VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise Case Study: Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross P.C.

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"VMware Infrastructure 3 has allowed us to achieve really remarkable economies of scale by consolidating our low-utilization servers onto a few high-performance hardware resources. That has helped us save thousands of dollars on everything from server space to hardware costs." Steven Marks, CIO, Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross P.C.
Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross P.C.K E Y H I G H L I G H T S Since its founding in 1971, Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross P.C. (Sills i n d u s t r y : P r o f e s s i o n a l Cummis) has developed an outstanding reputation both on a national and international level. Its lawyers are known for handling precedent-setting issues in corporate transactions, complex litigation, real estate and regulatory matters. As a growing firm, Sills Cummis found itself presented with several classic IT challenges. Firstly, it had to contend with server prolifera-C H A L L E N G E tion within its data center. Secondly, it needed to come up with a cost-effective disaster recovery system that didn't involve duplicating Needed to utilize production servers more effec- servers at the disaster recovery facility. Finally, it needed to ensure tively, while keeping them in sync with disaster recovery site high availability of key applications and services for its attorneys, who required 24/7 accessibility.S O L U T I O N Through its purchase of the VMware Infrastructure 3 suite, Sills VMware Infrastructure 3 consolidates low-utiliza- Cummis was able to readily tackle all of these problems. "VMware tion servers and replicates all virtual machine disk files between the production and the disas- software allowed us to consolidate servers at our primary site and ter recovery site get away from a need for dedicated high-availability servers, since the High Availability feature is built into VMware Infrastructure 3," says V M W A R E A T W O R K Steven Marks, CIO of Sills Cummis. "Additionally, the combination of VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise, featuring: VMware software with a SAN creates a highly cost-effective disaster . ESX Server 3 with VMFS recovery system-we always have a precise, up-to-date replica of the . VirtualCenter 2 entire production site at our disaster recovery facility.". VMotion Results. Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). High Availability (HA) . Reduced data center size by nearly 60 percent. "By implementing VMware technology, we were able to go from 120 servers in our D E P L O Y M E N T E N V I R O N M E N T data center down to 50," says Marks. "That incorporates a whole . ESX Server and VirtualCenter running on HP range of benefits: less space, reduced power and cooling costs, and 585s and 385s with Dual Core processors and reduced system maintenance, to name a few." 16 GB RAM. EqualLogic SAN, with 14 TB . Avoided hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware costs. "Of our . Guest operating systems: Windows 2003 Server original 120 servers, 40 of them were nearing end of life and needed to be replaced," says Marks. "Instead of spending money on replace-. Applications: More than 100 applications being deployed via Citrix, as well as SQL Server, ment servers, we were able to use VMware technology to create Exchange Server, document management virtual machines, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in the system, accounting system, and litigation process."support system . Increased availability of key services. "Our firm's attorneys work in a high-pressure environment, and they expect IT systems to be always available," says Marks. "Implementing VMware Infrastructure 3 has made a tremendous difference for providing the kind of service levels that our attorneys and customers expect from our IT infra-structure."
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