Enterprise Level Datacenter Virtualization
Students:Soren Haurberg, Undergraduate, Information Technology and Management
Greg Boggs, Grauate, Information Technology and Management
Faculty
Jeremy Hajek, ITM Computer Systems Manager
Valerie Scarlata, Instructor and Program and Media Coordinator, Information Technology and Management Degree Programs
Ray Trygstad, Lecturer and Associate Director, Information Technology and Management Degree Programs; Director of Information Technology, Center for Professional Development
Project
While working to consolidate application and data servers at Rice Campus, IIT entered into an academic partnership with VMware, Inc. who provided several copies of their ESX server virtualization software. After this project completed it became clear to some students and faculty that virtualization could be used for more than simple server consolidation. It was determined that the server structure at IIT's Rice Campus could be developed into an enterprise level virtual data center, with a fully virtualized server structure, dynamic resource allocation, backup snapshoting, and failover capabilities.
Objective
Working with the faculty, students designed and are implementing a migration from a mix of traditional servers and consolidated virtual servers, into a fully virtualized data center. In the final implementation the data center will have all Rice Campus servers operating with VMware's ESX software v3.5 using VMotion to operate as a resource pool, containing all the Rice campus servers. The resource pool will allow resources to be allocated dynamically to the various servers as needed, reducing overhead and allowing greater flexibility based on load. VMotion will also allow backup snapshots to be made nightly and full system recovery from those in case of disaster. Two storage area networks (SAN) will be deployed to allow for expansion of server resources and data backup.
By achieving a enterprise level virtual data center, the ITM program will be able to provide access to cutting edge technology quickly becoming industry standards. Future projects may also become available such as creating completely virtual desktop environments, that build upon the infrastructure created in this project.