Uniting the Worlds of Data and Voice

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Uniting the Worlds

of Data and Voice

Adding Unified Communicationsto the Virtual Data Center

FEBRUARY 2010

A Mitel and VMware White Paper


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Table of Contents

A tale of two technologies ..............................................................................2

Two worlds to manage ....................... ...................... ...................... ...................... ...............2When two become one........................................................................................................2Virtualization and the data center .................... ...................... ...................... ...................... .3The world of unified communications..................................................................................5Never the twain shall meet?................................................................................................6

Uniting the two the virtual voice breakthrough..........................................7

How it happened.................................................................................................................7What it means for business ...................... ....................... ...................... ...................... ........9

How it works .................................................................................................10Virtual Mitel Communications Director..............................................................................10VMware vSphere 4 ...................... ..................... ...................... ..................... ......................11What it looks like a typical scenario ..................... ...................... ...................... ..............12

Welcome to the virtualized voice revolution ................................................14

About Mitel ...................................................................................................15

About VMware...............................................................................................15

A MITEL AND VMWARE VIRTUALIZATION WHITE PAPER

UNITING THE WORLDS OF DATA AND VOICE

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A tale of two technologiesChief Information Officers (CIOs) and other IT managers straddle two worlds not becausethey want to, but because they have to.

First, there is the world of the data center. Its servers and other hardware components, andthe business applications that run on them, are the backbone of the organization. They turnthe reams of data that companies generate and collect into the information they need tounderstand and operate the business.

Then, there is the world of telephony. Here, voice applications ensure that the people whoseperformance determines how well the organization does, how effectively it competes, andwhether it succeeds or fails, communicate with one another in myriad ways to ensure thatinformation is understood and acted on. Even in todays high-tech world, voicecommunication is the beating heart of the business.

Two worlds to manageManaging those worlds is not easy. It means having two of everything. Two budgets.Two groups of personnel with different sets of specialized skills. And two technologyinfrastructures to buy, deploy, and support. It has to be that way though, because dataapplications and voice applications have very different needs when it comes to thehardware they run on and the ways in which they can be managed.

At least, they did until now.

This paper explains how the worlds of data and voice have evolved separately in recent years,and what has kept them apart for so long. But it goes on to describe how a leader in theworld of data center technology, and another in the world of telephony, got together to dosomething that many thought impossible to join the worlds of data and voice on a singlevirtualized infrastructure.

When two become oneThe result is revolutionary. Its exciting. And it offers substantial benefits to organizationsin the form of capital and operational cost savings, lower cost of ownership for hardwareinfrastructures, reduced risk associated with operational continuity and disaster recovery,and new opportunities for innovation. Its something that everyone wants. It has the powerto change business. And its here now.


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Virtualization and the data center

Figure 1: Data Center VirtualizationData center virtualization offers improved performance and more comprehensive managementcapabilities for data centers.

The first world and the first component of the unified voice and data solution is the data center.

Its been around since the days of mainframe computers. These were huge and expensive,and organizations had to use every ounce of power they offered and squeeze every bit ofpotential out of them.

One impediment to realizing their potential was that different software applications canrequire different operating systems. Unless a way could be found to run more than oneoperating system on a mainframe, different computers would be needed to run differentsoftware something too expensive to be practical.

The solution to the problem was called virtualization. Dividing a mainframe into partitionscapable of running different operating systems and applications in other words, turning onereal computer into two or more virtual computers made it possible to slice and diceresources and put the pieces to their best use.


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Enter the PCThe 1980s and 90s saw the emergence of personal computers (PCs) small but powerfuldesktops with x86 chip architectures. These evolved rapidly. And they were inexpensive

enough that data centers abandoned the mainframe and, in the process, virtualization to use PCs as servers. Other PCs were their clients. This client-server approach tohardware and software resulted in the proliferation of server farms and their clients.

