Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1037
www.iltanet.org 38 Peer to Peer CASE STUdIES performance the attorneys expect, due to the scalability of ESX and WAN performance with Riverbed. It's a far more efficient utilization of both human and computing resources, and VMWare is the key to providing that. The great thing about virtualization is that it also allows firms to continue to use preferred hardware products. For instance, Turner Padget was recently selected by Dell to be a case study based on their use of Dell PowerEdge servers and EqualLogic SANS, but our implementation could have easily been done with any of the other top-tier vendor combinations such as IBM, Hewlett Packard, EMC, NetApp, Compellent and others. LESS PLANNED DOWNTIME By using VMware VMotion to move virtual servers seamlessly between physical hosts, the firm's IT staff can now perform maintenance on servers and patch and update applications and server firmware without downtime. "We're able to essentially do all of the management of our environment during normal business hours," says Brophy. "If a physical box needs attention, I can just VMotion the virtual servers running on that box to another physical host and do whatever I need to do, then VMotion the servers back when done. I don't need to put in late nights anymore. The same thing goes when I have to update the storage. I can move the storage around and upgrade the SAN without having to bring down services or inconvenience end users." This capability has resulted in 75 percent less planned downtime for the firm. "We used to have scheduled downtime once or twice per quarter where we'd pick a Saturday or Sunday and be down for pretty much the entire day — that was a politically unpopular e-mail to have to send, to say the least," says Brophy. "We now limit our planned downtime to once per year when we have some kind of major change or installation, like a networking hardware upgrade." End users are more open to having only one day of total downtime versus three, four or more. In today's economy, keeping services available so that the attorneys can continue to generate revenue is not only politically popular, it's financially essential. BENEFITS OF RESOURCE RECOVERY AND REALLOCATION Doing more with less hardware has allowed Turner Padget to take reallocation a step further and implement a disaster recovery plan. With virtualization we were able to reallocate the existing hardware in our Greenville office and turn that site into a site to which our data and production servers in Columbia can replicate. With multiple offices in hurricane zones, this was very important and relatively easy to do. ExTRA SAVINGS ON BACKUP SOLUTION When I was soliciting pricing for a backup software migration, I quickly found out that by using VMWare and consolidating the servers, it was going to cost a lot less. Under our old backup model, we were licensed for more than 40 servers as we needed licenses for all servers in all offices. When the time came to replace that product, we found that, due to our consolidation, we only needed 12 licenses to accomplish the same tasks. That made a big difference in the final pricing, which was a welcomed cost savings of over 50 per cent. SUMMARY Through virtualization Turner Padget has effectively eliminated unplanned downtime and cut server footprint by more than 50 per cent. Instead of four physical servers each at four geographic locations outside of Columbia, we now have zero physical servers among three of our locations. We were also able to reduce the number of physical servers at our primary data center and reduce the amount of travel necessary between locations for IT staff. This solution has also enabled us to reallocate resources to implement in-house disaster recovery plans between our Columbia and Greenville offices. ILTA name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Michel company . . . Turner Padget Graham & Laney, P.A. Number of Attorneys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Number of Offices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5