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How Laurens County Health Care System is Now Realizing 65% Decrease in Hardware Costs / Uptime in the 99.999% Range by Deploying Meditech in a Virtualized Environment

Posted on May 22, 2013 by VMware SMB

Post by Brandon Sweeney, Vice President U.S. Mid-Market Businesses

Many midmarket organizations face challenges in equipping their IT infrastructure to support privacy and regulatory protocols and ensure consistent uptime, but those in the health care field have a unique challenge. For a healthcare professional, the reliability needed in their IT environment can literally be the difference between life and death. Finding an IT solution that supports compliance and ensures utmost performance is essential.

Pivotal Turning Points

Laurens County Health Care System, a 90 bed health care organization in Clinton, South Carolina was looking to deploy the Meditech clinical information system to improve patient information and care, as well as enable computerized physician order entry (CPOE). With 30 physical servers in their data center, an offline server could cause multiple facets of their infrastructure to go down. Additionally they found their staff of 11 IT workers often fighting fires instead of proactively addressing business needs. Hospital employees were using so many different laptops and desktops that just maintaining current versions of basic software was difficult. Downtime was up to 40% in the physical data center.

Running Meditech in the current environment was not feasible. Laurens County Health Care System needed to deploy a cost-efficient plan and looked to VMware for a solution.

The Solutions Journey

By deploying VMware vSphere^®, the IT staff virtualized their domain controllers, then implemented Exchange Server internally and moved it to a virtualized infrastructure. By adding vSphere vMotion, they enabled high availability for their virtualized file and print servers, as well as various applications.

“It’s a nightmare maintaining 50 physical PCs on nursing carts. Today, I can roll out 30 virtual desktops in 15 minutes and manage them all from a central location,” said Joe Lovell, IT Infrastructure Manager at Laurens County Health Care System. “Obviously, there are other vendors out there, but given the technical strengths, ease of implementation, and the centralized management capabilities, VMware was the obvious choice.”

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More Virtualization Benefits: Taking Advantage of Your vSphere Host Profile Feature

Posted on May 21, 2013 by VMware SMB

by Kevin Lubojacky, VMware SE, Mid-Market Team

vSphere Host Profiles are an often overlooked valuable feature for virtualized environments. Whether your environment is growing rapidly and adding hosts has become a management nightmare, or there have been too many cooks in the kitchen, and host configurations have gone awry, vSphere Host Profiles can save both time and headaches by creating a template for common host settings. As many of you may know, small inconsistencies between hosts in your environment can cause real problems in the ability to implement common vSphere features. This is a common discussion I have with my customers. Below are some advantages and the process for creating host profiles to help you continue advancing your IT infrastructure.

Host Profile Advantages

Host Profiles work by taking an accurate known host configuration and applying those settings to other hosts in your environment. Profiles contain the configuration information that most administrators manually enter when configuring a host, such as, storage, virtual switches, domain, time and vSphere features. Applying Host Profiles is typically applicable to the addition of a new host or to satisfy the need to easily enforce consistency amongst hosts. By applying the Host Profiles, you will be able to automate compliance to your configurations. In turn you will be able to simplify your operational management and reduce errors caused by any misconfiguration.

The Simple Process for Creating Your First Profile

Below I will outline the process of – extracting a profile from a known configuration, checking the profile against another host in the cluster and ultimately applying the profile to create consistency. The current requirements for Host Profiles are, ESX 3.5 and vCenter 4.0 or later, combined with an appropriate Enterprise + vSphere license.

From the vSphere Web Client, navigate to Rules and Profiles/Host Profiles. Click the green plus symbol and select the host with the configuration you wish to use as the profile (your blueprint) for other hosts in your environment. At this point you are able to provide a name and description for the profile.

