VMware and Documentum eRoom - or "how EMC saved $1.5M"

I've noted before how EMC uses VMware widely - there are more than 3000 ESX servers in use in various places, so it's not uncommon to hear great stories about how we save money.  This one was a nice one.

The full EMC Documentum suite works great on VMware (you only can't virtualize the FAST index server - and that's because of a weird Microsoft thing that's getting resolved, but that's only one server of many).   EMC Documentum is really a broad set of stuff, one part of which is called eRoom, which is analagous to how most people use Sharepoint - document storage and collaboration.   FYI, we use both Sharepoint and EMC Documentum internally.

I was happy to hear we run the whole deal on VMware Infrastructure.   Read the write up if you want the details, but here are some highlights...

1) the usual CapEx reasons (more important these days than ever!)

"Eliminated additional $1.5 milliion from planned budget expenditures and reigned in ongoing hardware and associated costs"

2) the normal "hey look at all this unexpected operational flexibility upside" reasons

"...several fail-overs have already been handled by VMware - the entire process only took a few minutes and the eRoom users never noticed a disruption.   In the past, such a failover would have significantly impacted users and produced longer down times."

3) the always fun "wow - performance is good.   WOW - really good!".    Everyone always is worried about this, almost always incorrectly.   Higher utilization can also be expressed as higher efficiency, which for some workloads has an effect of getting MORE on the same hardware (i.e. in this case we could have more front-ends).

"the final performance results acheived were significantly greater than expected.  Users were both pleased and astounded with the increased performancel eRoom activities such as site access, opening stored content, and saving files, are now instantaneous.   Response delays have been eliminated, yet the virtual site configuration is nearly identical to the original physical hardware configuration."

In the end, this one says it all....

 

So... You aren't virtualizing application ______   because of.... ?

Comments

[Craig Waters]

Hi again Chad, You helped me previously with getting to the truth in regard to EMC solutions. Can I please ask for your help again?

Our business uses Documentum and we are in the process of virtualising, but as yet I've been unable to get someone at EMC Australia to give real technical details regarding why it the FAST index server cannot be virtualised beyond "...it's not supported..".

I (and the business I work for) would be really grateful if you could provide some technical detail regarding the "..weird Microsoft thing that's getting resolved.." and prehaps a timeframe for its resolution?

Thanks again in advance for cutting through the EMC red tape Chad!

[Jayadeep Purushothaman]

While I am not contesting the savings due to virtualization, may be another way to look at cost savings is to see if you really need a beast like documentum to serve your needs. My experience with it at one large corporation was that it was unusable and users silently shifted to other tools - wiki or sharepoint. They couldn't make it scale for some reason and it died a natural death. My point is, while virtualization sure helps, you really need to dig deeper and make things simpler to save costs.

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Jayadeep -- a very interesting comment, and not at all unusual.

One of my roles at EMC is sheparding our overall "2.0" social media strategy. I've written a blog on the subject which has enjoyed a modicum of popularity over at http://chucksblog.emc.com/a_journey_in_social_media

You may find it interesting as well.

One of the posts has a link to an extended white paper explaining our overall internal strategy regarding tools and platforms that we need to use to drive our business forward.

Simply put, we see a need -- and will continue to see a need -- for all three: Sharepoint for ad-hoc file-oriented collaboration, wikis (actually a complete internal social media portal known as EMC|ONE) as well as extensive use of Documentum as the information management glue that ties multiple information sources together into a single asset that can be managed, shared, protected, archived, searched, etc.

Some of the posts in the blog explain the reason why we probably won't be the only company in the world that ends up doing much of the same thing.

Finally, when it comes to productivity tools, the goal is not so much to save money, but to make money. And some times making money requires more than one tool, and not only the cheapest one.

Best regards!

[ariellle]

Hi

Like Craig Waters asked, can you explain more about "the weird Microsoft thing that's getting resolved" you noticed in your article?
Thanks

[B]

Hi,
I would also be very interested to understand what the weird microsoft thing which is being resolved is. Deployment of NAS in our environment is really a non starter for various reasons and its holding back our deployment of the FAST index server.