EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions Product Strategy & Architecture Practice Wipro Technologies Boston, Massachusetts

October 2008 Sponsored by:

EMC Corporation

Copyright © Wipro Ltd. 2008. All rights reserved. No portion of this study can be used or reproduced without permission of the author. For additional reproduction rights and usage information, go to www.wipro.com. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.

EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

Executive Summary Information has become the single most important source of competitive advantage to enterprises. As technology becomes more central and strategic to business success, companies require that their IT suppliers provide reliable or ‘proven’ solutions to their business problems beyond just the technology products. Businesses expect these solutions to be customized and crafted to address their business and technology challenges. EMC, a leading information infrastructure provider, has developed an innovative and unique approach for architecting end-to-end solutions that integrates EMC hardware, software, and services with business and infrastructure applications from industry leaders such as Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and VMware. EMC also uses other critical infrastructure elements from technology firms including Brocade, Dell, Emulex, and QLogic, that best suits the requirements of customers. EMC provides IT professionals with well tested, Proven Solutions that include design, deployment, and management guidelines to support critical business activities. EMC’s solutions include:

• Industry-specific best practices for designing, deploying, and managing the specific solution • Comprehensive documentation that provides guidance for all components and phases of deployment and management with both EMC and non-EMC products

• Testing results and guidance derived from real world test scenarios and environments • Access and support through EMC to the engineering teams of industry leaders involved with the particular proven solution In this paper, Wipro Technologies focuses on the methodology EMC follows for building its Proven Solutions for organizations of all sizes and domains. This paper also demonstrates the methodology using an example of the solution development process for Microsoft Exchange in physical and VMware environments. Wipro Technologies believes that EMC’s approach to developing Proven Solutions adds substantial value to customers by solving their key challenges in a predictable, reliable, and accelerated manner. With this approach, EMC provides industryleading technology and expertise to help customers align the most appropriate solution and best practices to get more value from their investments and deliver more business impact.

Product Strategy & Architecture Practice, Wipro Technologies, Boston, Massachusetts

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

Introduction EMC’s storage, content management, and information infrastructure serves the information management needs of organizations. Regardless of size or industry, EMC has found that customers share these common challenges in managing information:

• Managing the dramatic growth of information in an increasingly complex information infrastructure that includes hardware platforms, software applications, and services

• Reducing risk by ensuring that stored information is adequately protected, secured, and is available as needed

• Maximizing the effectiveness of information by investing in the right information management solutions and delivering high service levels

• Deriving new business value from existing organizational information EMC validates its Proven Solutions through its reference architectures, subject matter experts, proofs-of-concept and solution demonstration, and rigorous testing at its EMC Solution Centers. EMC has developed Proven Solutions for the following applications — Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, SAP, and VMware. EMC also provides Proven Solutions for Compliance/eDiscovery and Physical Security. EMC solutions are organized around real world issues that customers face such as:

Performance & Scalability Many companies are adopting both organic and inorganic methods to achieve rapid growth. This is placing tremendous challenges on the information infrastructure in terms of the number of concurrent users, the increase in capacity and the extent of input/output operations; the requirements for which change frequently. From a technology perspective, the demand for new services such as the rollout of unified communications, integration of different solution architectures from a merger, or a desired increase in user storage quotas pose further challenges. Companies want information management solutions that can scale easily and provide stable and predictable levels of performance.

Disaster Recovery In the networked world, the importance of information is growing with every day. Organizations are looking for fault tolerant architectures that can prevent delays in communication and reduce downtime, as the business costs of downtime are increasing rapidly.

Management With an increasing focus on efficiency and green computing, enterprises must reduce energy and space costs. Therefore, they need to invest in optimized storage infrastructure with lesser number of servers, smaller disks and lower power requirements. Companies also want to reduce the costs of support and administration for these machines by looking for alternatives that allow for easy upkeep and maintenance.

Security As information is strategic to any enterprise, organizations impose strict safeguards on information assets to ensure their safe storage, archival and disposal. There are often strict regulations governing the protection of data for every industry. Organizations need an information architecture that satisfies all legal requirements for the industry, and ensures the safe storage, archival and disposal of information.

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

Archiving The ability to easily archive and retrieve information is essential to any organization and needs to be effectively managed with existing information infrastructures. In many countries, there are strict laws governing the storage of personal, financial and transactional information in areas such as telecommunications, healthcare and financial services. In order to effectively store and retrieve large amounts of data, enterprises want solutions with automated and efficient archival, as well as quick retrieval capabilities.

