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Use Cases and Applicability of Virtual Lab Automation Across the Enterprise

Use Cases and Applicability of Virtual Lab Automation Across the Enterprise. VMUG, Phoenix Jim Singh May 14, 2009 Director of Technology, VMLogix. Question/Answer and Follow Up. m: +1 (512) 917-5467 jim.singh@vmlogix.com. Jim Singh Director of Technology.

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Use Cases and Applicability of Virtual Lab Automation Across the Enterprise

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  1. Use Cases and Applicability of Virtual Lab Automation Across the Enterprise VMUG, Phoenix Jim Singh May 14, 2009 Director of Technology, VMLogix

  2. Question/Answer and Follow Up m: +1 (512) 917-5467 jim.singh@vmlogix.com Jim Singh Director of Technology 228 Hamilton Avenue ∙ 3rd Floor ∙ Palo Alto, CA 94301 Website: http://www.vmlogix.com Blog: http://blog.vmlogix.com Register on vmlogix.com for whitepapers, product walkthroughs and evaluation copies

  3. Agenda • Virtual Lab Automation (VLA) • Value Derived from VLA • Use Cases – Dev/Test, Training, Support, Demo • Q&A

  4. Virtual lab automation

  5. Indian Outsourcing Partner OSes Databases Browsers Hardware Languages Monolithic SOA Client-server 3-tier, n-tier Software Trends Driving Need for Virtual Labs • Increasing software complexity • Complex multi-machine build and test configurations • Difficult and time-consuming to set up and tear down • Outsourcing / Distributed Teams • Replicated development, test and support labs cost-prohibitive • Seamless process compliance, knowledge-sharing and collaboration European Software Team US Headquarters • Exploding interoperability matrix • More build and test configurations • Difficult to isolate and reproduce defects • Physical and virtual machine sprawl

  6. What is Virtual Lab Automation (VLA)? • Centralized & Shared Lab Infrastructure • Policy Driven Self Service • Automation • Storage Optimizations • Multi-Machine Configurations • Network Zoning • Reproduce Prod. Environments • Lab Resources Management All this management capabilities in a hypervisor agnostic manner!

  7. Beyond Provisioning and Enabling Faster Collaboration

  8. Contrasting Lab and Production Management Apps • Dev • QA/Test • Support • Demo • Training IT Ops Lab Automation Change Control Different usage goals necessitate different management tools.

  9. Virtual Lab Automation: Myriad of Use Cases • Application Development • Original and still dominant use case • Immediate provisioning/deployment of multi-machine dev and test environments • Patch Testing • Manage library of various system configurations, with varying patch/version levels • Support • Replicate customer environments in image library • Instant access to software versions and host environments • Training • Eliminate manual set-up/tear-down for instructors of lab equipment • Provide students self-serve lab for hands-on exercises • Software Demonstrations • Provide sales, sales engineers and product managers instant access to “clean” demo environments • Hosting Providers • Services delivered on standard system configurations, which can be easily stored and provisioned in the image library Virtual Labs can be put to work in a number of situations – but Dev/Test remains dominant

  10. Return on INVESTMENT ofvirtual lab automation

  11. Value of Virtual Lab Automation • Case Study Lab Environment • 25 individuals split between development and QA • 50 physical servers to support engineering team • 4 release per year, each with 3 release candidates • 10% of defects require environment reproduction • 1800 hoursspent managing testing environments annually • Lower IT Costs • Reduce virtual and physical machine sprawl in the lab • Eliminate manual set-up and tear-down of multi-machine configurations • Improve Software Quality • Reduce risk by increasing your test matrix coverage • Enable developers to rapidly locate and reproduce defects • Accelerate Time to Market • Minimize delays and hand-offs between Development, Test and Support • Provide users with self-service, on-demand access to lab infrastructure • 80-90% Reduction in physical server requirements • 50-80% Reduction in storage requirements • 80% Reduction in provisioning time for QA • 95% Reduction in time to share defect reproduction • 280 hours spent managing testing environments annually $400K in Hard ROI for 25 employees over 3 Years

