Server Virtualization Capabilities Description

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Server

Virtualization

Capabilities Description 19 August 2011

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SENSITIVE INFORMATION

IPNS PROPRIETARY INFORMATION—FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Server Virtualization

Capabilities Description

19 August 2011

Prepared by:

IPNS

13921 Park Center Road, Ste 380

Herndon, VA 20171

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IPNS Proprietary Information—SENSITIVE

1.0 ABOUT IPNS

IP Network Solutions, Inc. (IPNS) was founded in 2003. An 8(a), Small Disadvantaged

Business, IPNS customers include Department of Defense (DoD) and civilian agencies across the Federal Government, specifically the US Army, the US Air Force, and Federal Student Aid. With a Top Secret Facilities Clearance and unparalleled capabilities, IPNS provides the government our ability to support complex Information Technology, Programming, Network Architecture, and Infrastructure. IPNS brings extensive knowledge and understanding of the complexities of DoD, classified networks and government organizations. We strive to affect innovative, measured change to meet customer objectives and mandates with additional energy-efficiency, effectiveness and fewer resources. This inherent innovation translates succinctly to the requirements for our Federal and DoD customers.

IPNS is a small, agile business with a large business infrastructure—including a DCAA-approved accounting system, ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 20000 certifications, and a Program Management Office to ensure excellent customer relationships over time. We

recognize our customers’ overarching strategy

to improve their organizational structures and streamline their business processes through green, energy-efficient server virtualization and will work tirelessly to support those goals. IPNS is a firm with a highly relevant suite of capabilities for a virtualization effort—specializing in supporting, installing, maintain and operating Government and civilian systems. IPNS recognizes the criticality of a sustainable, application-centered initiative, and we work in collaboration with each customer to ensure we are utilizing the best, most appropriate tools for their particular requirements. We are experts in server consolidation and ensure complete customer satisfaction in green, energy-efficient systems, a reduced footprint and a 50% increased opportunity for growth.

Our International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certifications clearly illustrate our dedication to quality, comprehensive reporting system, in-place documentation management

structures and strong management team—both corporate and on-site. Some of the unique offerings we provide are as follows:

 Application-centric: Virtualization is the means, but applications are the end to providing the best solution and perpetual support for our customer.

 DoD-specific: Because IPNS and our personnel have worked within the Government sector for decades, we know the processes, understand the applications and have used the approaches. We have conducted these same processes at other Army installations with great success. Thus, only a nominal learning curve is necessary to understand and take care of our customers’ specific needs. In addition, we can offer recommendations based on seasoned experience and Army-specific know-how.

 Risk-abated: The more the experience, the lower the risk in transition. Because IPNS personnel have acute knowledge of these systems and their capabilities, we transition our customers’ servers over without any interruption to their systems. This gives a greater guarantee of success without high cost or disturbance in service.

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IPNS is confident we will successfully augment the support of the organization to ensure the Server Virtualization Efforts are completed to utmost customer satisfaction with no interruption to the servers for the customers who rely on them.

2.0 VIRTUALIZATION—BACKGROUND

The ability to virtualize storage resources in a shared environment has revolutionized the way in which computer applications utilize storage. These technologies result in energy and cost savings. These storage solutions also provide ―green‖ energy savings, high manageability of applications, and improved disaster recovery of data. They provide a non-heterogeneous way to provide storage— utilizing instead multiple-vendor storage subsystems grouped into tiered storage pools. The solution provides cost savings in that the data accessed the least can be placed into the least-expensive storage pool. This allows mission-critical data to be supported on faster, more-expensive disk storage—allowing immediate access with quicker response times.

According to a white paper issued by Hewlett Packard and CDW (HP Blades and Server

Virtualization: The Ins and Outs of I/O):

In an effort to address server sprawl and consolidate the plethora of distributed, underutilized servers, many businesses are turning to server virtualization technology on blade servers. These technologies together can reduce the amount of physical space, power and cooling costs required for servers significantly. When these two technologies are combined, IT also gains increased server utilization rates, higher reliability, flexibility, and serviceability.