Backups and Reliability Organizations cannot afford to not have access to their data in spite of natural disasters or system failures. They are increasingly favoring solutions with superior backup facilities that can automatically backup larger amounts of information in a short time. EMC’s Proven Solutions are designed, architected, and tested to deliver consistent and predictable performance across all important parameters including those listed above. Wipro finds that this approach is in line with the philosophy of providing customers with end to end information management infrastructures that help them store, protect, manage and leverage information. To satisfy the specific requirements of customers, deliver consistent performance and predictable results, EMC employs the services of technical and business architects from EMC and from partner organizations such as Wipro, with specialized skills in the design and delivery of its solutions.

Product Strategy & Architecture Practice, Wipro Technologies, Boston, Massachusetts

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

EMC Proven Solutions EMC Proven Solutions include end-to-end development and testing of EMC information infrastructure solutions. EMC’s Proven Solutions are built on the philosophy that customers are looking for solutions that can deliver predictable results. In the development of solution architectures for its Proven Solutions, EMC studies the customer’s integrated operating environment and then suggests the right technology and services. EMC’s Proven Solutions consider a number of business scenarios affecting customers including mergers, acquisitions and rapid organic growth. This ensures that these solutions are built to address each customer’s unique requirements. EMC Proven Solutions are characterized by rigorous interoperability testing at each of the integration points until the breakpoint is reached. This breakpoint is documented in the reference architecture; organizations can assure predictable results by following the reference architecture in their own solution implementation. EMC develops its solutions in Global Solution Centers, which are located around the world. Staffed by EMC engineers, each Global Solution Center is built using EMC and other industry-leading hardware and software, and the solutions developed are based on real world design, deployment, and operational scenarios. EMC also focuses on the EMC Total Customer Experience quality assurance program in these centers to ensure customer satisfaction. Having worked closely with EMC on the Proven Solution program, Wipro finds that EMC’s approach and methodology ensures that:

• All solution component vendors provide their product expertise during design, build, and test phases of the solution development;

• Industry best practices are identified, incorporated, and documented with the solution; • Extensive end-to-end testing is defined, performed, and documented; • Product integration or operational problems are discovered in the testing process and solved with each of the participating vendors prior to the solution being released to customers as an EMC Proven Solution;

• Solution knowledge acquired during the validation process is documented and made available to solution customers. The documentation includes a technical reference architecture and detailed procedures for deploying, testing, and operating the end-to-end solution; In addition to their Global Solution Laboratories, EMC’s Innovation Solution Center provides rapid testing and problem resolution to customers. It does not develop full reference architectures, but performs solution validation to identify opportunities for product enhancement and new end-to-end solution development.

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

Customer Requirements

New Technologies

Constant exchange of information with vendors

Constant customer feedback

EMC & MS Best Practices

1. Identify Requirements

2. Identify Technology 3. Design the Solution Reference Architecture 4. Define Testing Requirements

Building Block Approach 5. Build Solution

Automated Testing Approach

6. Perform Test to Meet Best Practices

7. Test Solution to Breaking Point

8. Publish Documentation

Figure 1. Process Flow, with added value, best practices, and built in.

EMC’s Proven Solutions – Methodology EMC follows a comprehensive methodology in developing EMC Proven Solutions. This methodology ensures that solutions deliver high performance, are highly scalable and available, interoperate well with other solution components, and exhibit predictable behavior. The key steps in the solutions development methodology for EMC are documented below:

1. Identify Requirements

1. Identify requirements EMC takes a proactive approach in identifying the major challenges enterprises face with deploying and managing information infrastructure. EMC gathers user and IT requirements for deployments through a variety of forums:



• Proactively interviewing enterprise users and IT staff • Consulting with EMC technology partners such as Wipro • Engaging enterprise customers at EMC sponsored customer councils • Gathering information about the current and anticipated requirements of customers through EMC’s consulting team that regularly interfaces with EMC customers

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

2. Identify the right technology 2. Identify Technology

EMC believes that technology is a business enabler. Therefore, the technology decision for any solution should be driven by the business requirements of the customer. We believe that EMC and its partners have the intellectual property, skills, and capabilities to provide custom business and technology recommendations including the hardware, software, policies, processes and networking for a solution. EMC works with industry leaders to also provide technology that is part of the integrated EMC Proven Solution but may not be part of the EMC product portfolio.

