Server Virtualization

Who:

Superior Court of San Diego
330 West Broadway
San Diego, CA 92101

When: April 2011

What: Client needed to upgrade their existing Wintel and UNIX server environments and improve overall business continuity for their infrastructure.

The Challenge: Most of the clients servers were traditional physical systems.  Little virtualization was being used. Since much of the equipment was reaching its end of life, to save money, client needed to virtualize and consolidate their servers.

The Solution: Developed project definition, plan, and supporting solution design to implement a virtualized infrastructure.  Since most of the clients' Wintel servers were primarily HP brand, we first implemented an HP assessment, a key step in determining all candidates for virtualization.  Based on the assessment's findings, an updated and executed plan was developed to replace 98% of existing physical servers.  Finally, the server plan upgrade was coordinated with another project to upgrade the client's existing storage area network.

The Result: The detailed (bottom-up estimated) plan to replace all Wintel and Unix servers was presented and approved by the client.  The corresponding SAN project also approved.  Both projects fast fast-tracked, ensuring an expedited timeline.  Both environments (Wintel / Unix) were virtualized, creating physical to virtual ratios that resulted in high saving.  Redundancy, high availability as well as disaster recovery was now available to the client.