MINET

Story Details

When the cities of Monmouth and Independence, Oregon, learned that its residents and businesses would not have broadband services until 2015 or later, the cities founded Monmouth Independence Network (MINET). Run by just 12 employees, the company initially provided high-speed Internet, cable, and VoIP phone services to the area over a fiber-optic ring. By the end of 2007, however, MINET needed to expand its IT architecture to support more customers. In addition, the company wanted to make use of underutilized network bandwidth to offer additional services and increase revenue.

MINET worked with Six Degrees Consulting to architect new offerings that include virtual desktops, virtual PBX systems, mobile VoIP extensions, data backup, and disaster recovery. Managed by MINET personnel at a central datacenter, the new services facilitate a utility computing model: rather than investing in IT infrastructure, customers can subscribe to services and pay only for the IT components that they use. As a result, subscribers can gain greater control over their costs, enhance IT reliability, and increase productivity by accessing phone extensions and high-performance desktops from multiple locations and devices.

Already a user of Sun technologies, MINET chose to expand its infrastructure with Sun hardware and software. Along with a small footprint and low power requirements, Sun hardware delivers features such as chip multithreading (CMT), solid-state drives with flash memory, and virtualization with Logical Domains (LDoms). “We demand a lot of horsepower here, and I’m impressed with the performance of our Sun gear, certainly compared with competing vendors,” notes Phil Garrett, general manager at MINET. The company also chose to standardize on the Solaris 10 Operating System for its performance and built-in features such as bare metal recovery, the ZFS file system, and virtualization with Solaris Containers.

In just 10 weeks, the equivalent of three full-time employees from MINET and Six Degrees Consulting implemented the new solution. Virtual PBX capabilities are provided by three Sun Fire X4150 servers that run the Mitel Unified IP Client for Sun Ray Software. Virtual desktops, managed by Sun Secure Global Desktop Software, run on virtual servers set up with Solaris Containers or LDoms. All virtual environments reside on a mix of 24 Sun Blade X6250 Server Modules and Sun Blade T6320 Server Modules, which are housed in a Sun Blade 6048 Chassis.

All of the company’s services, including the new data backup offerings, rely on a multi-tiered, Open Storage solution. A Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server uses CMT to simultaneously process storage requests. One Sun StorageTek 6540 array serves as a redundant controller. Data that is often accessed by services is stored on one Sun Fire X4540 server. Data that is not often accessed resides on two Sun Storage J4500 arrays. Solaris ZFS gives IT personnel the ability to manage the various storage components as a single storage pool — and change components as needed without affecting availability.

Fully deployed in April 2008, the new architecture provides 99.99% availability or higher. Virtual environments, Sun blade server modules, Solaris ZFS, and the Open Storage solution also simplify the provisioning and modification of customer services and system administration. This helps to fuel a 10% growth in customers each month and to maintain the employee headcount at just 12 people.

Administrators setup virtual desktops in minutes using clones or golden images, which serve as template desktop environments. Customers can securely access their virtual desktops — running Windows, the Solaris OS, or Linux — from any browser (with optional SSL tunneling) using a Sun Ray thin client or a PC.

The solution’s small footprint and energy requirements have also helped MINET save 25% annually on power, cooling, and space requirements. “Our large power and cooling savings translates into more than just money savings,” explains Garrett. “It also gives us more space that we can use to sell more services and generate additional revenue.” For example, MINET will soon offer video surveillance services and expand its service area to incorporate the state of Oregon. “Sun technologies deliver a lot of bang for the buck,” notes Garrett. “Through virtualization with Solaris Containers and LDoms, we can support a lot of services using a minimal amount of equipment. It’s fair to say that we will realize a complete return on investment in 12–36 months.”