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VMware® Horizon™ Solution Reference Implementation Case Study for ARcare In Its Move to “Virtual Everything,” ARcare Cuts OpEx by 90 Percent and CapEx by 60 Percent While Improving Agility, Security, and the User Experience

T E C H N I C A L W H I T E PA P E R

VMware Horizon Solution Reference Implementation Case Study for ARcare

t e c h n i c a l W h i t e Pa P e R / 2

table of contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

About VMware Reference Implementation

Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

About VMware Horizon with View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

VMware Horizon Solution Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

ARcare Reference Implementation Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Business Drivers, Business Case, and Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Business Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Business Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Business Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Project Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Server Cluster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

View Cluster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

VMware Expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

Lessons Learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Architecture Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Additional Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

About VMware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11



IntroductionThis document provides a reference implementation case study for VMware® Horizon™ with View at ARcare, a private U.S.-based community healthcare company. The case study represents a 250-user environment spread across multiple remote offices and clinics and powered by VMware ESX® hosts.

The intended audience for this document is the technical decision-maker who is considering deploying View across distributed locations. The Business Drivers, Business Case, and Benefits section of this document is also suitable for non-technical decision makers.

The purpose of this document is to illustrate how the technical solution provides tangible business benefits. The document includes an overview of business benefits and cost savings (where possible), an architectural overview, and key configurations that ARcare used to deploy the solution.



About VMware Reference Implementation Case StudiesA reference implementation case study shows how specific customers in a variety of locations and industry verticals have deployed and benefited from VMware Horizon. A reference implementation describes in detail the project approach, architecture, and business benefits at a real customer site, and provides lessons learned for that particular deployment. These implementations are often built on reference architectures validated by VMware.

While a reference implementation is often built on best practices, sometimes tradeoffs are made to meet project requirements or constraints. When a reader references these implementations, it is critical to understand where the architecture has deviated from best practices, and where improvements can be made. This is easily achieved by comparing a reference implementation to reference architecture documentation provided by VMware partners. For further information regarding this and other technical reference architectures, visit VMware Horizon Design resources on the VMware Web site.

This case study is intended to help customers—IT architects, consultants, and administrators—involved in the early phases of planning, design, and deployment of VMware Horizon solutions. The purpose is to provide an example of a successful architecture that represents specific industry vertical challenges met, and the benefits gained from the solution.

About VMware Horizon with ViewVMware Horizon with View is a desktop virtualization solution that simplifies IT manageability and control while delivering the highest fidelity end-user experience across devices and networks. The VMware Horizon solution helps IT organizations automate desktop and application management, reduce costs, and increase data security by centralizing the desktop environment. This centralization results in greater end-user freedom and increased control for IT organizations. By encapsulating the operating systems, applications, and user data into isolated layers, IT organizations can deliver a modern desktop. IT organizations can then deliver dynamic, elastic desktop cloud services such as applications, unified communications, and 3D graphics for real-world productivity and greater business agility.

Unlike other desktop virtualization products, VMware Horizon is built on and tightly integrated with VMware vSphere®, the industry-leading virtualization platform, allowing customers to extend the value of VMware infrastructure and its enterprise-class features such as high availability, disaster recovery, and business continuity.

VMware Horizon delivers important features and enhancements that improve the performance, security, management, and flexibility of virtual desktops.

Support for VMware vSphere 5 leverages the latest functionality of the leading cloud infrastructure platform for highly available, scalable, and reliable desktop services.

For additional details and features available in VMware Horizon, see the release notes.

http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop_virtualization/view/technical-resources.html#Design

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/view_pubs.html



VMware Horizon Solution Components

Typical VMware Horizon with View deployments consist of several common components, shown in Figure 1, which represent a typical architecture. The solution includes VMware Horizon components as well as other components commonly integrated with View.

