Accounting Firm Gets More Competitive with Virtualization
An accounting firm in Los Angeles started having issue with its servers when it started to add applications. Virtualization helped solve that problem.Further, it helped the firm, Lodgen, Lacher, Golditch, Sardi, Saunders, & Howard, LLP (LLGSSH CPA), to be more competitive with other accounting firms.
Content
indusTrY
ProFeSSIonAL SerVICeS
I
HIGHLIGHTS
CHALLENGE
Physical IT infrastructure hinders growth of small firm
Customer Snapshot
“A marginal investment in VMware technology can result in huge gains in terms of productivity or competitive advantage—and having Intel technology helps ensure that you can get the most out of the investment you make.”
IT Manager, Lodgen, Lacher, Golditch, Sardi, Saunders, & Howard, LLP
Scott Goldman
CPA Firm Finds ThAT The numbers Add uP wiTh VirTuAlizATion
Lodgen, Lacher, Golditch, Sardi, Saunders, & Howard, LLP (LLGSSH CPA) is a Los Angeles-based CPA firm with 60 employees. To support its operations, the firm had historically relied on physical servers to host its critical accounting applications and Windows-based infrastructure. Unfortunately, the firm reached a point where new applications were creating conflicts with applications already on the server. “As a small to midsized business, we don’t have unlimited resources,” says Scott Goldman, IT Manager at LLGSSH CPA. “We can’t have a physical server for each application.” Virtualization provided an effective way for LLGSSH CPA to tackle this challenge. The firm deployed VMware vSphere 4—the most trusted and reliable virtualization platform in the industry—onto servers with the latest Intel Xeon processors. “I like how Intel has integrated and enabled features within their chipset to work with VMware technology,” says Goldman. “For example, I can use enhanced VMware VMotion to livemigrate machines amongst different physical boxes—even if they have different generations of Intel CPUs.” Having a virtual infrastructure in place has enabled LLGSSH to quickly and easily provision dedicated Windows servers for new accounting applications, eliminating potential system conflicts and simplifying IT administration. “With virtualization, we are able to better compete against other CPA firms by deploying servers and additional services that we otherwise would not have been able to,” concludes Goldman.
SOLUTION
VMware® and Intel® technology creates a scalable IT platform that simplifies IT administration and improves availability of critical applications
VMWARE AND INTEL AT WORK
VMware vSphere 4, featuring: ™ • VMware eSX Server ° Dell 2950 servers with Intel Xeon 5300 and 5400 processors attached to a Dell MD3000i SAn
• • •
VMware VirtualCenter 4.0 VMware VMotion™ VMware Distributed resource Scheduler (DrS) VMware High Availability (HA)
•
DEPLOYMENT ENVIRONMENT
•
Guest operating systems: Windows 2003, Windows 2008 Virtualized Applications: SQL Server 2005, Microsoft exchange 2007, QuickBooks, Quicken, Blackberry enterprise Server, Prosystem fx Tax, Prosystem fx engagement, Prosystem fx Practice, Multiple versions of QuickBooks and Quicken, multiple tax applications, DnS, DHCP, domain controllers
•
RESULTS
Provide greater reliability for business-critical applications. “We’re an accounting firm—if we don’t have access to our applications, our accountants can’t do their work,” says Goldman. “It’s reassuring to know that features like VMware High Availability, VMware Distributed resource Scheduler, and VMware vMotion can work across all of our Intel-based machines.” Avoid $10k in storage costs. “The new Thin Provisioning feature of vSphere ensures that our virtual machines only take up as much storage space as they actually need,” says Goldman. “That has allowed us to defer a $10,000 SAn purchase for the time being.” Save tens of thousands of dollars in server costs. “We estimate $7000 in savings for each Windows 2003 instance deployed as a virtual machine instead of a physical box,” says Goldman. “And the power in Intel’s processors means that we can keep on adding virtual machines onto our VMware eSX hypervisors and still get all the performance we need out of our applications.”
Copyright © 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
The Foundation of Virtualization
ProFeSSIonAL SerVICeS
I
HIGHLIGHTS
CHALLENGE
Physical IT infrastructure hinders growth of small firm
Customer Snapshot
“A marginal investment in VMware technology can result in huge gains in terms of productivity or competitive advantage—and having Intel technology helps ensure that you can get the most out of the investment you make.”
IT Manager, Lodgen, Lacher, Golditch, Sardi, Saunders, & Howard, LLP
Scott Goldman
CPA Firm Finds ThAT The numbers Add uP wiTh VirTuAlizATion
Lodgen, Lacher, Golditch, Sardi, Saunders, & Howard, LLP (LLGSSH CPA) is a Los Angeles-based CPA firm with 60 employees. To support its operations, the firm had historically relied on physical servers to host its critical accounting applications and Windows-based infrastructure. Unfortunately, the firm reached a point where new applications were creating conflicts with applications already on the server. “As a small to midsized business, we don’t have unlimited resources,” says Scott Goldman, IT Manager at LLGSSH CPA. “We can’t have a physical server for each application.” Virtualization provided an effective way for LLGSSH CPA to tackle this challenge. The firm deployed VMware vSphere 4—the most trusted and reliable virtualization platform in the industry—onto servers with the latest Intel Xeon processors. “I like how Intel has integrated and enabled features within their chipset to work with VMware technology,” says Goldman. “For example, I can use enhanced VMware VMotion to livemigrate machines amongst different physical boxes—even if they have different generations of Intel CPUs.” Having a virtual infrastructure in place has enabled LLGSSH to quickly and easily provision dedicated Windows servers for new accounting applications, eliminating potential system conflicts and simplifying IT administration. “With virtualization, we are able to better compete against other CPA firms by deploying servers and additional services that we otherwise would not have been able to,” concludes Goldman.
SOLUTION
VMware® and Intel® technology creates a scalable IT platform that simplifies IT administration and improves availability of critical applications
VMWARE AND INTEL AT WORK
VMware vSphere 4, featuring: ™ • VMware eSX Server ° Dell 2950 servers with Intel Xeon 5300 and 5400 processors attached to a Dell MD3000i SAn
• • •
VMware VirtualCenter 4.0 VMware VMotion™ VMware Distributed resource Scheduler (DrS) VMware High Availability (HA)
•
DEPLOYMENT ENVIRONMENT
•
Guest operating systems: Windows 2003, Windows 2008 Virtualized Applications: SQL Server 2005, Microsoft exchange 2007, QuickBooks, Quicken, Blackberry enterprise Server, Prosystem fx Tax, Prosystem fx engagement, Prosystem fx Practice, Multiple versions of QuickBooks and Quicken, multiple tax applications, DnS, DHCP, domain controllers
•
RESULTS
Provide greater reliability for business-critical applications. “We’re an accounting firm—if we don’t have access to our applications, our accountants can’t do their work,” says Goldman. “It’s reassuring to know that features like VMware High Availability, VMware Distributed resource Scheduler, and VMware vMotion can work across all of our Intel-based machines.” Avoid $10k in storage costs. “The new Thin Provisioning feature of vSphere ensures that our virtual machines only take up as much storage space as they actually need,” says Goldman. “That has allowed us to defer a $10,000 SAn purchase for the time being.” Save tens of thousands of dollars in server costs. “We estimate $7000 in savings for each Windows 2003 instance deployed as a virtual machine instead of a physical box,” says Goldman. “And the power in Intel’s processors means that we can keep on adding virtual machines onto our VMware eSX hypervisors and still get all the performance we need out of our applications.”
Copyright © 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
The Foundation of Virtualization
