FIT4VIRTUALIZATION
Consultation Service
FIT4VIRTUALIZATION
Infrastructure Planning Workshop
FIT4VIRTUALIZATION
Proof of concept Service
FIT4VIRTUALIZATION
Implementation Service

FIT4VIRTUALIZATION - Infrastructure Planning Workshop

Introduction

Freestyle IT provides numerous Virtualization services which have been specifically designed to assist customers in identifying, planning and implementing Virtual Infrastructure solutions for both server and desktop environments, by utilising our skills, knowledge and experience in deploying Virtual Infrastructure Solutions. The first of these service offerings is designed to plan and scope such a project in readiness for a Proof of Concept or full implementation.

Workshop Scope

This is a two-day workshop, held at the customer’s premises, and is designed to plan a Virtual Infrastructure Proof of Concept environment or a full implementation. It is a forum in which the IT teams can come together with Freestyle IT’s Certified Professional Services Consultants to understand the specific requirements for server consolidation, disaster recovery, and virtual desktop infrastructure creating a tailor made programme for running the customers applications within a virtual infrastructure and ultimately accelerating the adoption of Virtualised environments.

Workshop Prerequisites

The following prerequisites will be carried out as part of the overall Infrastructure Planning Workshop:

Customer is required to produce a list of servers expected to be purchased in the coming year, either for new applications or to replace existing servers.
Freestyle IT will run a discovery tool within the customer’s environment to collect performance and utilisation statistics. Note – it does not collect any information on the data so data remains secure.
Freestyle IT will spend up to one week before the start of the workshop to analyse the resulting logs, in order to define which applications are suitable and which are not suitable to run in a VMware environment.
Freestyle IT will provide models based on real life scenarios which will show how the infrastructure will look depending on the chosen hardware platform/vendor.
Future proofing – as part of the modelling process Freestyle IT will model the infrastructure based on the customers growth plans to ensure the infrastructure scales.

Workshop Deliverables

Following on from the workshop, Freestyle IT’s specialists will prepare and present a report containing the following information:

A cost analysis matrix showing a comparison between physical and virtual server/desktop deployment.
A project definition documenting the actions to complete a Proof of Concept of running a Virtual Infrastructure within the customer’s environment, including identifying the servers intended to be virtualised as part of the Proof of Concept. This document will contain the existing server specifications, operating system(s) and application(s) installed and any dependencies on other hardware and/or services.
A clear definition of the acceptance criteria required to adopt Virtualization in a production environment.
A costing framework of Freestyle IT’s professional services required to support the Proof of Concept.
A list of issues that were identified during the workshop, for which information was not available at the time, along with details of who has taken ownership of sourcing the information and by what date.
Disaster recovery / business continuity options. This is important as Virtualization enables a range of high availability options that can be more cost-effective than traditional solutions.

Virtualisation Server Logos

Physical to Virtual

A key part of the Proof of Concept is replicating applications and their running environments from their existing physical machines onto virtual machines. This can present a whole set of new challenges as an application’s installation disks may not be available or the configuration may have been changed since the initial installation. Freestyle IT’s industry leading skills practice moving such applications and maintaining the same level of service to end users.

Proof of Concept Deliverables

The POC will adhere to the guidelines set out in Planning Workshop. It will demonstrate the suitability for the customer to run a Virtual Infrastructure. From here the technology should move to a small scale pilot to measure end user acceptance.