Local Connection

AndroidTablet

iPad ZeroClient

ThinClient

Windows View Client

Windows View Clientwith Local Mode

Macintosh View Client

Remote Connection

IntermittentNetworkConnection

Private Cloud (vSphere)

ViewClients

vCenter

View Composer

ViewAdministrator

(Browser)

Local Mode Only

Local Mode Only

Local Mode Only

ThinApp Virtualized Application Repository

ParentImage

Linked Clones

For PCoIP Direct Connect

VM

View TransferServer(s)

View ConnectionServer(s)

VM Hypervisors

(ESX)

VMVM

VM

VMVM

VM

View AgentOS

NativeApp ThinAppVirtualAppShortcut to

ThinAppVirtual App

Internal Network External Network

View SecurityServer(s)

MS ActiveDirectory

Figure 1: Horizon Solution Components .



ARcare Reference Implementation OverviewARcare is a private non-profit healthcare provider serving residents of Arkansas and Kentucky. Driven by its mission “Health for All,” the company focuses on delivering affordable primary medical and dental care through a broad range of customer health, community health, employee health, and organizational health services.

A primary goal of ARcare is to extend its services to a fast-growing network of primary care clinics, dental clinics, pharmacies, and wellness centers known as “Healthcare Home.” As part of this effort, ARcare has been looking for innovative new ways to deliver more high-quality services to more constituents in less time and for less money. The company has found VMware to be a valuable and trusted advisor in this effort. This paper describes how the use of virtualization technologies and techniques—in particular VMware Horizon with View—has helped ARcare achieve its ambitious vision to be a national leader of community health centers.

Business Drivers, Business Case, and BenefitsSeveral years ago, ARcare faced an enviable dilemma: Surging demand for the company’s service offerings had helped fuel rapid growth, but the accelerating pace of growth was putting a strain on its core service-delivery infrastructure and leading to unexpectedly high CapEx and OpEx costs. In addition, the company needed to expand the geographical reach of its services, both within and outside of Arkansas.

As a result, ARcare needed an innovative yet reliable, secure, quick, and inexpensive way to extend its service offerings to the desktops of new users in remote clinics and additional branch offices. The company found an answer in virtualization—specifically virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)—and it found a reliable, trustworthy partner in VMware.

Business Drivers

Faced with rapid growth and an increasingly distributed end-user constituency, ARcare had an urgent need to streamline service delivery while also bringing down CapEx and OpEx. Specifically, the company had the following requirements:

•Neededtopushoutmoreservicestomoreusersinmoreplaces—atalowertotalcost

•Aconsistentlyhigh-quality,predictableend-userexperiencewasanabsoluterequirement

•Compliancewithallrelevantregulationsandmandateshadtobemaintained

•NeededaVDIsolutionthatwasfastandeasytodeploy,requiringminimalstaffinvolvement

•Currentsecuritylevelshadtobemaintainedorincreasedbyanynewsolutionsortechnologies

Business Case

ARcare decided to begin the process of virtualizing datacenter resources back in 2009. “At that time, we were growing by leaps and bounds, and costs were beginning to get out of hand,” said Greg Wolverton, CIO at ARcare. “We kept adding servers, then adding more servers, so both CapEx and OpEx were growing faster than expected as we tried to integrate and manage all of the various servers, switches, and storage systems,” he said.

“At the same time there was an endpoint explosion, with lots of new users and demands for ever-increasing numbers of services from their desktops. It was clear we needed a better solution, and we believed virtualization was at least a starting point.”



Wolverton made the decision to transform ARcare into a showcase for the business value of virtualization. “As a company, our mission is to make high-quality healthcare affordable to everyone. So as an IT organization, we needed to make high-quality, inexpensive service delivery a core capability and a differentiator. Some would call that business-IT alignment; we simple refer to it as an extension of our values.”

Business Benefits

Today, ARcare has transitioned from no virtualization at all to a 95 percent virtualized environment. In the process, it has achieved:

• Exceptional cost savings – CapEx reduction of 60 percent and OpEx reduction of 90 percent. Because most systems can be virtualized, there is no longer a need to purchase special laptops to deliver healthcare applications, and end-user administration tasks are fewer and faster to resolve.