3. Design the solution reference architecture based on industry best practices 3. Design the Solution Reference Architecture

When the solution requirements are documented and components identified, EMC solution architects design the Reference Architecture. EMC provides the following information for each Reference Architecture:

• End-to-end technical architecture schematic diagrams • Detailed designs and configuration options for: - Network components - Storage components - Application server components - Infrastructure application components • Configuration and management best practices from third party vendors such as Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and VMware

The Reference Architecture document provides IT departments with a detailed picture of the specific solution, guidelines for customizing the solution to their specific environment, and technical specifications on solution components and component integration.

4. Define testing requirements and create testing plan

4. Define Testing Requirements

EMC solution architects create a testing plan to validate that the solution specific design objectives for availability, recoverability, reliability, and performance. To test solutions, EMC follows a comprehensive testing methodology based on:

• EMC’s own testing harnesses and testing best practices based on years of experience • Guidance from the industry experts for whose product the infrastructure is being built • Lessons learned and common tests developed and implemented by the EMC experts

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

5. Build solution EMC builds each of the solutions in EMC Global Solution Centers. These labs contain technology from many different vendors for the components of a solution including:

5. Build Solution



• Servers • Virtualization software • Storage • Ethernet switches • SAN switches • Host Bus Adapters

The teams in these labs consist of solution architects and engineers with a variety of skills and expertise to build and test solutions to meet the varied business requirements of different organizations. EMC uses a “building block” approach in architecting every proven solution. This approach provides customers with a solution that is easy to implement and will scale to meet changing capacity requirements. Building blocks are baseline configurations that are tested to provide predictable performance to seamlessly address:

• Increase load balancing for servers • Improve network connectivity with additional switches • Increase storage capacity by adding disks 6. Perform tests to meet industry best practices and metrics Our own experience has shown that EMC involves technology leaders in defining stringent storage testing guidelines and documentation standards for each proven solution. This is done in order to improve the quality and consistency of the user experience and to ensure that the infrastructure is optimized. Third party technology vendors usually request the results of these tests, as submissions, to ensure that all criteria have been met and all best practices have been incorporated. 6. Perform Test to Meet Best Practices

EMC uses these submissions as baseline tests in order to ensure that the basic requirements for the solution are in order. EMC has developed many standard solutions so that enterprises can select the EMC Reference Architecture and the solution that most closely matches their own environment.

7. Test the solution to the breaking point Using the testing plan developed, EMC performs thorough testing with an intention of finding the breakpoints in the solution. EMC also performs exhaustive documentation of these test results with the objective of documenting the levels up to which EMC Solutions exhibit predictable behavior. To improve speed, accuracy and analysis of the testing process, EMC uses automated testing scripts. The testing model continues to evolve as the EMC solutions team explores innovative approaches to reduce testing times, improve testing quality and analyze test results. 7. Test Solution to Breaking Point

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

8. Publish documentation The detailed documentation processes at EMC ensures that all data, test results, and EMC recommendations are captured. EMC provides complete and easy-to-understand information through screen shots and step-by-step procedures explaining the proven solution best practices, the design of the Reference Architectures, and the set up and installation procedures. The three major documents provided with every EMC Proven Solution are:

• Reference Architecture: This describes the test setup and the solution architecture for each 8. Publish Documentation

EMC Proven Solution. It contains information about the EMC products that have been tested such as CLARiiON, Replication Manager, PowerPath and so on, as well as, the scenarios that have been simulated. . The Reference Architecture is based on specific virtual or physical reference architecture and varies based on the user load and the applicability of a solution. Therefore, the reference architecture information is as necessary in solution building as the physical or virtual architecture itself.

• Best Practices Guide: The guide provides detailed guidelines on designing, deploying, and managing each solution including the Do’s and Don’ts for the solution.

• Validation Test Report: This provides detailed test results with graphs and statistics for all tests performed, irrespective of the outcome of the test. The Reference Architecture Guide and the Best Practice Guide are published to www.emc.com. The Validation Test Report is available through the local EMC sales representative or EMC Authorized Services Network partner.

Maintenance and updating the solution Wipro has found that EMC keeps its solutions and documentation updated to reflect changes in customer requirements, industry trends and solution component updates. When a significant change is identified, the solution architects evaluate the change and impact on the reference architecture and testing documents. For any change in the reference architecture, all steps in the process detailed above are repeated. In other cases, full regression testing is performed to ensure predictable performance. The changes to the documentation are then made to reflect these changes.

