ss lynchburg en
SUCCESS STORY
Veeam Monitor Becomes Essential Tool in City’s Virtual Management Toolbox “We looked for a monitoring tool for quite some time that was compatible with our ESXi software and found exactly what we were looking for in Veeam Monitor. It is easy to install, simple to configure, and it collects the data we need to effectively monitor our VMware hosts.”
Tom Williamson Network Analyst City of Lynchburg, Virginia
The Business Challenge
ORGANIZATION:
Located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and along the banks of the James River, the city of Lynchburg is near the geographic center of Virginia. Since its founding in 1786, the city has grown to 49 square miles and is home to more than 68,000 residents. Lynchburg is also a center for commerce and retail, as well as a college town. Five institutions of higher learning attract more than 16,000 students each year.
CHALLENGE: Find an easy-to-use and reliable monitoring solution for VMware ESX and ESXi servers
The Information Technology Department for the City of Lynchburg supports 1,000 end users and every aspect of city business, from the fleet repair shop to the public works department. Like many organizations, Lynchburg decided to virtualize its IT environment to consolidate physical servers and save money. “We had a physical server for almost every application,” explained Tom Williamson, Network Analyst for Lynchburg. “That resulted in too many servers and steep hardware costs.” Now 50 percent of Lynchburg’s IT infrastructure is virtualized. Tom and his team had 40 physical servers and consolidated 20 of them onto five VMware ESX servers, four of which are ESXi (the five ESX servers are a combination of Dell PowerEdge Servers, ranging from 1950s to 2950s to R710s). Since ESXi only supports sending Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps, the previous monitoring solution couldn’t retrieve data from the ESXi hosts themselves. “That was the key reason for us to search for a new monitoring tool,” Tom explained. “Not only was it important to monitor the Windows machines running inside the VMware hosts, but we also needed to see a picture of what the host itself was doing.” The only way the IT team could gather performance data was to connect to each host. “This was very time consuming because we had to track down individual administrators, who were already busy, and ask them to pull data from the hosts,” Tom said. Lynchburg began looking for a monitoring tool that was compatible with ESXi servers. “We wanted a product that was easy to use and could collect the performance data we need to help us make decisions on how to best allocate our virtual host resources to new virtual machines,” he said. “We also wanted a product that was cost-effective and included reliable support.”
The Veeam Solution The IT team investigated several monitoring tools, both paid and free, and found exactly what they were looking for in Veeam Monitor. “We found Veeam to be the quickest to configure out of the box,” Tom explained. “More importantly, Veeam Monitor collects the performance data we need to effectively monitor our VMware hosts. The charts are exactly what we wanted, and the presentation of data is right on the money.” Tom said Veeam Monitor is also easier to use compared to other monitoring solutions they considered. “With Veeam, we were up and running in minutes,” he said. “Other monitoring tools involved much longer configuration times—one took nearly two days to set up.” In addition to ease of use, Veeam Monitor saves time for the IT team. “It used to take 30 minutes to pull performance data because we had to track down individual
To learn more, visit: www.veeam.com
SUCCESS STORY
SOLUTION: Veeam Monitor™
RESULTS: • Installation and Configuration is 99% Faster • Collection of Performance Data is 93% Faster • Customer Support is Reliable
administrators,” Tom said. “But with Veeam, securing that same data takes minutes. That’s because administrators who are responsible for evaluating that type of data now have access to Veeam Monitor, and since it is so easy to use, they were comfortable with it in no time.” Product support is also important to Tom and his team. When they moved their monitor database from one computer to another, they were concerned about losing the data already collected. “I went straight to Veeam’s online forums,” he explained. “Veeam’s support folks told me exactly how to do it. This is just one example of the great experiences I’ve had with Veeam support. They actually answer customers’ questions, and they do it quickly, unlike other support forums I’ve encountered.” Soon after Veeam Monitor was in place, the IT team began searching for a backup solution for the VMware infrastructure. “Again, one of the key points for us was ease of use,” Tom said. “We found that Veeam Backup & Replication is just as easy to integrate and use as Veeam Monitor, and both products do exactly what they promise to do. Veeam Monitor has already become an essential tool in our virtual management toolbox, and we expect that the more we use Veeam Backup & Replication, it will become an essential tool as well.”
The Results Installation and Configuration is 99 Percent Faster It took Tom and his team just a few minutes to install and configure Veeam Monitor, but other VMware monitoring solutions took much longer—one even took nearly two days to set up.
Collection of Performance Data is 93 Percent Faster Before Veeam Monitor was implemented, Tom and his team spent 30 minutes pulling performance data because they had to track down individual administrators. Now it takes a few minutes to secure that same data because administrators have access to Veeam Monitor.
Customer Support is Reliable Tom and his team go straight to Veeam’s online forums when they have questions. They receive answers promptly, which is a welcomed relief. Tom said other support forums either provide incomplete answers or don’t provide answers at all.
About Veeam Software Veeam Software, an Elite VMware Technology Alliance Partner, develops innovative software to manage VMware vSphere®. Veeam Backup & Replication with vPower™ provides advanced Virtualization-Powered Data Protection™ and is the #1 VM backup solution. Veeam nworks extends enterprise monitoring to VMware and includes the Veeam nworks Management Pack™ for VMware management in Microsoft System Center and the Veeam nworks Smart Plugin™ for VMware management in HP Operations Manager. Veeam ONE™ provides a single solution to optimize the performance, configuration and utilization of vSphere environments and includes: Veeam Monitor™ for easy-to-deploy VMware monitoring; Veeam Reporter™ for VMware capacity planning, change tracking and documentation; and Veeam Business View™ for VMware business service management and categorization. Learn more about Veeam Software by visiting www.veeam.com.