•Increased agility – End-user desktops can now be deployed in less than 30 minutes with minimal administrative effort. All that’s needed is an Internet connection—no more driving and physical provisioning.

•Higher end-user satisfaction – The user experience is now consistent—and consistently high-quality—across locations, devices, and applications.

•Stronger security – With VMware solutions the ARcare Security Department can manage security according to its policies and priorities, and at the same time the IT department’s policies are kept in place, so compliance with HIPAA and other federal regulations are completely assured.

•Peace of mind – The new virtualized environment is based on proven technology and backed by support from VMware, the virtualization leader.

Project OverviewARcare began its journey to a “virtual everything” environment in 2009, working closely with VMware. One of the first objectives was to update the previous environment by virtualizing primary elements of the infrastructure, including servers, switches, and storage equipment.

The company has now implemented a total of 13 VMware ESX hosts in production, split into 2 clusters:

Server Cluster

•3HPProLiantDL380pG8bladeservers

•34virtualserversinproductioninthiscluster,withamixedenvironmentofWindowsServer2008R2,2012R2,andUbuntuLinux12.04hostingavarietyofapplicationsincluding:

- View

- Dynamics GP 2010

- Microsoft SharePoint

- Dentrix (dental record and imaging software)

- EHS (medical record software)

- ShoreTel

- Spiceworks (help desk ticketing system)

- A variety of Web services under IIS and Apache



View Cluster

•10total(mixofProLiantDL380G5,DL360G5,andDL360G6bladeservers)

•Licensingforupto250virtualmachines,withabout180inproduction,including:

- Windows 7

-CustomdeploymentOSimagesforworkstationsusingWindows7andUbuntuLinux13.10

Storage for the ARcare VDI implementation is provided by a Pure Storage solution composed of two controllers and one 5.5TB storage shelf. Pure Storage compresses ARcare’s 12TB of production data down to roughly 2TB. Both the hosts and the storage array are connected to their own switches and then brought to the ARcare core switch. Public connectivity is brought in through the ARcare firewall.

EachbranchsiteisconnectedbacktoARcare’scoreinfrastructurethroughaVPNforcompliancemeasures.Users access services through the View Connection Server as well as some Microsoft RemoteApp sessions. End users that fall outside of ARcare branch sites access View through a security server hosted at view.arcare.net.

The rapid growth of the company placed some unique demands of IT staff. At one point, ARcare needed to push out virtual desktops to 16 new locations in a period of just two weeks—a timeframe that was simply unheard of. Even the State of Arkansas Department of Health officials didn’t believe it could be done in that short a time period. However, thanks in part to the simplicity of View and advice and support from VMware, the ARcare IT team was able to accomplish the feat—without compromising performance, security, or the consistency of the end-user desktop experience.

VMware Expertise

One of the key advantages of the View solution, according to Mr. Wolverton, was the fact that a professional services engagement was not required to enable ARcare’s talented IT staff to implement it properly.

“We have a staff of just four technicians to operate, monitor, and manage this entire implementation,” said Mr. Wolverton. “We value VMware’s expertise, but part of the OpEx advantage of the VMware solution is that our small staff can work with this technology without hundreds of hours of training and without requiring extensive knowledge transfer from consultants,” he said.

“We have been able to deploy and use this solution effectively while actually cutting the total amount of administrative overhead substantially,” Wolverton continued. “With that said, however, we appreciate the level of support we have received from VMware. When issues arise, we get the information or guidance we need to resolve it quickly. That has given us the confidence—and the capability—to meet our expansion goals and needs. It has been a great relationship, and it has helped make us very successful and productive.”