In short, virtualization allows organizations to decrease costs while increasing capability and capacity. By utilizing the best virtualization techniques, IPNS consolidates physical servers with respect to power, server, storage and network requirements. The servers, then, will be dynamic, energy-efficient appliances taking up less space, less energy, and less money, while providing more capacity and increased capability. Please see Figure 1 below illustrating the transition to virtual servers.

Figure 1. Legacy Physical to Virtual Infrastructure

IPNS can transfer 100 existing servers to a virtual infrastructure composed of 4–5 servers, each with approximately 10 blades each.

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3.0 OUR APPROACH

3.1 VIRTUALIZATION

IPNS migrates and integrates the existing physical servers from a physical environment to the new virtual environment in a phased process.

 Approximately 100 physical servers can be consolidated onto 4–5 blade servers.  Each blade server, then, would be fully maximized with 10–12 blades.

 At a minimum, this consolidation leaves 50% capacity still available in the blades, as there is a minimum of 64 GB (32 Cores) on each blade.

 This remaining storage capacity then allows our customers to nearly double their amount of existing data.

Our proposed solution supports multiple deployment options. We work with our customers to ensure we utilize the particular deployment option that provides the best value for them. IPNS personnel have deployed virtualization solutions in production infrastructures at Dugway Proving Ground, Department of Veterans Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the US Patent Office. For instance, at Dugway, we transferred 50 physical servers to a virtual environment, and are currently providing support for that network with exceptional customer satisfaction. Because we have successfully integrated these solutions at multiple Federal and DoD installations, we know the systems, applications and processes associated therewith. We understand the criticality of non-interrupted service and impenetrable security. We use this first-hand expertise to ensure our customers are given the support they need to their utmost satisfaction. See Figure 2 below for a top-level illustration of the application profile we feel necessary.

Figure 2. Application Profile—Compute Resource Mapping

Various applications are available to transition infrastructures to a virtual environment. IPNS works with our customers to ensure they are supported by the best application possible that fulfills each of their needs.

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There are three separate options for a virtualization transition: A virtualized environment in the Army Data Center, a private cloud with virtualization in the Army Data Center, and a Public Cloud in a cloud service provider such as EC2, Google or Azure. The advantages and disadvantages for each of these approaches are listed below.

Table 1. Various Options for Solution Deployment

IPNS will work the Army Project Officer to determine the best solution that meets the Army’s requirements and is compliant with its standards.

Option Advantages Disadvantages Virtualized

Environment in the Army Data Center

 Reduced Cost of Deployment by minimizing the cost of server and storage infrastructure.

 Ability to Scale the infrastructure as the demand increases

 Improve Reliability of the

infrastructure and support for better Service Level Agreements

 Lower cost of Disaster Recovery

 An additional layer of technology

 May include licensing cost if a non-open source solution is chosen.

Private Cloud with Virtualization in the Army Data Center

 Similar to the above option except that some of the cloud management tools will be used

 Provide all the advantages of the Virtualized environment

 Provide cloud-management tools, which will allow the infrastructure to grow dynamically.

 May incur additional licensing cost if specific cloud products have to be used to meet the DOL EA standard. Public Cloud in a cloud service provider such as EC2, Google or Azure

 Low initial cost

 Ability to Scale up dynamically as needed.

 FISMA support and C&A according to NIST SP 800-53 are extremely difficult—if not impossible—to implement in a public cloud.

 Data segregation in a Multi-tenant environment is a complex problem.

