Partner Feature

June 2008 - When Sun and VMware announced their OEM agreement in February, 2008, Bill Calderwood, president of Sun reseller, The Root Group, was already on board–since the spring of 2007, in fact. The Colorado-based Sun partner is certified for VMware ESX, and brings along its expertise and experience implementing integrated Linux and Windows applications executing in virtualized environments, on Sun Blade 6000 Modular Systems.

The Root Group Goes to Market

The resulting integrated virtualization offering from The Root Group boosts server performance, improves asset utilization and operational efficiency, and reduces overall cost of ownership for Calderwood's customers by:

• Maximizing IT Investment with the Sun Blade Architecture: According to Calderwood, one of the major benefits to data center managers of the Sun Blade architecture is its flexibility: the ability to run Linux, Windows, Solaris, and VMware on single and multi-core processors made by Sun, AMD, and Intel – all in one chassis. This cross-platform capability, says Calderwood, permits customers to preserve their investments in applications and operating environments, even as they save with server consolidation. Another thing Calderwood likes about the Sun Blade architecture is that "Sun allows you to put in standard, off-the-shelf components. With some of the other blade architectures, you have to buy the vendors' components," he says. Calderwood is also enthusiastic about the horsepower the Sun Blade 6000 Family offers his customers. Generating up to 7 TFLOPS of peak performance per rack, according to Sun, the Sun Blade 6000 System is designed to provide all the number- and data-crunching power IT managers are looking for.
  
  
• Saving with Green Technology: The Root Group's virtualization offering appeals to the growing number of data center managers seeking to cut costs with "green" computing technology. "The design of Sun's system is very efficient, very eco-friendly," says Calderwood. "Instead of having to maintain 20 underutilized servers, virtualization on a Sun Blade System enables us to do everything on one or two maximized servers…So you're gaining the benefits of a smaller footprint, together with dramatically lower energy and cooling costs." This latter point is increasingly important as "the energy costs over the life of a typical server have come to exceed the costs of system procurement," Calderwood emphasizes.
  
  
• Reducing Administrative Overhead: The Root Group's Sun/VMware solution permits data centers to cut their labor costs, as well. In a consolidated, virtualized environment, says Calderwood, "you can easily administer the equivalent of tens of servers. So you're not only saving on data center real estate and cutting energy costs, you're also reducing your administrative and maintenance costs."
  
  

Other providers in Calderwood's market were beginning to provide virtualization on Dell and HP platforms, he says. But, by offering a solution based on the Sun Blade 6000 System and VMware ESX, The Root Group gives its IT customers the power to consolidate, virtualize, and streamline their multi-platform server infrastructures, so they can reduce costs, improve manageability, and deliver predictable service levels–with greater eco-efficiency, flexibility, and performance than that afforded by competing platforms.

What Sparked This Idea?

The genesis of the company's decision to bring to market a Sun/VMware virtualization offering stemmed in no small part from Root Group Account Manager Steve Cannon's experience selling VMware prior to joining the Boulder-based Sun reseller. The choice of the server platform centered around the company's long experience with Sun solutions; The Root Group, founded in 1989, has been a Sun partner since 1994. "Our system engineers liked the Sun Blade 6000's eco-friendliness, openness, and scalability," says Calderwood. Sun's ability to manage multiple, distributed virtual environments, built on open standards, is also a consideration for the future, he says.

The Root Group has enjoyed significant success in the field with its virtualization solutions. Recently, the Sun partner helped one of its clients, an application- and systems-integration firm in the telecommunications sector, successfully deploy a strategic development and testing project for satellite-based communications. The Sun Blade 6000 platform incorporates Intel blades, leveraging VMware ESX, to provision and manage guest virtual machines running business applications on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Cannon explains.

"We hosted an instructor-led VMware engagement for our customer at their offices, and this four-day 'JumpStart' workshop helped turn the customer's strategy into reality," Cannon says. "We powered up the Sun Blade 6000 in The Root Group data center, while our consultants converged on the customer site." Root Group consultants then conducted "an intense week of ESX knowledge transfer, and guest VM iterations and testing, before moving the Sun Blade 6000 to the customer's co-location facility, and then proceeded to the next phase of their project–'virtual machine reality.'"

Sun Partnership Advantage

Calderwood believes the relationship The Root Group enjoys with Sun has been "mutually beneficial and collaborative. As both a commercial and GEH (government/education/healthcare) Sun partner, "we have been through some ups and downs, but Sun has always had a strong vision–and their commitment to the channel is stronger than ever." Calderwood gives Sun credit for its devotion to open standards and for participating with its partners in the communities that define and drive those standards. "This commitment and participation gives us the opportunity to deliver products and services that meet our clients' goals and budget objectives–and that provide them with lasting value and tangible business advantage."