The new infrastructure worked well, but it too faced challenges. Typically, only a very smallportion of each servers capacity was used some estimates are as low as five percent. The costsincurred to house, deploy, run, and support growing server farms became onerous. With so manycomponents, failover and disaster protection became problematic. And managing and securingall those moving parts became complex, time-consuming, and expensive. In a sense, things wereright back where they had been with mainframes. Something had to be done.

Virtualization, take two

That something was a second wave of virtualization.Just before the turn of the century, a company called VMware figured out how to virtualizepersonal computers. As it had with the mainframe, virtualizing server-based data centerssolved the problems that CIOs faced in the client-server environment. Turning physicalmachines into virtual ones this time on servers rather than mainframes meant thatdifferent operating systems and applications could once again run on the same piece ofhardware. Fewer resources were needed, reducing costs.

Today, fourth-generation virtualization technology makes is possible for an IT professional tomanage farms of servers and clients from a single console. Virtual computers can be createdand modified at will. Applications and databases can be moved from one virtual machine toanother without disrupting the work of the business people who depend on them. Deployingnew software and maintaining hardware has become much easier, and the cost of running

data centers has decreased significantly. Virtualized data centers deliver huge cost savingsand operational advantages to todays organizations.


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The world of unified communications

Figure 2: Mitel Business Communications Leadership Developing the Future

When the people who ran the mainframe computers that started it all needed to talkto someone in another office or city, they picked up a telephone. It was heavy, somewhatawkward, and came with no extras, but it did the basic job.

But just as the data center world has evolved since the era of the mainframe, communicationstechnology has evolved through a series of exciting changes into the unified voicecommunications of today.

A parallel evolutionFirst came the transition from Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) to Voice over InternetProtocol (VoIP). VoIP made it possible to run voice applications over the Internet, and tocentralize many of the maintenance tasks associated with keeping a voice infrastructurerunning. It also enabled unified messaging capabilities, such as the integration of voicemail and email.

Further developments included the ability to use open operating systems, like Linux, and industry-standard servers from Sun Microsystems, IBM, HP, and others in voice infrastructures. Control

of voice technology became software-based, with products like Mitel Communications Director(MCD), Mitel Applications Suite (MAS), and Mitel Border Gateway (MBG), making voice a partof the software application layer in the business data center.

Just as the evolution of the data center has led to the sophisticated data infrastructuresof today, so the advances in telephony have enabled the reliable, flexible, capability rich,Internet-based telephony systems that today enable teleconferencing, web and audioconferencing, centralized global call center operation, and other technologies thatorganizations depend on to keep communication flowing.


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Never the twain shall meet?Virtualized data centers and telephony technologies have both come a long way, and both arecritical to the day-to-day operations of 21st-century organizations. Yet they continue to exist

in two separate worlds, where they are supported by separate infrastructures, largely becauseof something called latency.

The problem of latencyWhen someone initiates an action in a virtualized data center sending an email, forexample there is a time lag, or latency period, before the action is completed. The virtualdata center has to determine which of the available resources should be used to process thecommand it has received in this case, to deliver the email and then put those resourcesto work. This might only take seconds, but there is a latency period nonetheless.

When latency happens with email and other data, its usually not a big deal. We dont expecta senders message to arrive instantaneously. Back-and-forth communication over time is the

norm for email. And, although it might not even be noticed by users, it is the norm for otherdata center applications too.

With voice, its a different story. Voice and other real-time applications dont work wellin an environment with latency. Insert the time needed to deliver an email into a telephoneconversation, and the conversation would quickly come to a halt. Because voice and otherreal-time applications havent been able to tolerate latency, they havent been suitablefor virtualization. Virtualization solutions used in data centers havent been able toaccommodate them.

Attempts have been made to overcome the latency problem with voice applications, butuntil recently no workable solution could be found. Whenever it seemed that latency hadbeen addressed successfully in the lab, real-time applications took such a hit in performancewhen scaled up, that the solution was not practical. Whats more, voice quality levels that

were all right for demonstrations didnt cut it in the real world.The virtual data center and unified communications were still worlds apart. CIOs still had twotechnology infrastructures to buy, deploy, and support, and businesses still had to absorb thecosts that went along with that.


