Better security over data and applications remains a foremost reason IT organizations embrace and extend the use of client virtualization. Yet performance requirements for graphics-intense applications and large files remain one of the top reasons the use of thin clients and virtualized desktops trails the deployment of full PC clients.
For a large architectural firm
in Illinois, gaining better overall security, management, and data center
consolidation had to go hand in hand with preserving the highest workspace
performance -- even across multiple distributed offices.
The next BriefingsDirect security
innovations discussion examines how BLDD
Architects, Inc. developed an IT protection solution that fully supports all of
its servers and mix of clients in a way that’s invisible to its end users.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy.
Here to share the story of how
to gain the best cloud workload security, regardless of the apps and the data,
is Dan Reynolds, Director of
IT at BLDD Architects in Decatur, Illinois. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner,
Principal Analyst at Interarbor
Solutions.
Here are some excerpts:
A long time ago, I worked as a computer-aided design (CAD) draftsman. The way the architecture industry has changed since then has been amazing. They now work with clients from cradle to grave. With school districts, for example, they need help at the early funding level. We go in and help them with campaigns, to put projects on the ballot, and figure out ways to help them – from gaining money all the way to long-term planning. There are several school districts where we are their architect-of-record. We help them plan for the future. It’s amazing. It really surprises me.
On the flip side, I also use a product called StorageCraft and I encrypt all my backups. Like I said, I am not cocky. I am not going to put a target on my back and say, “Hit me.”
Gardner: It sounds like Bitdefender had people like you, a jack of all trades, in mind when it was architected, and that wasn’t always the case with security. Usually before the security would play catch-up to the threats, rather than anticipating the needs of those in the trenches fighting the security battle.
Okay, let’s look to the future before we end. There are always new things coming out for modernizing data centers. On the hardware side, we’re hearing about hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), for example. We’re also seeing use of automated IT ops and using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help optimize systems.
Reynolds: Research, research, research -- and then more research. When I started, everybody said there’s no way we could virtualize Revit and Autodesk. Of course, we did and it worked fine. I ignored them, and you have to be willing to experiment and take some chances sometimes. But by researching, testing, and moving forward gently, it’s a long road, but it’s worth it. It will pay off.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Bitdefender.
Here are some excerpts:
Gardner: Dan,
tell us about BLDD Architects. How old is the firm? Where you are located? And what
do you have running in your now-centralized data center?
Reynolds: We
are actually 90 years old this year, founded in 1929. It has obviously changed
names over the years, but the same core group of individuals have been involved
the entire time. We used to have five offices: three in central Illinois, one
in Chicago, and one in Davenport, Iowa. Two years ago, we consolidated all of
the Central Illinois offices into just the Decatur office.
 |
| Reynolds |
When we did that, part of the
initiative was to allow people to work from home. Because we are virtualized,
that was quite easy. Their location doesn’t matter. The desktops are still here,
in the central office, but the users can be wherever they need to be.
On the back-end, we are a 100
percent Microsoft shop, except for VMware, of course. I run the desktops from a
three-node Hewlett Packard
Enterprise (HPE) DL380
cluster. I am using a Storage Area Network (SAN) product called the StarWind Virtual SAN,
which has worked out very well. We are all VMware for the server and client virtualization,
so VMware ESXi 6.5 and VMware Horizon 7.
Gardner: Please
describe the breadth of architectural, design, and planning work you do and the
types of clients your organization supports.
Architect the future, securely
Reynolds: We
are wholly commercial. We don’t do any residential designs, or only very, very
rarely. Our biggest customers are K-12 educational facilities. We also design
buildings for religious institutions, colleges, and some healthcare clinics.
Recently we have begun
designing senior living facilities. That’s an area of growth that we have
pursued. Our reason for opening the office in Davenport was to begin working
with more school districts in that state.
A long time ago, I worked as a computer-aided design (CAD) draftsman. The way the architecture industry has changed since then has been amazing. They now work with clients from cradle to grave. With school districts, for example, they need help at the early funding level. We go in and help them with campaigns, to put projects on the ballot, and figure out ways to help them – from gaining money all the way to long-term planning. There are several school districts where we are their architect-of-record. We help them plan for the future. It’s amazing. It really surprises me.
Gardner: Now
that we know what you do and your data center platforms, let’s learn more about
your overall security posture. How do you approach security knowing that it’s
not from one vendor, it’s not one product? You don’t just get security out of a
box. You have to architect it. What’s your philosophy, and what do you have in
place as a result?