Lessons LearnedAccording to Mr. Wolverton and ARcare Knowledge Management Systems Director Adam Ausburn, the journey to virtualization and IT as a service (ITaaS) can fully deliver on its promise if a few simple guidelines are followed:

•Focus on reducing costs first – Terms such as “IT transformation” and “business transformation” are in vogue today, but all too often companies are neglecting short-term wins such as CapEx and OpEx reduction in favor of loftier “metamorphosis” goals. Quick and substantial cost reduction can prove the business case for additional advancements in capabilities and pave the way to more broad-based transformation strategies.

•Make sure your servers and storage systems are up to the task – If your core systems are underpowered or under-resourced for the performance and scalability you’ll need, you’re in for a rocky road. Make sure they can accommodate the increased load you have planned for them—and even unexpected surges or spikes in demand—so that end-user desktop applications perform as expected, with no additional latency or risks of outages. It pays to spend time upfront making sure the hardware is capable of doing what your transformation strategy calls for it to do.

• Stay open to new advances – It’s important to keep abreast of new developments in virtualization technology or specific features that you may want to take advantage of—and make sure you’ll be able to exploit them when you want to. For example, you may want to leverage new features such as USB redirection to deepen your security defenses, or take advantage of end-user personas or zero-client configurations. Stay in touch with your vendors and partners and keep your options open.

•Keep your licensing up to date – It’s easy to lose track of the status of your licenses, but don’t—especially if you’re in a high-growth period. You need to “rightsize” your licenses—not too many so that you’re paying too much, but not too few so that there are issues when you need to expand quickly.

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Architecture OverviewThediagrambelowencapsulatestheenvironmentdeployedbyARcare.Atotalof34virtualhostsareinproduction with support for up to 250 View virtual desktops; 13 VMware ESX hosts support the server cluster and View clusters. Storage is provided by a Pure Storage array with two controllers and one 5.5TB storage shelf. Both the hosts and the storage array are connected to their own switches and then brought to the ARcare core switch. Public connectivity is brought in through the ARcare firewall.

Server34 Servers

View250 VMs

Storage Array2 Controlers1 Storage Shelf

VMware Guest

VPN

Storage

ServerCluster3 ESX Hosts

ViewCluster10 ESX Hosts

ESXSwitch

Storage Switch

Firewall

CoreSwitch

Internet

VMware Bridge

Branch Sites

Figure 2: ARcare Architecture Overview

VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.comCopyright © 2014 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 athttp://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. Item No: VMW-TWP-SOLREFIMPLEMARCARE-USLET-20140401-WEB


ConclusionBy committing to a long-term plan focused on cost reduction and improved service delivery, and by selecting VMware to provide technology and guidance, ARcare is succeeding in its goal of becoming a national leader in affordable, community-based healthcare services.

With 95 percent of its environment virtualized, including end-user desktops, the company has achieved truly remarkable business results, including:

•CapExreductionof60percentandOpExreductionof90percent

•Fast,painlessdeploymentofend-userdesktops

•Higherend-usersatisfactionduetoamoreconsistent—andconsistentlyhigh-quality—experience

•TightersecurityandcompliancewithHIPAAandotherfederalregulations

•PeaceofmindthroughreliabletechnologyandsupportfromVMware

ReferencesVMware Horizon with View

VMware vSphere

View Technical Resources

View Documentation

VMware vSphere Documentation

Additional ResourcesFormoreinformationortopurchaseVMwareproducts,call1-877-4VMWARE(outsideNorthAmericadial+1-650-427-5000),orvisitwww.vmware.com/products, or search online for an authorized reseller. For detailed product specifications and system requirements, please refer to the View documentation.

About VMwareVMware, the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, delivers customer-proven solutions that accelerate IT by reducing complexity and enabling more flexible, agile service delivery. VMware enables enterprises to adopt a cloud model that addresses their unique business challenges. VMware’s approach accelerates the transition to cloud computing while preserving existing investments and improving security and control. With more than 250,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware solutions help organizations of all sizes lower costs, increase business agility and ensure freedom of choice.

http://www.vmware.com/products/view/

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/

http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop_virtualization/view/technical-resources.html


http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-pubs.html

http://www.vmware.com/products


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