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Uniting the two the virtual voice breakthroughThanks to the combined efforts of a leader in the field of virtualization, and another leaderin the world of telecommunications, that has now changed.

Figure 3: Mitel Virtual Solutions

How it happenedVMware, the company that introduced data center virtualization in the first place and stillcommands a whopping 85 percent market share, and telecommunications innovator Mitel,a leader in Voice over IP solutions around the world, joined forces to confront the latencyproblem and related issues head on.

After almost two years of intensive research and development effort in VMware and Mitellaboratories, they overcame latency and related challenges with a breakthrough solution thatmeans the worlds of the virtual data center and unified communications can now becomeone in fact, already have become one in some organizations.

Doing it wasnt easy it meant developing new processes and technologies on both the datacenter and communications fronts, and making sure they would work together seamlessly to

solve the problem.


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The server side VMware vSphere 4With input from Mitel, and by leveraging its own longstanding history of excellence andinnovation in virtualization, VMware modified its market-leading virtualization technology

to address the latency issue from its side.VMware enhanced its technology to address issues in the areas of scalability, resourcemanagement and processor scheduling, hardware-assisted memory virtualization, datastorage, networking, resource management, and performance. The result is the VMwarefourth-generation virtualization solution VMware vSphere 4, which, for the first time,can accommodate real-time applications in a data center.

The voice side Mitel Unified CommunicationsAt the same time, Mitel leveraged its heritage of innovation in the VoIP world to enhanceMitel Unified Communications (UC) solutions and related technologies, addressing real-timeapplication issues from the voice side of things.

The result was Mitel Virtual Solutions, which provides all of the features of Mitels industry-leading unified communications technologies on a virtualized infrastructure.

A third component a new chipsetA third component that helped with the solution was the Intel Xeon Nehalem chipset. Assuccessor to the Core microchip architecture, the Nehalems focus on power and performanceprovided the architecture needed to make the Mitel and VMware solution viable from aperformance perspective.

The resultsTogether, VMware vSphere 4 and Mitel Virtual Solutions have overcome the problems

of uniting data and voice on a single virtual infrastructure.Unlike other solutions that leverage virtualization to enable their own products torun in integrated, single-server suites of applications, Mitel Virtual Solutions virtualizescommunications to fit seamlessly into virtualized business data centers, alongside otherbusiness applications and in the context of established business processes. It is not aclosed environment.

Organizations that run data centers using VMware software, and voice applications usingMitel Virtual software, can now run both on a single virtualized infrastructure, reaping all ofthe benefits that go along with that.


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What it means for businessThose benefits are considerable.

Reducing the overall number of physical servers in a data center has the obvious benefitsof capital cost savings. And server consolidation also leads to immediate operational savings,because less real estate is needed to house hardware, and less energy is needed to powerand cool the fewer servers that do the job.

IT managers used to laboring over two plans for business continuity and disaster recovery one for data, the other for voice can now encompass their entire IT infrastructure with asingle plan. And they can have a common set of service level agreements (SLAs), processes,and tools for their single infrastructure.

A single standard for managing servers and applications in the data center provides increasedefficiencies in a range of other IT areas, too, including provisioning for test, development, andproduction environments.

As well as lowering the total cost of ownership of the IT infrastructure, virtualizing voice

along with all of an organizations other business applications greatly improves ITs abilityto respond to business changes, so they are better prepared to respond to the ever-shiftingdemands that the business places on both data and voice resources.

In short, CIOs can now fundamentally change the way they think about their ITinfrastructures and their resources. Instead of managing individual boxes, they canmanage overall IT services. Instead of devoting most of their budgets to maintenance,they can focus on innovation. Resources and personnel that have traditionally been devotedto maintaining two infrastructures can now be focused on developing new applications andservices that build competitive advantage for the organization. And, for the business peoplewho depend on data and voice applications, it means a better quality of service atconsiderably less cost.


