A new virtual reality
It’s not too hard to see the theoretical appeal of virtualisation. A typical virtual machine environment brings significantly reduced hardware, energy and space costs – in terms of power and cooling alone, virtual servers are reckoned to be 700-800% more efficient than a traditional server. As well as consolidation, virtualisation can help strengthen operational resilience and data security; expedite the provisioning and scaling of IT resources; enable the rapid deployment of applications; and streamline back-end administration. It also allows IT teams to focus more readily on added-value projects safe in the knowledge that they can still respond quickly to any fluctuating demand in computing resources.
Practical gains
The really good news is that the theory translates brilliantly into practice.
Top 10 law firm Irwin Mitchell recently adopted a server virtualisation strategy based on VMware ESX and NetApp Storage and according to Group IT and Operations Director, Richard Hodkinson, the benefits have been clear to see.“What’s been really impressive is that any one of these advantages would have been hugely impactful on their own. Collectively, they have introduced a whole new dimension and dynamic to the IT function, helping to transform delivery capability, development capacity and departmental cost-base.
Server consolidation – We have housed 143 virtual machines on 11 physical servers, allowing us to eliminate 132 physical servers from the data centre, plus associated hosting, power, cooling and maintenance costs.
Provisioning – On average we have saved 201 days of the provisioning cycle that would have been attributed to hardware lead times and 64 days of resource effort in racking and configuring the servers.
Testing/development – Suitable test environments often need to be created quickly, destroyed and then recreated. The ability to clone servers and data has vastly improved such cycles of development with the ability to create such services in a fraction of the time usually required.
Business continuity – Virtualisation in conjunction with NetApp storage has drastically simplified our testing arrangements such that it will become possible to conduct tests on a more frequent basis. A recent DR test was done using virtual data (cloned), on virtual servers, on a virtual network and represented a fraction of the effort normally associated with replicating systems.
Green issues – The adoption of virtualisation has reduced our energy requirements at the data centre in terms of both power and air conditioning demands. In addition, fewer server requirements also result in less packaging waste, shipping costs etc”
Kicking tin into touch
But typical virtualisation projects still call for protagonists to ‘think and touch tin’ – to justify, fund, configure, house, power and manage the necessary (albeit reduced volume of) hardware. But what if you could kick tin into the cloud? What if virtualisation was available to you in a virtual world, supplied by a very real third party expert in cloud-based services? What if you could have the servers you need exactly when you need them? To increase their numbers instantly? To give them back when you’re done with them. To get them back on-line urgently because circumstances have suddenly changed. In fact, to have an incredibly powerful, high availability server environment to call your own – without the pain of owning it.
Think of it as freedom – freedom to tailor your environment, freedom to control costs, freedom to focus on business priorities. The only thing you’re divesting yourself of is the responsibility for provisioning and powering, managing and monitoring hardware. You take charge of everything else: how many servers you want, their specification, the storage you’re going to require and the on-going state of your hosted resources, be that on-line, off-line, powered down or even deleted.
Moreover, think again of the benefits of virtualisation but this time as if they had been passed through a prism: intensified, concentrated, startlingly bright and clearly compelling.
Hardware costs are reduced to zero as you no longer need your own servers to run your virtual machine(s); gone too is the money spent on housing, powering, maintaining and refreshing it. In terms of accelerating the availability of IT resources, cloud-based virtual servers can be brought on-line via the UK’s only self-provisioning portal – no need for your next virtualisation project to be held up any longer than necessary. We know that virtual servers are ideal for high-availability applications because they are not tied to a single piece of hardware that is subject to failure. But if the location of your in-house virtual servers suddenly experiences a catastrophic event, what then? Maintaining access to those business-critical applications during a disaster scenario is often the difference between a business standing or falling. Put your virtual servers in the cloud and you take redundancy and resilience to a whole new level, leaving you free to focus on your business while your provider deals with continuity of service. As for virtual servers being a more flexible option when it comes to coping with fluctuating demand, again consider how much more flexible it is never to have to worry about your host hardware, but to just tap into someone else’s capacity in the cloud. And what capacity: ultra-scalable, ultra-available, ultra-reliable, and all of it on-demand.
Virtual Hosting Service
So a great idea in theory – but can we have it for real? Put it this way, InTechnology’s new Virtual Hosting Service may be in the cloud but its substance is very tangible indeed.
At the heart of the Virtual Hosting Service is the self-provisioning portal , a secure, intuitive web interface that allows users complete freedom to orchestrate every aspect of their hosted virtual server set-up. They can define the grade and number of virtual machines they want to bring on line; specify storage levels and add capacity at any time; take machines off-line when they are no longer needed; reactivate them when needs dictate; even delete them permanently. This straightforward configuration utility translates into new servers being ready for customer development in less than two hours, and changes to existing servers being made seamlessly in the background.