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Join VMware on May 21st For a Live Webcast Unveiling the New vCloud Hybrid Service Offering

Posted on May 16, 2013 by VMware SMB

Mid-sized companies face specific challenges when it comes to meeting the changing demands of the business, such as needing to balance limited resources while still remaining agile enough to respond to new business requirements. Indeed, many mid-sized companies cite limited resources as a common barrier to realizing the full benefits of cloud services. The question is, how can mid-sized companies achieve the same benefits enterprises see by moving to the cloud, such as improved flexibility, improved agility and cost reductions, without breaking the bank on initial investments?

Find out on May 21^st – VMware is hosting a live webcast with VMware Executives Pat Gelsinger and Bill Fathers, where they will be unveiling a new cloud service from VMware, The webcast will provide mid-sized businesses with details to better understand the new VMware vCloud Hybrid Service and how they can best take advantage of its potential.

Register now for this free, LIVE online event: http://www.vmware.com/go/vmwarehybrid

For more information, be sure to follow the VMware vCloud blog and VMware SMB Blog, and follow the hashtag #VMwareHybrid leading up to and during the webcast.

VMware is also promoting a chance to win prizes each week leading up to the webcast. By sharing the event and using the hashtag #VMwareHybrid on your social media channels, you could be eligible to receive a Starbucks gift card or a Netflix gift subscription! See full details below.

Follow VMware SMB on Facebook, Twitter, Spiceworks and Google+ for more blog posts, conversation with your peers, and additional insights on IT issues facing small to midmarket businesses.

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Who is Your IT Hero? Call for Nominations Now Open!

Posted on May 14, 2013 by VMware SMB

We are excited to announce the launch of our VMwareSMB IT Hero search!

Does your business have an IT pro that you couldn’t work without? Are you an IT whiz that keeps your company’s tech running smoothly? We want to hear from you! The VMware SMB team is on the search to recognize the unsung IT Heroes that make a business hum. An added bonus: the IT Heroes selected will win some awesome prizes and VMware loot!

Enter Today!

Over the next 6 months we’ll be searching for IT professionals who have performed so well at their jobs that many would call them an ‘IT Hero’. Nominations are open to individuals who are themselves IT Heroes as well as anyone who would like to get their IT Hero some recognition. Each month a committee from the VMwareSMB team will review the submissions received and select one to represent that month’s official IT Hero. We’ll recognize a total of 6 VMware IT Heroes over the course of our search.

Once selected, monthly IT Heroes will win a prize pack from VMware plus special graphics for their social media channels to highlight their IT Hero distinction. Each hero will also be recognized on the VMware SMB blog to share their IT insights and best practices with the community.

What are you waiting for? Make your nomination today! Follow VMware SMB on Facebook, Twitter, Spiceworks and Google+ for more blog posts, conversation with your peers, and additional insights on IT issues facing small to midmarket businesses.

For more contest information and official rules, see Terms and Conditions below:

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Simplifying the Back-Up Process – VMware Data Protection (VDP)

Posted on May 7, 2013 by VMware SMB

Post by Mike Rose, Systems Engineer, Midmarket and Small Business Team

In today’s market there is no shortage of backup technologies to address virtual infrastructure. There are dozens of vendors with multiple solutions and this can easily and quickly contribute to confusion. Very quickly you will find yourself buried in questions like:

Can I understand the complicated licensing model?
How hard is it to deploy in my virtual environment?
Do I need to deploy agents?
What kind of overhead will be required of the virtual machine itself?
How will I get my staff trained on this solution?

It’s clear that during my daily conversations with customers, IT leaders and staff are constrained and are actively looking for ways to streamline processes and make the best of their time…. aren’t we all? With this in mind, I often recommend VMware Data Protection (VDP). I feel this comes up often enough that I should extend the solution to all of you and how I walk through this with my customers.

What is VMware Data Protection?

VMware Data Protection was first introduced in vSphere 5.1. It was a joint solution from VMware and EMC based from EMC’s mature Avamar product. Data Protection is a disk based backup virtual appliance that is imported into vCenter via OVF files (provided on our website) which integrates into your existing virtual environment. There are two version of Data protection: Standard and Advanced. The standard version comes free as a part of all vSphere editions. The Advanced version is licensed per processor which comes with some advanced features that are not contained in the Standard version. You can read more about the differences at this link: Data Protection Edition comparison.

