Информационное Руководство для Cisco Cisco Nexus 5010 Switch
Groupe Agrica Rises to Challenge of Data Centre
Virtualisation
Virtualisation
Groupe Agrica, the French insurance conglomerate, has deployed Cisco® Nexus 1000V
and 5000 Series Switches to virtualise its infrastructure, and this change has been met
with high business user satisfaction.
and 5000 Series Switches to virtualise its infrastructure, and this change has been met
with high business user satisfaction.
Virtualising the data centre with VMware brings many benefits, but it also brings new challenges
involving how organizations design and manage their network and security teams. If not properly
configured virtualisation can place strains on the network, even if server administrators see gains in
server capacity optimisation. In the case of Groupe Agrica, the deployment of a suite of Cisco Nexus
virtual switches, combined with VMware vSphere management tools, facilitated cooperation between
server and networking teams and resolved challenges arising from this infrastructure consolidation
project. Groupe Agrica manages retirement, injury, health care, and savings plans for employees in
the agricultural sector. When the group decided to consolidate the IT infrastructure three years ago,
VMware, the market leader, was the natural choice. Today 99 percent of the group’s servers, critical
and noncritical, are virtualised on the VMware vSphere platform. Two hundred virtual machines (200
VM servers running on 20 ESX version 4) support applications including Oracle, Business Objects,
or Lotus Domino. But for the network engineers, the server infrastructure was just so many
undifferentiated black boxes.
involving how organizations design and manage their network and security teams. If not properly
configured virtualisation can place strains on the network, even if server administrators see gains in
server capacity optimisation. In the case of Groupe Agrica, the deployment of a suite of Cisco Nexus
virtual switches, combined with VMware vSphere management tools, facilitated cooperation between
server and networking teams and resolved challenges arising from this infrastructure consolidation
project. Groupe Agrica manages retirement, injury, health care, and savings plans for employees in
the agricultural sector. When the group decided to consolidate the IT infrastructure three years ago,
VMware, the market leader, was the natural choice. Today 99 percent of the group’s servers, critical
and noncritical, are virtualised on the VMware vSphere platform. Two hundred virtual machines (200
VM servers running on 20 ESX version 4) support applications including Oracle, Business Objects,
or Lotus Domino. But for the network engineers, the server infrastructure was just so many
undifferentiated black boxes.
Roles and Responsibility Challenge, Not Technical Challenge
In a classical data centre, when a physical server is installed it is connected to a known physical port
on a switch, and the network administrator configures the appropriate policies: VLAN membership,
traffic shaping, I/O filtering, network addresses, etc. In a virtualised data centre, everything changes.
Network switches cannot be configured with individual policies for each virtual machine; network
administrators can only see to the underlying physical platform, the server. Also, for all the benefits
that vMotion brings to the data centre, it complicates the job of the network engineer as applications
migrate across physical ports. Server virtualisation is a serious challenge for the network
administrator. According to Julien Mousqueton, network designer with Groupe Agrica, “It was worse
than that. Certain network parameters were being configured on the server by system administrators,
and were no longer under the control of the networking team.” In designing Groupe Agrica’s new
virtualised data centre, the principal challenge was an operational and people challenge. Several
cross-functional meetings were needed to define the roles and authority of each team, and to
demonstrate the advantages of a new virtualised architecture. The time spent proved to be essential
to the success of the project.
on a switch, and the network administrator configures the appropriate policies: VLAN membership,
traffic shaping, I/O filtering, network addresses, etc. In a virtualised data centre, everything changes.
Network switches cannot be configured with individual policies for each virtual machine; network
administrators can only see to the underlying physical platform, the server. Also, for all the benefits
that vMotion brings to the data centre, it complicates the job of the network engineer as applications
migrate across physical ports. Server virtualisation is a serious challenge for the network
administrator. According to Julien Mousqueton, network designer with Groupe Agrica, “It was worse
than that. Certain network parameters were being configured on the server by system administrators,
and were no longer under the control of the networking team.” In designing Groupe Agrica’s new
virtualised data centre, the principal challenge was an operational and people challenge. Several
cross-functional meetings were needed to define the roles and authority of each team, and to
demonstrate the advantages of a new virtualised architecture. The time spent proved to be essential
to the success of the project.
Groupe A
HQ : Paris
Number of employees : 850
Project Name: Nexus Project
Project Manager : Julien
Mousqueton, System and
Network Architect
Mousqueton, System and
Network Architect
Servers : 200 virtual servers,
20 ESX hosts (physical
servers)
20 ESX hosts (physical
servers)
Percent virtualized : 99%
Result : 50% Reduction in
physical DMZ servers after
implementing Nexus 1000V
and vSphere Enterprise Plus.
physical DMZ servers after
implementing Nexus 1000V
and vSphere Enterprise Plus.
Groupe Agrica