Reynolds: I
like to have a multilayered
approach. I think you have to. It can’t just be antivirus, and it can’t just
be firewall. You have to allow the users freedom to do what they need to do,
but you also have to figure out where they are going to screw up -- and try to
catch that.
I
like to have a multilayered approach. I think you have to. It can't
just be antivirus, and it can't just be a firewall. You have to allow
the users freedom to do what they need to do, but you also have to
figure out where they are going to screw up -- and try and catch that.
And it’s always a moving
target. I don’t pretend to know this perfectly at all. I use OpenDNS as a content filter. Since
it’s at the DNS level, and OpenDNS is so good at whitelisting, we pick up
on some of the content choices and that keeps our people from accidentally
making mistakes.
In addition, last year I moved
us to Cisco Meraki Security Appliances,
and their network-based malware protection. I have a site-to-site virtual
private network (VPN) for our Davenport office. All of our connections are
Fiber Ethernet. In Illinois, it’s all Comcast Metro E. I have
another broadband provider for the Davenport office.
And then, on top of all of that,
I have Bitdefender
GravityZone Enterprise Security for the endpoints that are not thin clients.
And then, of course, for the VMware environment I also use GravityZone; that
works perfectly with VMWare NSX virtual networking on the back-end and the
scanning engine that comes with that.
Gardner: Just
to be clear Dan, you have a mix of clients; you have got some zero clients, fat
clients, both Mac and Windows, is that right?
Diversity protects mixed clients
Reynolds: That’s
correct. For some of the really high-end rendering, you need the video hardware.
You just can’t do everything with virtualization, but you can knock out
probably 90 to 95 percent of all that we do with it.
And, of course, on those traditional
PC machines I have to have conventional protection, and we also have laptops
and Microsoft Surfaces. The marketing department has Mac OSX machines. There
are just times you can’t completely do everything with a virtual machine.
Gardner: Given
such a diverse and distributed environment to protect, is it fair to say that
being “paranoid about security” has paid off?
Reynolds: I am
confident, but I am not cocky. The minute you get cocky, you are setting
yourself up. But I am definitely confident because I have multi-layers of
protection. I build my confidence by making sure these layers overlap. It gives
me a little bit of cushion so I am not constantly afraid.
And, of course, another factor
many of us in the IT security world are embracing is around better educating
the end users. We try to make them as aware to help share your paranoia with
them to help them understand. That is really important.
On the flip side, I also use a product called StorageCraft and I encrypt all my backups. Like I said, I am not cocky. I am not going to put a target on my back and say, “Hit me.”
Gardner: Designers,
like architects, are often perfectionists. It’s essential for them to get apps,
renderings, and larger 3D files the way they want them. They don’t want to
compromise.
As an IT director, you need to
make sure they have 100 percent availability -- but you also have to make sure
everything is secure. How have you been able to attain the combined requirements
of performance and security? How did you manage to tackle both of them at the
same time?
Reynolds: It
was an evolving process. In my past life I had experience with VMware and I
knew of virtual desktops, but I wasn’t really aware of how they would work
under [performance] pressure. We did some preliminary testing using VMware ESXi
on high-end workstations. At that point we weren’t even using VMware View. We
were just using remote desktops. And it was amazing. It worked, and that pushed
me to then look into VMware View.
Of course, when you embrace
virtualization, you can’t go without security. You have to have antivirus (AV);
you just have to. The way the world is now, you can’t live without protecting
your users -- and you can’t depend on them to protect themselves because they
won’t do it.
The way that VMware had approached
antivirus solutions -- knowing that native agents and the old-fashioned types
of antivirus solutions would impact performance -- was they built it into the
network. It completely insulated the user from any interaction with the antivirus
software. I didn’t want anything running on the virtual desktop. It was
completely invisible to them, and it worked.
Gardner: When
you go to fully virtualized clients, you solve a lot of problems. You can
centralize to better control your data and apps. That in itself is a big
security benefit. Tell me your philosophy about security and why going
virtualized was the right way to go.
Centralization controls chaos, corruption
Reynolds: Well,
you hit the nail on the head. By centralizing, I can have one image or only a
few images. I know how the machines are built. I don’t have desktops out there
that users customize and add all of their crap to. I can control the image. I
can lock the image down. I can protect it with Bitdefender. If the image
gets bad, it’s just an image. I throw it away and I replace it.
I tend to use full clones and non-persistent
desktops simply for that reason. It’s so easy. If somebody begins having a
problem with their machine or their Revit software gets
corrupted or something else happens, I just throw away the old virtual machine
(VM) and roll a new one in. It’s easy-peasy. It’s just done.