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New: 7 Key Indicators that it’s Time for you to Move to Desktop Virtualization (VDI)

Posted on May 1, 2013 by VMware SMB

As a midmarket business, you’ve likely virtualized your data center as a cost-saving measure and found additional benefits such as reduced physical space, and a decrease in power and cooling expenses. However, traditional endpoint environments can be difficult to manage and can present a number of security risks that your organization can’t afford. You may now be thinking about ways to deliver rich, flexible, mobile, and productive user experiences through centralized IT services. And, you may be thinking about desktop virtualization (VDI) that can give you ways to simplify desktop and application management and data.

So how do you know when it’s time to move to desktop virtualization (VDI)?

Read this whitepaper on When It Makes Sense to Move to Desktop Virtualization to learn more about the 7 key indications that your business is ready for VDI. Find out how deploying VMware Horizon View can improve your IT infrastructure by:

Giving IT easy control over data access
Making regulatory compliance more manageable
Enabling quick and scalable management for you while avoiding crippling downtime for users

Read now!

How else has desktop virtualization benefited your business? We look forward to your comments.

No Longer An Option: Midmarket CIOs are Expanding Their Virtualization to Take Their Businesses Forward

Posted on April 25, 2013 by VMware SMB

Post by Michael Brunner, Director, Midmarket and Small Business Team

Recently I attended the Midmarket CIO Forum event in Bonita Springs, Florida, joining a group of leading CIOs to discuss the challenges and opportunities that midmarket organizations are facing. Many CIOs who attended were looking for insights from their peers and midmarket solution vendors, to discuss challenges and create actionable plans to move their business forward by leveraging new and existing IT opportunities.

During the discussions in our Boardroom presentations (shown here with Kyle Martin, VMware Regional Account Executive) the specific challenges cited by midmarket IT leaders ranged from balancing limited resources to meeting end-user demand, to quickly increasing agility to respond to new business requirements.

Attending CIOs agreed and felt that VMware helped them to meet these challenges, voting VMware as the company with best solution or service suited to meet the specific needs of the midmarket.

With this in mind, there were a couple of key conversations that came out during the Forum.

Key Conversations – Mobility Through Desktop Virtualization (VDI) and Disaster Recovery (DR)

With a recent survey showing that 85% of employees at small to midmarket businesses are using personal devices for work, it’s no surprise that mobility thru desktop virtualization and disaster recovery dominated the conversation among attending CIOs. From costs, to security, to reliability, midmarket IT leaders are looking for a way to ensure they’re providing the best solutions for their business.

The overwhelming answer to challenges relating to mobility and “bringing your own device (BYOD) among attendees was desktop virtualization. As many midmarket organizations that attended have already taken the initial step into server virtualization, many are looking to expand their virtualization infrastructure with VDI to ensure security for an expanding mobile workforce. A recent Spiceworks study reported that 65% of small to midmarket business have already deployed virtualization in 2012, with 39% using or planning to deploy desktop virtualization in the early part of 2013. Having benefited from initial cost savings when virtualizing, many CIOs discussed how virtualization expansion allows IT infrastructure to increase agility and quickly respond to new business requirements.

Aside from cost savings, many CIOs who had already expanded their virtualization spoke of additional benefits such as:

Increased efficiency and agility for their end users (end user computing (EUC))
Consolidated hardware, with more productivity from remaining servers and having a greener footprint (lower cooling costs)
Having fully automated site recovery and migration capabilities (DR)
Real simplification of IT management that allows them to operate strategically as a business unit rather than a reactionary help center, with existing resources and staff.

One of VMware’s key objectives is to stay closely connected with midmarket and small businesses. It is very important for us to take the opportunity to share trends and learnings that you can use to shape your IT infrastructure and take it forward, and hear what your peers have to say.

We will continue to share recaps from these events through the year. I welcome your thoughts below in the comments.

