virtualization of the KPBSD datacenter bolstered the stability of our systems and drove time-to-deployment for new systems to amazingly small timeframes. What used to take weeks to procure hardware, configure systems, install operating software, and deploy product, can now often be completed in hours.

• Launch Date:

  Spring 2008

• Tools:

  VMware ESX/ESXi, VMware VirtualCenter, EqualLogic ISCSI