Once we have determined the appropriate application profile, and upon successful virtualization, we initiate the End-to-End support for the established systems. The core tasks included in our approach to operations and maintenance after the transition to virtualization are outlined below. These major tasks include:

 Monitor and Support the System  Provide Quality Assurance  Manage System Changes  Manage Security

 Monitor System Health and Performance  Execute Problem Resolution

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IPNS adheres to commercial best practices and all applicable DoD and Federal plans, policies, procedures and governance:

DoD G6/CIO, DISA, Cyber Command, NSA,

the FISMA of 2002 (44 USC § 3541), and Clinger Cohen Act of 1996 (Title 40, USC) Specifically, we initiate the following processes:

Operations and Maintenance – Network Control Facility

 Charter a team to preform root-cause analysis and identify maintenance or sustaining engineering projects that can reduce maintenance requirements

 Employ Knowledge Management for Standard Operating Procedures maintenance, collaboration, and training

 Adopt, adapt, and continuously improve processes to enhance the energy-efficiency of the specific Data Center’s Server Virtualization productivity and performance

 Design, develop, implement, test, integrate, sustain, & upgrade

 Capture and apply knowledge to support product-improvement initiatives

Hardware Maintenance and Logistics Support

 Leverage existing infrastructure

 Apply lessons learned to streamline processes, improve services and reduce cost

 Deploy commercial best practices and exceptional products and services for leading-edge infrastructure technology

 Provide superb products and services for high-quality, cost-effective maintenance and logistics

COTS Software Operations and Maintenance

 Provide integrated solutions to simplify and reduce cost of COTS SW management  Utilize strategic partnerships with major vendors to secure best value

The next section delineates some of our recommendations for transition. We can provide up-to-date, applicable recommendations because of our current and past experience transitioning to virtualization for our other Federal and DoD customers.

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3.2 OUR RECOMMENDATIONS

Because of our extensive experience with the applications and processes inherent to Federal systems, we have substantial insight into what will work best in that system as we proceed in the virtualization effort. Some of our recommendations are included below:

Application: IPNS strongly suggests we utilize the virtualized environment in the Army Data

Center solution described in Table 1 above. This solution provides the most advantages for the least cost, and the DoD has already had great success with this solution in the past. Further, this

environment would utilize the Kernal Virtual Machines (KVM) hypervisor. This platform is used by the DoD in multiple installations, and it has been proven to be the most cost-effective solution for virtualization to-date. It also provides optimal interface with DoD systems. Other options include VMWare, OpenSource, Xen, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft HyperV. We work with the customer in making this decision to ensure they are given the best solution possible for the least cost and optimal performance results.

Storage: We would likely use Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) storage. We

may capture existing infrastructure components, virtualize the same, run those components in a test network for impact analysis and go live to ensure that the existing applications are properly migrated to virtual and the applications behave as expected.

Migration Phases: We recommend using a phased approach to this transition, then

overlapping each phase in terms of procurement and deployment because we do not recommend deploying any VMs without the storage framework in place. In other words, we ensure Storage and Server infrastructure is already in place before the first VM runs.

Disaster Recovery: IPNS incorporates a ―live‖ Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy into our

systems. These continuously ensure the various sites providing the DR solution are synchronized. We also design our systems to failover appropriately—this provides a correctly recovered state based on the systems’ requirements.

With a focus on end-to-end (application to spindle) DR in application planning, design and implementation phases, IPNS selects the most applicable technology to optimize both operation and management DR objectives. By combining multiple, server-, network- and storage- virtualization technologies, business objectives are met in a technology agnostic and multi-vendor environment. The business priorities are used to design the availability, performance and cost objectives during the design phase.

A typical Data Center that addresses both availability and Disaster Recovery is shown in Figure 3 below.

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Figure 3. Disaster Recovery for Virtual Servers with SAN Replication

IPNS designs our systems with data recovery in mind, so the Disaster Recovery tools and configurations are built into the system from its initiation.