  12. Testing case study

  13. The Problem and The Customer Challenges • The Scenario and Problem • ISV with 3000+ customers • The ISV product deploys on multiple OSes, supports many languages, browsers and databases; typically installed in a two tier environment • Every bug found in the field costs the engineering and ISV dearly • Customer Challenges • Test Environment Creation - Takes 2+ hours to re-create a test environment; for every release the customer was dedicating 300 hours to provisioning alone! • No central library of test environments • No central library of CD/DVD ISOs • Operational challenges in deploying test environments (e.g., IP conflicts in virtual machines) • Resource hog - Test engineers did not free up resources promptly (i.e., un-deploy virtual machines once test runs were complete) • No easy way to share test environment runs with other members (like sharing bug states with development staff)

  14. The VMLogix Solution and Benefits • VMLogix Solution • 5 (at HQ) quad core servers running VMware ESX each with 128 GB of RAM connected to 4 TB of storage • VMLogix LabManager 3.6.1 • Use of Windows and Linux based guest VM images in multi-machine configurations • Solution Benefits • Save timeon test environment creation -few minutes vs. 2 hours • Save on storage – “Linked clones” reduce the VM storage 60-90% • Operational benefits – IP zoning ensured no conflicts, central library of CD/DVD ISOs available • Control VM deployment sprawl – Deployment leases and quotas to prevent resource hog situations • User/team collaboration – Share/collaborate with lab users/teams • Automated test environment – Second order automation within guest VMs – helps reduce VM deployment time Freed 7.5 man weeks of test engineer time in a year

  15. Testing Use Case: Before/After

  16. Training case study

  17. The Problem and The Customer Challenges • The Scenario and Problem • F-500 multi-national software vendor • Multiple weekly training classes (on premise and remote) throughout the year, a single training lab requires dozens of machines with full software stack • 50 staff engineers deliver training on their product to internal and external users • Customer Challenges • Class Planning and System Preparation – • 800 hours/week spent just preparing systems for the classes! • Time increased further when customer data needed to be added in training labs • No access controls to prevent accidental wipeout by others once systems were prepared • Lab Operations and Delivering Training Sessions – • Huge challenge bringing up the lab virtual machines (IP address conflicts etc.) • Trainees often logged in to the wrong set of machines, instructors were unable to monitor each individual trainee

  18. The VMLogix Solution and Benefits • VMLogix Solution • 8 VMware ESX servers each running on a quad core processor with 128 GB of RAM and connected to 4 TB of shared storage • VMLogix LabManager 3.6.1 • SSL VPN Gateway, LDAP for authentication • Use of Windows and Linux based images in multi-machine configurations • Solution Benefits • Increased instructor availability – freed time from lab setup • Re-purposed staff who previously conducted lab setup • Accelerated setup time (guest automation) and concurrent provisioning for multiple labs offered in the week • Enforced server integrity – through user access policies in the lab • Increased flexibility – e.g., easily add new students to the class • Centralized training lab operations • Instant access to demos – easily roll out new software to training labs Saved $1.5M on otherwise wasted resources & productivity

  19. Training Use Case: Before/After

  20. Support case study

  21. The Problem and The Customer Challenges • The Scenario and Problem • F-500 multi-national software vendor • Level 1 support offered via phone, level 2-3 are complex support issues; 60,000 customer scenario provisions done in a year • 120 support engineers deliver support from multiple geographies • Customer Challenges • Time for provisioning – 30-45 minutes for single environment creation (using a home grown application) • Myriad of configurations – 200 different OS and product combinations possible! • Storage overutilization – Full VM copies led to tremendous storage wastage • Conflicts during environment deployment – E.g., IP address conflicts • Server sprawl – Support engineers did not free up resources promptly and the deployed configurations were nailed up for days • Security and Reporting – The lab did not have the required access control and permissions

  22. The VMLogix Solution and Benefits • VMLogix Solution • 8 (at HQ) + 3 (at remote locations) quad core ESX servers each with 128 GB of RAM connected to 4 TB of storage • VMLogix LabManager 3.6.1 • Active Directory (AD) for authentication • Use of Windows and Linux based images in multi-machine configurations • Solution Benefits • People/Effort savings – Minimal administration of lab environment, phase out in-house developed custom applications • Time savings – a fully operational configuration could be deployed in less than 5 minutes (vs. 45 minutes previously) • Central library - 200+ configurations modeled easily and available to all users in a central library • Storage savings – store only differentials for VM copy/snapshots • Operational benefits – Leverage IP zones, deployment leases and sharing/collaboration between users and teams Saved $1.3M on otherwise wasted resources