To learn more, visit: www.veeam.com © 2011 Veeam Software. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
09282011
Veeam Monitor Becomes Essential Tool in City’s Virtual Management Toolbox “We looked for a monitoring tool for quite some time that was compatible with our ESXi software and found exactly what we were looking for in Veeam Monitor. It is easy to install, simple to configure, and it collects the data we need to effectively monitor our VMware hosts.”
Tom Williamson Network Analyst City of Lynchburg, Virginia
The Business Challenge
ORGANIZATION:
Located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and along the banks of the James River, the city of Lynchburg is near the geographic center of Virginia. Since its founding in 1786, the city has grown to 49 square miles and is home to more than 68,000 residents. Lynchburg is also a center for commerce and retail, as well as a college town. Five institutions of higher learning attract more than 16,000 students each year.
CHALLENGE: Find an easy-to-use and reliable monitoring solution for VMware ESX and ESXi servers
The Information Technology Department for the City of Lynchburg supports 1,000 end users and every aspect of city business, from the fleet repair shop to the public works department. Like many organizations, Lynchburg decided to virtualize its IT environment to consolidate physical servers and save money. “We had a physical server for almost every application,” explained Tom Williamson, Network Analyst for Lynchburg. “That resulted in too many servers and steep hardware costs.” Now 50 percent of Lynchburg’s IT infrastructure is virtualized. Tom and his team had 40 physical servers and consolidated 20 of them onto five VMware ESX servers, four of which are ESXi (the five ESX servers are a combination of Dell PowerEdge Servers, ranging from 1950s to 2950s to R710s). Since ESXi only supports sending Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps, the previous monitoring solution couldn’t retrieve data from the ESXi hosts themselves. “That was the key reason for us to search for a new monitoring tool,” Tom explained. “Not only was it important to monitor the Windows machines running inside the VMware hosts, but we also needed to see a picture of what the host itself was doing.” The only way the IT team could gather performance data was to connect to each host. “This was very time consuming because we had to track down individual administrators, who were already busy, and ask them to pull data from the hosts,” Tom said. Lynchburg began looking for a monitoring tool that was compatible with ESXi servers. “We wanted a product that was easy to use and could collect the performance data we need to help us make decisions on how to best allocate our virtual host resources to new virtual machines,” he said. “We also wanted a product that was cost-effective and included reliable support.”
The Veeam Solution The IT team investigated several monitoring tools, both paid and free, and found exactly what they were looking for in Veeam Monitor. “We found Veeam to be the quickest to configure out of the box,” Tom explained. “More importantly, Veeam Monitor collects the performance data we need to effectively monitor our VMware hosts. The charts are exactly what we wanted, and the presentation of data is right on the money.” Tom said Veeam Monitor is also easier to use compared to other monitoring solutions they considered. “With Veeam, we were up and running in minutes,” he said. “Other monitoring tools involved much longer configuration times—one took nearly two days to set up.” In addition to ease of use, Veeam Monitor saves time for the IT team. “It used to take 30 minutes to pull performance data because we had to track down individual
To learn more, visit: www.veeam.com
SUCCESS STORY
SOLUTION: Veeam Monitor™
RESULTS: • Installation and Configuration is 99% Faster • Collection of Performance Data is 93% Faster • Customer Support is Reliable
administrators,” Tom said. “But with Veeam, securing that same data takes minutes. That’s because administrators who are responsible for evaluating that type of data now have access to Veeam Monitor, and since it is so easy to use, they were comfortable with it in no time.” Product support is also important to Tom and his team. When they moved their monitor database from one computer to another, they were concerned about losing the data already collected. “I went straight to Veeam’s online forums,” he explained. “Veeam’s support folks told me exactly how to do it. This is just one example of the great experiences I’ve had with Veeam support. They actually answer customers’ questions, and they do it quickly, unlike other support forums I’ve encountered.” Soon after Veeam Monitor was in place, the IT team began searching for a backup solution for the VMware infrastructure. “Again, one of the key points for us was ease of use,” Tom said. “We found that Veeam Backup & Replication is just as easy to integrate and use as Veeam Monitor, and both products do exactly what they promise to do. Veeam Monitor has already become an essential tool in our virtual management toolbox, and we expect that the more we use Veeam Backup & Replication, it will become an essential tool as well.”
The Results Installation and Configuration is 99 Percent Faster It took Tom and his team just a few minutes to install and configure Veeam Monitor, but other VMware monitoring solutions took much longer—one even took nearly two days to set up.
Collection of Performance Data is 93 Percent Faster Before Veeam Monitor was implemented, Tom and his team spent 30 minutes pulling performance data because they had to track down individual administrators. Now it takes a few minutes to secure that same data because administrators have access to Veeam Monitor.
Customer Support is Reliable Tom and his team go straight to Veeam’s online forums when they have questions. They receive answers promptly, which is a welcomed relief. Tom said other support forums either provide incomplete answers or don’t provide answers at all.
About Veeam Software Veeam Software, an Elite VMware Technology Alliance Partner, develops innovative software to manage VMware vSphere®. Veeam Backup & Replication with vPower™ provides advanced Virtualization-Powered Data Protection™ and is the #1 VM backup solution. Veeam nworks extends enterprise monitoring to VMware and includes the Veeam nworks Management Pack™ for VMware management in Microsoft System Center and the Veeam nworks Smart Plugin™ for VMware management in HP Operations Manager. Veeam ONE™ provides a single solution to optimize the performance, configuration and utilization of vSphere environments and includes: Veeam Monitor™ for easy-to-deploy VMware monitoring; Veeam Reporter™ for VMware capacity planning, change tracking and documentation; and Veeam Business View™ for VMware business service management and categorization. Learn more about Veeam Software by visiting www.veeam.com.
To learn more, visit: www.veeam.com © 2011 Veeam Software. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
09282011