3.3 RISK MITIGATION

3.3.1.1 MANAGING SYSTEMS CHANGES

IPNS’s greatest strengths are its technical expertise across a multitude of technologies. We also have the technical expertise to support transition to new architectures based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and related technologies. Our strong technical architecture capabilities include J2EE, .Net, Databases, Web 2.0, Storage and Security Infrastructures, as well as midrange and mainframe technologies. IPNS manages the various architectural changes resulting due to system enhancements, new requirements and other changes in a consistent and collaborative manner from an architectural, security and related perspectives.

3.3.1.2 MANAGING SECURITY

IPNS brings deep security expertise to meet both Federal and Army security standards and has successfully achieved Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) Certification and

Accreditation (C&A). IPNS ensures the system enhancements and new requirements do not adversely change the security posture of the system and maintain all applicable security during transition to a virtualized environment. In addition, IPNS follows the FISMA and Army guidelines on Audit trail retention, secure Data backup and other security policies as required.

3.3.1.3 MONITOR SYSTEM HEALTH AND PERFORMANCE

IPNS monitors the health and performance of the various software systems using state-of-the-art monitoring tools and applications. IPNS works with the infrastructure provider to meet the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for the various software systems. We even develop a customized

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digital dashboard to monitor the health of the system, cyber security, production and the environment. Because we do this work at other Army installations, we are expert in providing optimal performance day in and day out for our customers and their customers.

Figure 4. Customized Dashboard to Monitor Service

IPNS monitors the health of our systems at all times, and allows our customers a unique view of that status.

3.3.1.4 MAINTENANCE

IPNS monitors and supports the system to maintain reliable services. System monitoring procedures for the system will track system availability, service level metrics, and capacity. These procedures align with the ITIL process areas for service delivery including:

 Service Level Management  Capacity Management  Availability Management

We measure and monitor these process areas closely to make certain that IPNS meets and exceeds service level agreements. IPNS implements Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Service Level Management (SLM) procedures to define, monitor and report on the agreed-upon system service level agreements. In addition, we monitor and control performance metrics such as the timeliness, accuracy, quality, architecture, and artifact availability as part of this process.

3.3.1.5 PROBLEM RESOLUTION

IPNS problem resolution procedures incorporate each of the following ITIL process areas for Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management and Configuration Management. The steps for successful problem resolution include:

1. Incident ticket is logged in tracking tool.

2. Problem ticket opened to perform root-cause analysis. The agency approves root-cause findings.

3. Configuration Items from configuration management tool updated in ticket. 4. Code change targeted for a release.

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5. Request for migration form completed with details about the code change, testing results.

6. Request reviewed by change management and approved by agency 7. Code change migrated in release. Problem ticket resolved.

4.0 BENEFITS TO OUR CUSTOMERS

Besides the inherent benefit of exceptional past performance, IPNS brings numerous benefits to our customers. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

 Zero down-time of the server. We can complete all transitions to the virtual servers without interruption to the users.

 Application consistency: Our virtualization approach ensures the users have no change in service or application. To them, the servers look exactly the same as they did before virtualization.

 Army-proven: Because our personnel have already engaged in these same efforts for other Army installations, we know the best approaches for Army-specific applications.  End-to-end: IPNS supports each aspect of this virtualization process. We finish what

we start. We initiate the transition, facilitate the virtualization, work the process through to completion, then support the customer after it is complete.

 Expert: IPNS personnel are experts across all virtualization-type fonts. They know which avenues to take to ensure the customer is given the best solution for the lowest cost.

 Decreased Footprint; Increased Capacity: IPNS understands our customers’ desires to go green by decreasing the power necessary to run their current physical servers. Yet, we know requirements change and capacity must anticipate future needs. Thus, we ensure their virtualization effort provide an increased capacity usually over 50%. We ensure the virtualization approach we provide grants our customers a solution requiring less power, in less server space, for a low cost, with increased capacity.

5.0 CONTACT INFORMATION

Contact

Position

Contact Information

Mark Thomas Director of Business Development [email protected] 703-787-0095, ext. 207