Living in a virtualised world

The recent emergence of software virtualisation technology will ease this pressure by eliminating conflicts, allowing organisations to deploy and fix applications quickly and ultimately reduce support costs and improve application reliability. Ed Reilly, EMEA general manager at Altiris, now part of Symantec, urges IT managers to embrace this new technology, which is set to completely revolutionise the way in which IT systems are built and supported in the future.

Users commonly experience problems with their applications slowing down and PCs failing to reboot as their system gets older and more littered with applications. Magnify this problem by a thousand users and it’s clear to see how productivity within an organisation could suffer and how quickly this could become an expensive problem. These problems occur when users install new software or application updates which share common resources and codes, resulting in conflicts, application failure or the reintroduction of security holes that were previously patched.

With this in mind, IT managers should seriously consider taking a look at software virtualisation technology which enables desktop applications to be run as virtual software packages allowing users to switch applications on and off instantaneously to eliminate any conflicts. Applications can then be reinstalled remotely without adversely affecting the base Windows configuration. By simply switching an application on or off without needing to reboot, a user can keep their PC’s capacity under control as well as maximise its performance and resilience.

The technology works by deploying the software to a part of the file system that is normally hidden from Windows. As a result, the resources that are used by applications like Microsoft Word are isolated from the operating system or other applications that might have conflicting drivers.

IT managers can also use software virtualisation technology when testing and rolling out new versions of an application. Performing a successful upgrade to a business critical application is essential, but there is always a risk attached to changing or upgrading a package. If the application doesn’t work properly for some reason, the management team will not be interested in understanding why, they will just expect the application to be working again quickly.

Virtualisation technology can resolve upgrading issues by allowing users to simply roll back to the old version so they can continue working. This gives IT managers time to repair the damaged application before making the new package available again. In addition to this, virtualisation allows users to host multiple versions of an application on the same system giving them sufficient time to become familiar and comfortable with the new features of the package before they feel confident to move away from the old version.

Even though awareness of virtualisation has been around for some time many IT managers still do not understand the technology and how it will change the way software is managed in the future. However, once more IT managers start looking at software virtualisation and begin to see the true value of the technology it will only be a matter of time before IT infrastructures become completely virtualised. Organisations shouldn’t make the mistake of turning a blind eye to virtualisation as it is here to stay and will be used in the future by many IT departments in their quest to standardise IT infrastructures and achieve financial efficiencies.

Barings utilises virtualisation to ensure business continuity

Baring Asset (Barings) has recently deployed software virtualisation technology from Altiris to virtualise and package 29 business-critical applications as part of its business continuity plan. Barings can now ensure the business will continue investing for its clients by instantly switching on virtual applications in the event of a disaster.

The company is no longer reliant on a team of people to restore IT desktop application functionality, reducing manpower required to switch to the failover configuration. The SVS solution was implemented and the applications virtualised within three months meeting the deadline to manage a successful business continuity test to help meet regulatory requirements

Barings is a global investment management firm with offices based in the UK, Hong Kong, Japan, the USA, France, Germany, Taiwan and Guernsey. It is part of the MassMutual Financial Group, the fleet name for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) and its affiliates.

MassMutual has more than 13 million clients and over $395 billion in assets under management at year-end 2005. In its UK office alone the IT team provides daily support for over 400 employees.

In July 2006, Barings embarked on a major overhaul of its Business Continuity IT Desktop strategy which supported its production data centre and disaster recovery site. The project had two objectives; firstly, to review business continuity planning to ensure that it could continue to effectively manage the availability of business critical applications in the event of a disaster. The second, to deliver a seamless solution that could change the configuration of all desktops from production to disaster recovery settings. The solution had to be in place within three months to enable the company to perform a planned business continuity test.

Preparing for disaster

Barings’ IT team wanted to ensure that in the event of a disaster it would have one desktop strategy to support its production and disaster recovery infrastructure configurations. Neil Elliott, project manager of ISS at Barings, outlines the IT team’s requirements:

“Ideally we were looking for a solution which would enable our staff to remain at their desks in the event of a disaster or business continuity test, and the desktop configuration could be changed effortlessly and seamlessly to use disaster recovery infrastructure. “

In addition, the IT team faced the daunting prospect of building spare PCs for employees to use in the event of a disaster, keeping them up to date, and also having to store them.

Switching operations

Barings’ IT support team needed to be able to switch a desktop’s configuration seamlessly between its production server infrastructure in a dedicated data centre and disaster recovery site infrastructure. Any changes would need to take place instantaneously with minimum effort.

Virtual project

After carrying out extensive research the team concluded that virtualising applications would be the best way of addressing these objectives. The company considered virtualisation as an inexpensive approach which would not only save on resources but deliver fast results. Once the team had downloaded free software from the Altiris website it conducted thorough testing of the product comparing it to similar virtualisation software on the market.

Elliott explains: “By using SVS to place our applications into manageable virtual software packages we were hoping to be able to instantaneously activate, deactivate, switch and reset our applications without conflicts.”

With a successful Proof of Concept completed and a business continuity test in October 2006, it was important that the implementation and preparation was completed swiftly within three months, with no margin for delays.

The switch

The IT team at Barings needed to configure 440 PCs to a disaster recovery setting and purchased 500 SVS licences to achieve this. To begin with the team rolled out Altiris’ SVS onto the desktops which were to be used in the October business continuity test. After the successful test all the remaining desktops in London then had the Altiris agent deployed.

The team established that the company uses 90 applications on a daily basis that are mission-critical, and from those, 30 needed to be virtualised, including applications used in the whole process of managing an investment.

With every application differing in configuration and complexity, the IT team needed ongoing support from the technical team at Altiris. It also took full advantage of Altiris’ online Juice website (http://juice.altiris.com/), a customer resource where users can learn and share knowledge on the Altiris product portfolio.

Elliott comments on Altiris’ support during the project: “The Altiris team was very supportive during the whole project from start to finish. In the event of any problems they made sure resource was available to us very quickly, sometimes in the night. Before we implemented Altiris we would have deployed a team of people to manage the desktop changes needed for a business continuity test or disaster. Now we only need one person to manage this process.”

Results

The work has been viewed as a success across the board and MassMutual was satisfied with the final report submitted by the project team. The company can now have desktop business continuity with minimum effort and without experiencing any conflicts. The project also highlighted potential opportunities for the company to manage its IT desktop moving forward.

Elliott concludes: “SVS is a very inexpensive product for the complexities which it addresses and solves. We will now operate with an effective desktop strategy for business continuity and will continue to use SVS in the future.”
To know more about Altiris Software Virtualisation Solution, please view www.go4softwaremanagement.com