  23. Support Use Case: Before/After

  24. Demo case study

  25. The Problem and The Customer Challenges • The Scenario and Problem • F-500 multi-national software vendor • 50 products in the catalog, each with multiple packaged offerings. Every sale required at least 2-3 demos; took about 2 hours for a demo to be setup • 800 sales reps based across NA that deliver on-site as well as remote product demos • Customer Challenges • Ad-hoc demo solution environment – the existing solution was a distributed and ad-hoc nature of VM sharing and hosting on servers • Demo readiness • No single sales engineer was familiar with demo environment creation for all products • It took many hours to create the environment with up to 12 simultaneous running machines required for some demos • Since it took long to setup, unscheduled demos were impossible to deliver • Accessing consistent demo environments – the demo environments across sales engineers differed wildly and there was no consistent demo across sales engineers • Adopting new releases – It was very difficult to push new products to the field (of 800) • Building reliable demos – Sales engineers were never sure if the demo is going to ‘work’ since the demo environment setup was complex

  26. The VMLogix Solution and Benefits • VMLogix Solution • 25 VMware ESX 3.5 Servers; each with Dual-Core processor and 64GB RAM • 12TB of Fiber Channel disk storage • VMLogix LabManager 3.6.1 • SSL VPN Device to provide secure remote access, even from customer sites • Solution Benefits • Ability to service more customers – Sales engineers saved 4-8+ hours/week since they were freed up from demo setup and maintenance • Rapid access to demo environments – near instant access to a complex demo setup from a library of ready to deploy demo configurations • Self serve environment – Every sales engineer self serviced their IT requirements without waiting for IT administrators • Centralized management and operations – central lab helped control sprawl and plan lab capacity better • Operational benefits – Sales engineers had reliable metrics on demos (e.g., frequently used demos etc.); instant access and rollout to field for new demos and products Saved $2M on otherwise wasted resources & productivity

  27. Demo Use Case: Before/After

  28. About VMLogix Inc. • Funded by Bain Capital Ventures & Trilogy in Q3 ‘06 • First hyper-agnostic product brought to market 18 months ago • Rapid customer adoptions, thousands of users, global distribution • Award winning, industry recognized Virtual Lab Automation product Enterprise Partnerships

  29. Question/Answer and Follow Up m: +1 (512) 917-5467 jim.singh@vmlogix.com Jim Singh Director of Technology 228 Hamilton Avenue ∙ 3rd Floor ∙ Palo Alto, CA 94301 Website: http://www.vmlogix.com Blog: http://blog.vmlogix.com Register on vmlogix.com for whitepapers, product walkthroughs and evaluation copies

  30. Virtualization Overview Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197004875 Virtualization isbeing rapidly adopted and is playing an increasingly important role in the way software is built, tested and delivered

  31. Virtualization Transforms Development and Testing • Virtual lab automation is listed as one of the top timer saver technologies of 2008 • Source: eWeek, Jan 2008 • Test/Development is the second highest use of virtual machines • Source: SearchDataCenter Purchasing Intentions Survey 2007 • 73% of companies using virtualization to its fullest potential have a formal process for moving virtualized applications from testing and development to production • Source: Aberdeen May 2008

  32. Managing the Lab: Demands Placed on IT Ops Functional Demands Dev/QA • Provisioning faster to spend more time on development and testing • Covering all parts of testing matrix • Sharing defect with developers for issue reproduction • IT Operations Tasks • Handling provisioning requests • Controlling machine sprawl • Ensuring environment consistency • Licensing compliance Support • Provisioning systems to match customer environments • Having easy access to a wide variety of 3rd party products • Sharing defects with dev / QA Demo & Training • Being able to reset environments to a known good state • Updating environments to include new product revisions • Accessing environments remotely Time spent on provisioning, is time taken away from higher ROI initiatives.

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