The on-demand, scalable and variable nature of the Virtual Hosting Service provides an optimum combination for those with changing needs who want to be able to up- or down-shift their IT capability and capacity accordingly. Flexible per server per month pricing helps minimise waste and cost as users can move easily to accurately match resources to requirements – perfect for those companies looking to reduce capital and operational budgets without sacrificing IT growth or impacting user/customer experience. With Virtual Hosting they can:
· Add more servers in times of peak load
· Add more servers to test upgrades or new applications
· Add more servers to test restores or Disaster Recovery policy
· Add more power in times of peak load
· Provision servers ready for the unexpected
· Reduce power in times of low load
· Remove servers in times of low load
The Virtual Hosting Service is very much part of InTechnology’s drive to promote the concept of ‘cloud computing with control’. Users need to be able to take full advantage of all cloud-based services confident in the knowledge that they retain the mastery and management of their environment. Just as clients can control every aspect of their managed back-up or data storage service or their hosted VoIP system, so they can design and drive their virtual server solution. And that’s the key. It’s your virtual solution to do what you like with – with such freedom and flexibility, why would you want to pay and play with your own?
www.intechnology.com | sales@intechnology.com
ED in the ER – treating the e-disclosure case
At the recent IQPC conference, leading consultancy Legal Inc hosted a workshop entitled:
THE ANATOMY OF PRACTICAL DISCLOSURE AND THE BODY OF EVIDENCE
As seasoned litigators will testify, there is often a huge gulf in theoretical best practice and the realities of disclosure on the ground. Using three client case studies, with those clients in attendance, the workshop looked at the key elements of effective disclosure, the challenges at the coal-face, the management of clients, process and technology, all with a view to helping delegates devise consistent and proven methodologies for successful litigation.
Central themes included:
• Information retention/information management – how prepared are law firms and their clients?
• Compliance – what are the issues when providing data to law firms?
• Logistics – how do you cope with huge data volumes efficiently, accurately and cost effectively?
• Legal review – how are practitioners dealing with CPR and disclosure obligations at the coalface?
• Client handling – how do litigators ensure client relationships stay on track?
• Production environments – how can the minefield of paper and/or electronic disclosure best be negotiated?
The session was moderated by Legal Inc’s Andrew Haslam and followed on from the medical analogy by adopting a theme based on the US hospital drama series ER, with each of the speakers adopting a persona from the show.
• Lovells’ Bill Onwusah presented on the “healthy patient”, that is a description of a well planned and executed case and how you go about achieving this. He was representing the young, fresh faced idealistic view of the world and hence was Dr John Carter.
• Vince Neicho from Allan & Overy talked about the “sicker case”, that is how events and individuals can conspire to thwart your well laid plans, and again what do you do about it, and how you can use strategies to try to minimise the impact of these events. A more world weary view of the situation, though still with aim of saving the patient, he was Dr Luka Kovac.
• Bill Sillett of the enforcement division of the Financial Services Authority, took people through the “basket case”, that is organisations or individuals who are not prepared at all for disclosure and the (sometimes fatal) effect this can have upon both their business and their own personal livelihoods. His patients were often desperate cases on the ER table with CPR and resuscitation sometimes failing to bring them back to life, in fact he was Dr Mark Greene.
Bill Onwusah took the delegates through the EDRM model with lots of sound practical advice on how to run a case “in an ideal world”. What came over, was that with planning and the right approach, it was possible to achieve significant savings in both time and money, with the key being early filtering and reduction in the volume of documents. Focusing on the processes on the left hand side of the EDRM model and taking your medicine in the form of control of information management and use of early case assessment tools, could indeed keep the doctor away, or at least make sure his bill was dramatically reduced.
In the real world, Vince Neicho explained the pitfalls that await those individuals and organisations that are not ready for the demands of litigation, fail to communicate with the other side within the spirit of the CPR, or do not take sufficient care with their processes and approach to handing electronic disclosure. Covering some of the same ground as Bill Onwusah, he used various real life anecdotes to show “how not to do it”.
In the final session, Bill Sillett took the audience through the very real dangers that await those foolish enough not to take the FSA seriously. He warned that the regulators are taking a tougher approach, based on targeting individuals rather than organisations. Failure to co-operate can be very expensive, both in terms of financial penalties and in the revocation of licences to trade in certain areas, effectively killing an individual’s ability to work at all. On a brighter side he reinforced the concept that being prepared for an investigation by having the rights tools and service providers in place beforehand can pay off handsomely and sometimes even cause the regulators to go away.
With a final continuation of the ER theme, Andrew Haslam undertook the role of the seasoned practitioner, the expert that could save the day no matter what the overwhelming odds against were, he was indeed Legal Inc’s very own Dr Doug Ross, and that fact he claimed George Clooney as an avatar was merely a reflection of his own ruggedly handsome good looks. (ED: “dream on, Andrew, dream on”).
He summarised the three sessions and then led an interactive debate around a top ten list of points for delegates to take away:
1. A clear, effective and enforced records management policy will save you time and money. This should address not just what you should keep, but what you can safely destroy.
2. When litigation is anticipated, establish an e-disclosure committee and ensure that Legal and IT are represented and talk to each other (whatever the size of the organisation).
3. Use the e-disclosure committee to establish the “who”, “what” and “where” of your data, and how to preserve it if you need to.
4. Collect wide, produce narrow.
5. Agree the keywords or any other searching methodology upfront.
6. Ensure that you properly comply with any obligation to “meet & confer” (or any similar requirement).
7. Don’t be afraid to shop around and to demand aggressive pricing from suppliers.
8. Be aware of the available technology and identify the solution(s) that meet the case’s requirements (it will help, honest).
9. Ensure the legal team are supported with good project management for control and provenance of data.
10. If in doubt, seek professional advice.
There was lively interaction between the speakers and delegates over the various tips, with a number of “real life” questions being posed and answered by all four panel members. After 3 hours there was just time for a quick play of the ER theme tune and it was time to leave the hospital behind and for delegates to begin the rehabilitation process of bringing their information to a fit and healthy state.
