CPM

Virtualization Provides Big Opportunities for Improved Continuity of Operations

• By David Hutchins
• Nov 12, 2010

According to the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), budgets and cost control are the top management priorities for state information technology (IT) professionals across the country in 2010. As a result, NASCIO lists virtualization as the top technology priority for state government agencies to consider.

Seventy-nine percent of state and local government agencies are implementing server, storage and/or client virtualization, and in many cases, they are reaping big benefits, according to CDW-G’s Government Virtualization Report, released July 13. The report surveyed 300 state and local IT professionals and 300 Federal IT professionals to understand the state of client, server and storage virtualization.

Many state and local governments are implementing virtualization to reduce capital and operating costs and improve IT staff productivity. In addition, the Government Virtualization Report found that 27 percent of state and local government IT professionals use server virtualization to enable continuity of operations (COOP), and 26 percent are realizing COOP benefits from storage virtualization. The benefits of virtualization are not limited to the IT department. Leading-edge implementers like the Village of Skokie, Ill., and Stanly County, N.C., are also employing virtualization to improve continuity of services for citizens.

Village of Skokie, Ill. – Reduced Downtime for Critical Services

Faced with the threat of major storms disrupting the village’s data center operations, Bryan Gilley, management information systems director for Skokie, knew that it would take his team days to restore operations if such a disaster occurred. Needing to ensure continuity of critical citizen services, and to align with the village’s “Going Green” initiative, which aims to make Skokie a more eco-friendly municipality, Gilley decided to implement virtualization.

“Virtualization puts us in a much better situation to handle a crisis,” said Gilley. “Previously, if a server crashed, it would take us one to two days to get a new server configured and to transfer all the data from the old server to the new one. With the new infrastructure and disaster recovery plan in place, we can be up and running within an hour.”

Virtualization provided Skokie with:

• Improved services to employees and citizens, including disaster recovery, COOP and storage management
• Reduced power consumption and heat generation by replacing 12 servers with four energy-efficient servers and four storage-area network (SAN) nodes
• Significant IT time and cost savings
• Alignment with the city’s “Going Green” initiative

Skokie plans to expand its disaster recovery capabilities as the village builds its new police station, which will also include a new data center with the capability to provide two-way data replication between the village’s data centers.

Stanly County, N.C. – Enhanced Emergency Response

Not long ago, Chad Coble, IT director for Stanly County, worried the county’s emergency communications could be interrupted in the event of a major flood, fire or other disaster. The 9-1-1 call center, which is located in the basement of the county courthouse, had no technology backup. The county needed a redundant data center, but the current data center lacked the space to add additional computing equipment and the building presented significant power and cooling challenges. Coble turned to virtualization to ensure that emergency communications could continue uninterrupted.

“Our IT production site is in the basement of our courthouse,” said Coble. “Bursting pipes, fires and floods were real concerns for us. Virtualization allows us to provide the protection our citizens deserve by ensuring our 9-1-1 operations are up and running at all times.”

With virtualization, Stanly County:

• Created a fully redundant data center
• Improved availability of 9-1-1 services to citizens
• Condensed seven physical servers into three

Based on its initial success, the county is expanding its virtualization initiative to its general network.

Virtualization and COOP Best Practices

Despite the improved COOP, cost-savings and utilization benefits of virtualization, governments note that there is more work to be done. The Government Virtualization Report found that 82 percent of state and local agencies say they are not using virtualization to the fullest extent. IT managers cite limited budgets and lack of staff and resources as the biggest barriers to further virtualization projects.

To successfully implement virtualization, CDW-G recommends that government IT professionals follow four steps:

• Lead: Secure support from non-IT leadership and ensure adequate end-user education
• Analyze: Conduct cost-benefit and performance analyses and set benchmarks for evaluating return on investment
• Plan: Audit current IT environments to determine areas that can immediately benefit from virtualization and areas that will require additional planning
• Implement: Begin with a small-scale implementation and then apply lessons learned to subsequent deployments

In addition, agencies looking to implement disaster recovery solutions with virtualization should couple virtual servers with an enterprise-level storage area network (SAN) to help minimize network slowness that can occur with resource-intensive applications such as Exchange and SQL Server.

Following these best practices can mean the difference between $1 or $1,000 in savings, citizen safety or peril and two hours versus two days of downtime.

About the Author

David Hutchins is director of state and local government sales at CDW Government (CDW-G), a leading source of IT solutions to governments and educators. Hutchins is responsible for leading the team of sales executives and account managers focused on meeting the unique needs of CDW-G state and local customers.