For those of you exploring disaster recovery, desktop virtualization solutions and mobility, I urge you to review these helpful resources to assist in moving your organization forward:

Until next time,

Mike

Third in a Series: Virtualization Expansion Makeover Debunks the Top 5 Virtualization Myths!

Posted on April 24, 2013 by VMware SMB

In February, we announced PBS Engineering and Environmental Inc. as the winner of our $100,000 VMware/Dell Journey to Your Cloud Makeover contest. This is the third in our blog series chronicling PBS’s implementation of expanded virtualization and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

Everything has been progressing as planned at PBS. The Vancouver disaster recovery center is already up and running with a full 3-2-1 redundant high availability (HA) configuration based on a SAN, two switches and three servers. Throughout the makeover and our discussions with Todd Leavitt, IT Manager at PBS, there’s been one recurring theme – he wishes he would have started virtualization sooner.

So why didn’t he? “I implemented a little slower than I should have because I was very cautious that virtualization was different than what I was used to,” he explains. “I started out with one machine and then virtualized a couple machines with a free version of ESXI host. I ran that for a while to see if I’d have any problems, and it was just incredible. There were no problems, and it became absolutely trustworthy.”

We often hear similar stories from customers who wish that they would have started virtualization, or expanded their use of virtualization, earlier. So we thought it would be helpful to dispel some of the common misconceptions surrounding virtualization for small to medium-sized businesses.

Debunking the Top 5 Virtualization Myths Through One Company’s Experience

Myth 1: Change is scary.

IT professionals are understandably wary about rocking the boat, but as PBS’s experience shows, there really is nothing to fear. Or, as Todd puts it, “I think a lot of small businesses might be afraid – the technical people, the IT managers, the network administrators – because virtualization is just different. Everyone is used to one machine with one OS installed on it, and they get stuck on that. It’s amazing, once they take that first step, how easy it is to implement and manage. Don’t fear the change – it’s for the best. It is the future.”

Myth 2: My company doesn’t have the manpower.

On the surface, it may seem like implementing or expanding a virtualized environment would require a lot of resources; however, many of our small and medium-sized business customers operate with one-person IT departments. Without virtualization, these businesses would need to hire additional IT staff. As Todd has discovered, virtualization allows you to remain nimble, dynamically adapt to change, address problems as they arise, and accomplish more with far fewer resources.

Myth 3: I don’t have the time.

In most cases, virtualization doesn’t take long – usually anywhere from a couple days to a month, depending on the project scope. For example, the timeline for the $100,000 PBS virtualization expansion is roughly one month. And, think of the time and headaches you’ll save in being able to schedule server downtime or take vacation without having to worry about potential server issues. “It’s extremely efficient to be able to do maintenance on servers during the workday now, instead of having to stay until 7:00 p.m.,” Todd says. “And now, there’s significantly less maintenance overall.”

Myth 4: Virtualization is expensive.

Virtualization can Continue reading →

New eBook: Top Four Reasons to Expand Virtualization of Your IT Environment

Posted on April 16, 2013 by VMware SMB

VMware SMB

In a recent survey of more than 1,000 small to midmarket businesses, 68% say they plan to spend more on virtualizing their infrastructure this year than they did last year. Although cutting costs remains a key driver of virtualization, companies that have already implemented virtualization are seeing plenty of additional benefits.

Demands on IT departments are changing, from increased pressures to implement BYOD policies for users to scalability issues, and expanding on virtualization remains a key step for laying a foundation for a small to midmarket organization’s infrastructure.

Download this free eBook to get the top 4 reasons why you need to expand virtulization in your IT environment and what your midmarket or small business stands to gain – beyond cost savings:

Learn how to prevent outages with a resource-constrained environment
Discover how you can be among the 73% of companies that have reduced significant time investments in routine administrative tasks.
Hear from other companies on how expanding virtualization has improved their business.

What were your top reasons for expanding virtualization? Share them with us here.

The Power of Enterprise IT Management for Small and Midsize Business (SMB)

Debunking the Top 5 Virtualization Myths Through One Company’s Experience