April Seminar, Virtualisation In High-Tech Environments

101 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Rd

We are holding a free, invitation only seminar on the 23rd April 2012 for high-tech or research and development centric organisations in the Cambridge area.

Aimed at technical and business users with an interest in virtualisation, this is not a vendor-centric product briefing, but a sharing of real customer experiences in two demanding application areas and a detailed look at a world class software research and development facility. There will also be an opportunity to network with fellow members of the Cambridge technology cluster over lunch.

360is are hosting the event at Citrix’s R&D centre on the Cambridge Science Park. Two local case studies will feature, each from a different high-tech business that has adopted desktop or server virtualisation to increase productivity for specialist office workers, scientists, or engineers. If you are charged with supporting demanding, sophisticated users in the Cambridge area then this seminar will be of interest to you.

Contact the organiser for an invite if you would like to attend.

When: Monday April 23^rd 09:30 until 12:30

Where: Citrix Systems Inc, Building 101, Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 0FY

Organiser: rob.gilson@360is.com

Summary Agenda:

09:30 Registration and Coffee

09:50 Start

10:00 Mark Heath VP of Products, Citrix XenServer

Detailed look at the engineering facilities and resources behind the Citrix R&D organisation

10:30 Case Study 1

Shortening the testing and development cycle for an large international software company

11:00 Break

11:15 Case Study 2

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for demanding, scientific, and engineering users

11:45 Closing remarks and prize draw

12:00 Buffet lunch and open networking 

About 360is

360is have over 10 years’ experience in providing consultancy and professional services in the application of  technology to business problems and challenges. Our staff have worked in and around Cambridge since the early 90s, solving problems for numerous Software, Life Sciences,  Electronics and R&D driven companies.

The Microsoft Virtual Desktop Licensing Conundrum

Typically, large established software companies take a long time to alter their licensing and pricing to accommodate new models of use or methods of deployment. Just as many companies initially refused to support or license their server software in a virtual environment, before eventually softening their position and in many cases re-working their license agreements to support or encourage server virtualisation, the same is true of VDI. The matter of reviewing licensing is made more difficult and slower by virtue of the fact that there is only 1 desktop Operating System provider who completely dominates the market.

While the importance of desktop OS choice is probably declining (in the face of application virtualisation, google apps, and tablet or embedded devices which to the user appear to “have no OS"), the case is currently that Microsoft completely controls the desktop. They feel less pressure to do anything with licensing than they did in the server market, where they had real competition.

360is recently reviewed the situation with Microsoft OS licensing for a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure service provider. Through our discussions with Microsoft, Citrix, and other software vendors we were able to unscramble the (current) conundrum around Microsoft desktop Operating System licensing in a VDI environment.

For an extract from the licensing section from our report "Multi-tenant Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Design" Read More.

360is Brings VDI To UK's Innovation-Lead Companies

Cambridge Display Technology is a UK-founded company that is leading the development of display technology based on polymer organic light emitting diodes. Their technology is used in mobile devices, screens and lighting. The company employs hundreds of scientists, engineers, and supporting staff around the world.

The company needed a high performance desktop virtualisation solution that would make supporting a distributed workforce easier. Constraints were space, power, CAPEX and a lack of availability of shared storage. End users were running a mixture of office automation and scientific applications.

A 64-bit Operating System was required in order to support the 6GB RAM desktops demanded by end users. Each hypervisor node was to support between 40 and 80 of those users. The only way to achieve the user-density required while meeting the constraints, was to use dedicated Virtualisation Appliances. The platform chosen provided an integrated IOPS sink, continuous performance and heath monitoring, and a redundant N+1 configuration. The solution was designed to support expansion, including applications that require virtualised GPU capability.

Where once only basic "office" desktops could be supported in any number, and the hardware (in particular shared storage) required to do so was prohibitively expensive, it is now possible to support far more specialised classes of user and application. Furthermore, such users can be supported at high-densities without the necessity of expensive shared storage, thanks to the in-bult IOPS sink and performance management features of Virtualisation Appliances.

360is End Of Year Message, 2011

2011 was another year of growth for 360is and for many of those with whom we work. Our base of Financial Services clients has seen a rebound since the darker days of 2009, and we have continued to expand into Scientific and Research Intensive sectors with several new projects and clients in Cambridge. As a result of this, we were pleased to welcome another Cambridge-based senior consultant to the practice. We continued to execute Virtualisation, Security, and Performance-related engagements for our clients, and maintained our focus on short term, (less than 3 month) fixed-price, projects, with a vendor-independent, client focused approach.

Inside 360is in 2011

• Security work consisted mainly of Security Assessments, Penetration Tests, and Post Incident work, but grew to include Application Security Assessments, with significant new clients in the online gaming sector. We have also seen an increase in Distributed Denial Of Service (DDoS) mitigation projects. More companies with an online business model established themselves as brands, and therefore attracted the attention of extortionists, activists, and attention-seekers.