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

Example: Simplifying and Validating Infrastructure for Microsoft Exchange Server in Physical and Virtual Environments To validate EMC’s solution development process, Wipro Technologies closely studied the methodology EMC follows for building its four solutions — Consolidation, Backup, Archive, and Protect — for enterprises for both Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 in physical and virtual environments. The solutions are supported by documented reference architectures and best practices. The solutions are:

• EMC Consolidation Solutions for Exchange • EMC Backup Solutions for Exchange • EMC Archive Solutions for Exchange • EMC Protection Solutions for Exchange The table below identifies examples for each methodology step for Microsoft Exchange solutions. EMC Proven Solutions methodology applied to Microsoft Exchange Identify Requirements

• EMC solution architects work closely with EMC’s Microsoft Practice, 1000+ field consultants devoted to assisting customers design, deploy, and manage MicrosoftEMC environments. • EMC also participates in Microsoft events such as Microsoft Tech-Ed, Microsoft Forum and in Microsoft Exchange user groups.

Identify the right technology

• EMC solutions team consults with the Microsoft development teams, EMC Global Services’ Microsoft Consultants, EMC’s own engineers, VMware engineering, and with multiple server and network vendors. • Factors considered to identify the right technology: number of email users, projected growth of users and message traffic, centralized or distributed message environment, performance requirements, SLAs, corporate network configuration, message retention, archiving, backup and recovery requirements.

Design the solution reference architecture based on industry best practices

• EMC solution architects review, revise, and validate the solution architectures with Exchange subject matter experts at Microsoft, VMware, and EMC.

Define testing requirements and create testing plan

• Typical user scenarios are identified and simulated.

• Solution architectures incorporate all best practices to deliver the optimal end-toend infrastructure solution for Microsoft Exchange. • Testing is based on the principle that “no test is a bad test.” • Test results are fully documented and provided to customers. • EMC uses the guidance from Microsoft through the Exchange Solution Reference Program (ESRP) program.

Build Solution

• Solutions are built in the EMC Solution Center • EMC built 11 different solution infrastructure configurations for the Exchange Server 2007 solutions based on: - Number of mailboxes - Number of mailbox servers - User IO profile - User mailbox size - Backup Strategy - Time for Restore Continued on next page

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

Continued from previous page Perform tests to meet industry best practices and metrics

• As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, EMC utilizes the ESRP framework to test that its solutions are designed to optimize Microsoft Exchange using the ESRP submissions as a baseline test.

Test the solution to the • EMC performs hundreds of tests on each version of Exchange. breaking point •A  typical solution set includes more than 18 man months of testing time, and generates more than 10TB of raw data that is analyzed and summarized for the customer. • Ensure that EMC solutions for Microsoft Exchange will perform as described and deliver predictable results to end customers. • Documentation submitted to Microsoft to be posted with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 solutions. Submit Documentation

• EMC ensures that the solutions meet Microsoft’s ESRP strict criteria and guidelines. • ESRP validates that all the criteria are met and that the appropriate Microsoft best practices are incorporated before approving the solution.

Wipro Technologies found that EMC’s approach for building an optimized Physical and Virtual infrastructure supporting Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 under the Proven Solutions program adds substantial value to clients in providing them with highly scalable, available and predictable solutions.

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

Case Study: NexsEn Pruet Nexsen Pruet is a multi-specialty law firm headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina, with more than 170 attorneys and offices in Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina and in Columbia, Charleston, Greenville, Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The firm offers significant advantages to clients in terms of outstanding individual lawyers, a depth of talent, and extensive experience in many areas. VMware-based SAN consolidation provides cost savings and user enhanced services Challenge

Nexsen Pruet had recently merged with another large firm using different software and network systems. Many servers in the data center were at the end of their life cycle. This situation, coupled with a management directive to move from Groupwise in a Novell environment to Microsoft Exchange, moved the firm to look at an EMC Proven Solution that included an EMC SAN and VMware server virtualization software for their planned Exchange environment.

Implementation

Because the environment was distributed among the seven attorney offices, Nexsen Pruet would have had to buy 50 or more mid-range servers but instead consolidated applications, brought in an EMC CLARiiON 3-20 SAN, bought four high-end servers with VMware and VMotion supporting 50 virtualized servers to start.

Highlights

• Cost savings of more than $100,000 in the first year by avoiding server acquisition and deploying VMware in a virtualized environment. • Transformed IT infrastructure and realized 50:4 server elimination. • Enabled the upgrade to Microsoft Exchange 2007 without downtime; having been fully tested in a virtualized environment minimizing the likelihood of post conversion issues.