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Uniting data and voice benefits for the businessUniting the worlds of data and voice on a single infrastructure using VMware vSphere 4

and Mitel Virtual Solutions means: Reduced capital expenditures. Running telephony and data applications on thesame servers means fewer servers are needed, so the total cost of ownership for theinformation infrastructure drops dramatically.

Reduced operations and maintenance costs. Managing communicationsolutions along with other virtualized business applications does away with thecosts of duplicate maintenance tasks.

Reduced power consumption. The power savings inherent in virtual dataenvironments can also be applied to voice applications.

Improved application availability. Applications are no longer subject toprolonged downtime for physical server maintenance.

Integrated business continuity. Consolidated disaster recovery managementmeans that management methodologies and best practices can be appliedconsistently across all applications in the data center, including businesscommunication applications.

Faster system deployment. Because Mitel Virtual Solutions installs easily into anexisting virtualized data center, increasing communications capacity and adjustingoverall workload is faster than with traditional appliances or dedicated servers.

Increased business innovation. Freed from having to maintain two separateinfrastructures, IT can devote resources to developing new applications and servicesthat build competitive advantage.

How it worksMitel Virtual Solutions integrate seamlessly into existing Mitel Communications Director(MCD) networks. And they leverage the same software licensing as the traditional Mitelsolution, so that investments already made in Mitel technology are fully protected.

For Mitel and VMware customers, moving to virtualized voice simply means updating theirMitel and VMware software. The features and benefits they depend on to run both their dataand voice applications function as they do now, but on one infrastructure instead of two.

Virtual Mitel Communications DirectorMitels contribution to the unified solution, Virtual Mitel Communications Director(Virtual MCD), leverages the same software as the traditional MCD. It provides the samefeatures and functions already enjoyed on traditional platforms.

This includes the full breadth of IP telephony features, dynamic extension, clustering

capabilities, resiliency support, SIP service provider interconnection, and embedded systemsmanagement. Virtual MCD integrates seamlessly in a network of MCDs, and with the sameMitel desk phone portfolio and applications.

Virtual MCD does not have the specialized interfaces needed to support connections such asdigital trunks, analog trunks, station lines, and Mitel-specific peripherals. Instead, it connectsto other controllers via IP trunking or SIP trunks. Messaging solutions can be provided viaoffboard products, such as the Mitel Applications Suite, including Mitel NuPoint UnifiedMessaging (UM).


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VMware vSphere 4The same rich set of virtual infrastructure management capabilities of VMware vSphere 4 thatVMware customers are used to applying to their business applications, can now also be used

with Virtual MCD applications.

VMware vSphere, with the scalable and extensible management platform for VMwarevSphere deployments, and the VMware vCenter Suite provide IT managers with everythingthey need to manage a unified infrastructure, including virtual machine creation andconfiguration, health monitoring, performance reports, and more. It includes:

VMware VMotion. The foundation technology for several key VM management functions,vMotion enables live migration of virtual machines from one physical server to anotherwith zero downtime.

VMware High Availability (HA). Automatically detects physical server failure and restartsvirtual machines on alternate servers.

VMware Fault Tolerance (FT). Enables zero downtime, zero data loss, and continuousavailability against physical server failures with stateful failover protection.

VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). Enables automated and notifiedmigration of virtual machines, balancing workloads to meet business demands andenabling optimal use of physical server resources.

VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM). Consolidates unneeded or lightlyused virtual machine workloads onto fewer physical servers, placing unneeded physicalservers in standby mode. As workloads increase, it brings servers back online andredistributes virtual machine workloads appropriately.

Update Manager Server and OS Patching. Automatically patches / updates one or moreVMware vSphere physical servers, as well as select Microsoft Windows and Red Hat

Enterprise Linux operating systems in a managed fashion. Virtual machines are migrated VMotioned off of hosts to be patched.

VMware VMSafe. An integrated infrastructure that enables VM-aware security solutions

from leading third-party security software vendors to be applied and used within a virtualinfrastructure.