• Virtualisation made-up almost 50% of projects, however the emphasis shifted from 1st-time production roll-out to 2nd or 3rd stage "3-5 years on" projects. We recently doubled the density of an already-virtualised estate of 500+ VMs as part of a hardware refresh cycle. Service Provider Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) projects also grew in 2011. 360is worked in partnership with client's Architecture and DevOps staff to deliver industry-leading high-density, high-margin, VDI to tens of thousands of users.

• Performance-related projects were driven by a combination of CAPEX freezes and business growth, and were concentrated around storage systems. Due to continued difficult economic conditions in the UK, and recent shortages in hard drives, we expect this trend to continue into Q1/Q2 2012. In the last 18 months, data volumes have increased dramatically in Media (HD and 3D), Geo Sciences (ultra-wideband sensors), and Life Science (faster, cheaper, sequencing). These trends drive up data volumes and the demand for performance, as the bottlenecks move downstream.

360is Outlook For 2012

The outlook for 360is in 2012 is good.  Industry trends favour our long experience, technical capability, and vendor-neutral approach to problem solving. 

• There will be fewer new infrastructure projects in 2012 (semiconductor sales were essentially flat in 2011). Supply chain disruption caused by floods in Thailand will provide even greater incentives to extend the life of existing platforms through careful optimisation and tuning. Although hard drive prices are stabilising, availability remains poor unless you take spindles as part of a large purchase from a major vendor. 360is can help you grow in spite of these difficulties, engage us to execute the following projects:
• Storage Consolidation/Re-Tasking
• Storage Performance Tuning
• Storage Tiering

• Rising energy costs and the practicalities of power distribution will continue to constrain some projects and have a significant impact on hosting and colocation costs. A recent study by 360is revealed that those renewing 3-year contracts for data-centre space typically saw a 40%-50% increase in annual charges, with colocation customers under pressure to migrate to higher-margin higher-price fully managed hosting contracts. If you have already virtualised some years ago 360is consultants can help you find an encore, we can further streamline your operations, deliver greater VM densities and lower OPEX costs through the use of new methods and technologies.
• High Density, Low Power Virtualisation Appliances
• Data Centre selection and evaluation
• Cloud or hosting provider selection and evaluation

• Recent wide-scale civil unrest across UK cities brought Disaster Recovery and Contingency Planning into focus in 2011. Further disturbances are set to occur as a variety of protest and pressure groups plan disruptions in 2012. Whether it be city-wide riots or attacks against individual organisations, it is now more important than ever to make sure you have a solid, rehearsed, Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity plan. 360is consultants have executed many of successful projects in the areas of DR/BC.
• Secure hosting/colocation outside London
• In-house Disaster Recovery Infrastructure
• Replication and High Availability or Fault Tolerant Systems
• Denial Of Service Mitigation

If your team is challenged to deliver any of these projects, 360is can help you do so, on time and on budget, in a way that is tailored to your organisation's individual circumstances. We look forward to working with you in 2012.

360is Completes Migration to New Data Centre

360is have recently completed a data centre migration from our primary location (shared with the Manchester University Supercomputer) into a new facility nearby. We continue to maintain a presence at both sites, which have layer-2 adjacency. The motivation for the move?

Power costs.

UK consumers are seeing domestic bills increase this year up by 18% for gas and 10% for electricity. The UK electricity price broadly tracks natural gas futures, so we can expect further rises in the months and years to come. Since 2004, electricity prices have doubled from below 3.0p/KWh to 6.0p/KWh. At that rate they will be between 8p and 9p per KWh by 2013, an increase of 40% from today.

UK Energy Prices, Gas and Electricity, 2004 to 2011, Source: BuyEnergyOnline

Since many companies sign 3-year contracts with their provider, increases of 30-40% in the power-portion of their data centre costs are common upon contract renewal. Although the long term trend for network bandwidth prices is down, the reduction is nowhere near enough to offset the power cost increase, particularly since most companies have modest bandwidth requirements.

Besides contracting with a new data centre, 360is have also deployed energy efficient virtualisation appliances to reduce overall power consumption. These systems provide large VM carrying capacity (upto 384GB RAM in a 1U unit) in a tiny power power envelope (between 120 and 300 Watts depending on utilisation), they can carry hundreds of VMs.

By re-contracting at a new site, and replacing commodity systems from HP and Dell with dedicated virtualisation appliances, we have been able to mitigate the hike in power costs.

If you have received a shock when presented with a new data centre, hosting, or colocation contract then speak to one of our consultants. Together we can formulate a long term strategy to better insulate you  from increasing power costs.