Results

Consolidating to a VMware-based SAN not only provided tangible costs savings but an infrastructure for Nexsen Pruet to deploy future user-enhanced services such as disaster recovery and seamless, non-disruptive application upgrades. The newly deployed information infrastructure enabled them to upgrade to Microsoft Exchange 2007 without interruption of service to the attorneys. John Davis, Technology Director of Nexsen Pruet said “I think the EMC Proven Solution we looked at for VMware and Exchange is very powerful and made it easier to overcome our resource challenges”. Shortly after the technology refresh, Nexsen Pruet was tasked with moving their datacenter to a new location. Having the servers virtualized allowed them to manage the transition with very little downtime.

"We chose EMC because of its industry-leading products, expertise and solutions capabilities that address all of the components of our information infrastructure including - Exchange, VMware and network storage. Utilizing a virtual environment has enabled us to meet the specific requirements we have as a law firm, for ROI, flexibility and availability, while freeing up resources for other critical business, said John Davis, Technology Director at Nexsen Pruet.

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

Conclusion After reviewing the methodology EMC follows for its Proven Solutions program, Wipro Technologies believes that the approach that EMC has taken adds substantial value to customers. This methodology ensures that EMC identifies the most important challenges facing customers, designs optimized solutions with all the relevant best practices, builds and tests the solutions to ensure quality, and documents results and guidance for customers and solution implementation teams. The resulting solutions and documentation help customers reduce costs and risk in designing, deploying, and managing their infrastructure solutions.

Appendix A. Glossary Term

Description

EMC Total Customer Experience Quality Assurance Program

A top down EMC initiative to implement and maintain the best possible experience for a customer at every EMC touch point from customer service to engineering.

CLARiiON

A SAN disk array that occupies the entry level and mid range of the EMC’s SAN disk array product palette.

PowerPath

A family of solutions that enable multipathing, data migration and host based encryption.

Replication Manager

Automated application data replication software from EMC.

Exchange Solutions Reference Program (ESRP)

To improve quality and consistency of Microsoft Exchange user experience, Microsoft created the Exchange Solution Reference Program to provide storage testing guidelines and solution documentation standards for Microsoft Exchange Server environments. The Microsoft ESRP program combines a storage testing harness (Jetstress) with Microsoft solution publishing guidelines.

Appendix B. Sample Reference Architecture Diagram The following diagram, included in the Reference Architecture Guide, shows the reference architecture diagram for EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007 with CLARiiON CX3 Series for iSCSI.

Figure 2. Reference architecture diagram for a comprehensive storage solution from EMC.

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EMC’s Comprehensive Approach for Building Proven Information Infrastructure Solutions

Appendix C. EMC Solutions for MS Exchange Over the past year, EMC has made the maximum submissions to the ESRP. EMC recognizes that there are many different customer environments and has developed many ESRP submissions so that organizations can follow the EMC reference architecture and solution that most closely matches their environment.

Number of Solutions Listed

ESRP Solution Listing – Storage Solutions for Exchange 2007 20 15 10 5 0 EMC

HDS

HP

IBM

NetApp

Vendor 1-1000 Mailboxes

1001-5000 Mailboxes

5000+ Mailboxes

Figure 3. The number of Exchange Server 2007 solutions listed by the Microsoft ESRP program

as of September 2008. EMC leads with twice the number of submissions across all categories.

Appendix D. About Wipro Product Strategy & Architecture Practice The Wipro Product Strategy & Architecture (PSA) practice is a division of Wipro Technologies, a global technology services division of Wipro Ltd. (NYSE-WIT). Wipro PSA practice has more than 12 years experience in researching, analyzing, and documenting the business value of technology solutions. Wipro PSA practice helps enterprises and technology vendors develop innovative and effective product and IT strategies that enable them to expand market opportunities, extend competitive advantage and economize business operations. In addition to providing consulting services to technology vendors, PSA consultants and technologists work with global enterprises and service providers in architecting and implementing large-scale systems. This practical, hands-on experience gives Wipro PSA practice consultants and technical architects first-hand knowledge that informs their business analysis work. For further information, contact [email protected] or visit www.wipro.com/psa

Copyright © Wipro Ltd. 2008. All rights reserved. No portion of this study can be used or reproduced without permission of the author. For additional reproduction rights and usage information, go to www.wipro.com. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Order Number: 318219-001US

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