VMware Site Recovery Manager. A plug-in to the VMware vCenter, it enablespre-planned disaster recovery management policies to be enacted should a primary datacenter or server cluster be put out of service. An entire virtual cluster can be recreated ona backup data center. Storage replication ensures data continuity.

The Virtual Mitel Communications Director solution can be managed from either a VMwarevSphere Client or from VMware vCenter.


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What it looks like a typical scenarioThe configuration of the Virtual Mitel Communications Director solution will, of course, varywith an organizations requirements, resources, and approach to ensuring business continuity.

But, for description purposes, a typical scenario can be imagined.

Deployment Configuration

Figure 4: A Typical Mitel Virtual Solutions Configuration

In a typical deployment, the virtual infrastructure hosts: one or more instances of the Virtual Mitel Communications Director, which can be

configured as a cluster with resilient IP telephony failover additional Mitel business communication applications that are VMware Ready, such as

Mitel Contact Center Solutions, Mitel Unified Communicator (UC) Advanced, and MitelEnterprise Manager

other business applications

Mitel Applications Suite is typically deployed on its own dedicated server, and houses acomplete suite of business communication applications, including messaging and audio andweb conferencing.

A Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP) Media Gateway can be optionally deployedto provide digital and analog services, including E1 / T1 service provider interconnect fordigital services.

A Mitel Border Gateway is deployed on its own dedicated server in the organizations DMZ toprovide secure integration for Teleworker Solution, SIP Trunk Proxy services, and theApplication Web Proxy for Mitel applications.


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Business Continuity and Failover

Figure 5: Mitel Virtual Solutions Configured to Ensure Business Continuity

As Mitel continues to expand its support for virtualized data and voice centers, increasinglybroad business continuity capabilities will become possible, allowing for the replication ofbusiness communication applications in secondary data centers.

This type of business continuity infrastructure, enabled by VMware virtual infrastructuremanagement coupled with Mitels application layer resiliency / failover for MCD, provideunprecedented availability in conjunction with consistent administration and manageabilityacross the IT data center.


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Welcome to the virtualized voice revolution

Figure 6: Mitel Business Communications Leadership Developing the Future

Thanks to the results of the Mitel and VMware collaboration, CIOs and other IT managerscan now unite their business data and voice applications on a single infrastructure.

All of the benefits of the data center and VoIP telephony can be realized with less capitalspending, lower operational and maintenance costs, reduced power consumption, and easierand more dependable business continuity and disaster recovery. What used to exist in twodifferent worlds can now, for the first time, be united in one.

Welcome to the virtualized voice revolution.


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About MitelMitel delivers flexibility and simplicity in smart unified communications solutions andapplications for organizations of all sizes. Combined with a full range of managed servicesthat include voice and data network design and traffic provisioning, custom applicationdevelopment, and attractive financing options, Mitel is reinventing how successfulorganizations gain competitive advantage by easily collaborating and communicating overdistance and time with customers, colleagues, and partners. Mitels (www.mitel.com) USheadquarters are in Phoenix, Arizona. Global headquarters are in Ottawa, Canada, withoffices, partners, and resellers worldwide.

About VMwareVMware (NYSE: VMW) delivers solutions for business infrastructure virtualization that enableIT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. With the industry leading virtualizationplatform VMware vSphere customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating

expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security, and go green. With2009 revenues of $2 billion, more than 170,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware isthe leader in virtualization, which consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware isheadquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online atwww.vmware.com.


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www.mitel.comTHIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED TO YOU FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. The information furnished in this document, believed by Mitel to be accurate as of the dateof its publication, is subject to change without notice. Mitel assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions in this document and shall have no obligation to you as aresult of having made this document available to you or based upon the information it contains.

M MITEL (design) is a registered trademark of Mitel Networks Corporation. All other products and services are the registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Copyright 2010, Mitel Networks Corporation. All Rights Reserved. GD 1092_5724 PN 51016323RA-EN

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Uniting the Worlds of Data and Voice