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NSMS Virtualisation Services

Virtualisation Services

This is a service designed to assist University units in the virtualisation of their IT infrastructure using the VMware ESX operating system. The service is designed to be modular in what it offers, being based around a three stage process with a three tiered solution.

The three stages of the process are:
  • Planning
  • Implementation (hosted or h/w solutions)
  • Maintenance
and the three tiers of solutions are:
  • Bronze : (typically suitable for a project, section team or small research unit; 1 - 10 servers)
  • Silver : (typically for a small department, college or sub faculty; 10 - 50 servers or small VDI implementation)
  • Gold: (ideal for a large department, college or faculty unit; 50+ servers or large VDI implementation)

Stage 1: Planning

The three tiers of the planning process are as follows:
  • Bronze: The NSMS consultancy team will assess the current infrastructure and produce a report recommending which implementation modules are appropriate. A full report containing all options and detailed finding will be provided.
  • Silver : NSMS consultancy team will assess the current infrastructure, provide detailed capacity analysis and produce a report recommending which implementation modules are appropriate. A full report containing all options and detailed findings will be provided.
  • Gold : NSMS consultancy team will assess the current infrastructure, provide detailed capacity analysis using Vmware Professional Services if applicable and produce a report recommending which implementation modules are appropriate. A full report containing all options and detailed findings will be provided.

Stage 2: Implementation – Hosted

Each option (Bronze, Silver, Gold) can be purchased as a Hosted solution running on NSMS equipment, so no hardware purchase is necessary.

  • Bronze: Typically non critical services so hosted on lower spec, less resilient hardware platform.
  • Silver: Highly resilient VMs with typically smaller, 1 virtual CPU systems, around 512MB ram.
  • Gold: Highly resilient VMs with full larger scale VMs, SMP vCPUs (max 2 vCPU) - 1GB RAM or more.

It is expected that most people will fall into the silver category.

Stage 2: Implementation – Hardware Solutions

  • Bronze: twin ESX 3i Appliances and shared iSCSI storage.
  • Silver: 3-5 ESX 3i Appliances and Fibre Channel storage.
  • Gold: 6+ ESX 3i Appliances and Fibre Channel storage.

Stage 3: Maintenance – Hosted

  • Bronze: Self management of VM, no NSMS support included, all support charges per hour.
  • Silver: Monitoring cover, proactive monitoring and critical patching/updates.
  • Gold: Fully comprehensive server management.

Stage 3 : Maintenance – Hardware Solutions

  • Bronze: Essential update management to ESX and storage infrastructure.
  • Silver: As Bronze plus proactive monitoring and management of ESX and storage.
  • Gold: As Silver, plus full management.

Building Solutions from Modules

  • Users of the service can purchase modules of different sizes for different phases – for example, a small team may only need Bronze modules for stage 1 & 2 but go for Gold modules for stage 3.
  • Extra support or consultancy can be bought by the hour or using support packs at any stage in the process. If more appropriate however, NSMS will move up (or down) a module to provide the additional resources.