Leaflet

3 © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. EDCS-1263077
Built from the ground up for virtualization
According to the IT team, Cisco UCS was a natural choice. It included built-in support
for VMware, and was unique in its ability to integrate storage, network, and UCS server
resources into a unified whole, managed from a single pane of glass. “When it comes to
data center virtualization, Cisco UCS hits the ball out of the park,” says Broyles. “Overall
the Cisco UCS solution provided us with greater scalability and flexibility as well as the
ability to become more innovative in developing and providing infrastructure solutions
that offer superior value.”
Today, the Cisco UCS servers are virtualized, using VMware ESXi hypervisor and managed
with Cisco Unified Computing System Manager (UCSM), making it fast and easy for the
IT team at MPI Research to divide computing pools into virtual resources for research
studies. Instead of deploying new physical servers, the team can deploy and move UCS
service profiles (software files containing specific server configurations such as storage and
networking characteristics) to available portions of physical server blades.
To streamline management of its virtual environment and optimize performance, MPI
Research is using Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches with the Cisco Nexus 1010
Virtual Services Appliance as part of its comprehensive virtual services platform. The
Cisco Nexus 1000V Series includes the Virtual Ethernet Module (VEM), which is a
software switch embedded in the hypervisor and the Virtual Supervisor Module (VSM)
to manage network policies and quality of service for virtual machines along with VEM.
The Cisco Nexus 1010 delivers several advantages, including the flexibility to manage
policies separate from VMware virtualization administrators, simplifying compliance and
reducing administrative errors.
“Combining Cisco Nexus 1000V switches and the Nexus 1010 Virtual Services appliance
enables us to rapidly deploy new assets and provision resources to keep up with changing
business demands, with no interruption to services,” says Broyles. “The solutions are
integral to enabling our successful virtualization strategy.”
As part of the virtualized environment, a NetApp storage-area network (SAN) and Hitachi
Universal Storage Platform VM (USPV) are virtualized and can be allocated on demand.
And, for general business productivity, MPI Research hosts over 100 Citrix servers for
applications such as Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint.
Results
IT resources ready to use
When clients come to MPI Research, they can be confident that their preclinical studies
will be completed quickly, reliably, and securely. High-performance technical resources
to support studies can be provisioned in the Cisco UCS environment within hours versus
weeks, creating a competitive advantage for MPI Research and its customers. The strong
performance and reliability of Cisco UCS helps ensure that analyses related to studies
are completed quickly and that no gaps occur in service delivery. Because MPI Research
uses virtual machines managed using Cisco UCS, tracking the status of computing
resources for reporting to the FDA and other agencies can be done with ease, without
having to gauge the status of physical servers.
“So far we’ve seen approximately a fourfold boost in performance by using virtualization on
the Cisco UCS hardware when compared to previous physical systems. System monitoring
has verified that overall Application and Operating System responsiveness has more than
tripled,” says Broyles.