Gardner: And,
of course, you have gained centralized data. You don’t have to worry about
different versions out there. And if corruption happens, you don’t lose that
latest version. So there’s a data persistence benefit as well.
Reynolds: Yes,
very much so. That was the problem when I first arrived here. They had five
different silos [one for each branch office location]. There were even different
versions of the same project in different places. They were never able to bring
all of the data into one place.
I saw that as the biggest
challenge, and that drove me to virtualization in the first place. We were
finally able to put all the data in one place and back it up in one place.
Gardner: How
long have you been using Bitdefender GravityZone Enterprise Security, and why
do you keep renewing?
Reynolds: It’s
been about nine years. I keep renewing because it works, and I like their
support. Whenever I have a problem, or whenever I need to move -- like from
different versions of VMware or going to NSX and I change the actual VMware parts
-- the Bitdefender technology is just there, and the instructions are there,
too.
It’s all about relationships
with me. I stick with people because of relationships -- well, the performance
as well, but that’s part of the relationship. I mean, if your friend kept
letting you down, they wouldn’t be your friend anymore.
Gardner: Let’s
talk about that performance. You have some really large 2-D and 3-D graphics
files at work constantly. You’re using Autodesk Revit, as you mentioned, Bluebeam Revu, Microsoft Office, Adobe, so quite a large portfolio.
These are some heavy-lifting
apps. How does their performance hold up? How do you keep the virtualized
delivery invisible across your physical and virtualized workstations?
High performance keeps users happy
Reynolds: Number
one, I must keep the users happy. If the users aren’t happy and if they don’t
think the performance is there, then you are not going to last long.
I have a good example, Dana. I
told you I have Macs in the marketing department, and the reason they kept Macs
is because they want their performance with the Adobe apps. Now, they use the Macs
as thin clients and connect to a virtual desktop to do their work. It’s only
when they are doing big video editing that they resume using their Macs
natively. Most of the time, they are just using them as a thin client. For me,
that’s a real vote of confidence that this environment works.
Gardner: Do
you have a virtualization density target? How are you able to make this as
efficient as possible, to get full centralized data center efficiency benefits?
Reynolds: I have
some guidelines that I’ve come up with over the years. I try to limit my hosts
to about 30 active VMs at a time. We are actually now at the point where I am
going to have to add another node to the cluster. It’s going to be compute
only, it won’t be involved in the storage part. I want to keep the ratio of
CPUs and RAM about the same. But generally speaking, we have about 30 active
virtual desktops per host.
Gardner: How
does Bitdefender’s approach factor into that virtualization density?
I
like the way Bitdefender licenses their coverage. It gives me a lot of
flexibility, and it helps me plan out my environment. I'm not paying by
the core, and I'm not paying by the desktop. I'm paying by the socket,
and I really like it that way.
Reynolds: The
way that Bitdefender does it -- and I really like this -- is they license by
the socket. So whether I have 10 or 100 on there, it’s always by the socket. And
these are HPE DL380s, so they are two sockets, even though I have 40 cores.
I like the way they license
their coverage. It gives me a lot of flexibility, and it helps me plan out my
environment. Now, I’m looking at adding another host, so I will have to add a
couple of more cores. But that still gives me a lot of growth room because I
could have 120 active desktops running and I’m not paying by the core, and I’m
not paying by the individual virtual desktop. I am paying for Bitdefender by the
socket, and I really like it that way.
Gardner: You
don’t have to be factoring the VMs along the way as they spin up and spin down.
It can be a nightmare trying to keep track of them all.
Reynolds: Yes,
I am glad I don’t have to do that. As long as I have the VMware agent installed
and NSX on the VMware side, then it just shows up in GravityZone, and it’s
protected.
Prevent, rather than react, to problems
Gardner: Dan,
we have been focusing on performance from the end-user perspective. But let’s
talk about how this impacts your administration, your team, and your IT
organization.
How has your security posture,
centralization, and reliance on virtualization allowed your team to be the most
productive?
Reynolds: I use
GravityZone’s
reporting features. I have it tell me weekly the posture of my physical
machines and my virtual machines. I use the GravityZone interface. I look at it
quite regularly, maybe two or three times a week. I just get in and look around
and see what’s going on.
I like that it keeps itself up
to date or lets me know it needs to be updated. I like the way that the virus
definitions get updated automatically and pushed out automatically, and that’s across
all environments. I really like that. That helps me, because it’s something
that I don’t have to constantly do.
I would rather watch than do.
I would rather have it tell me or e-mail me than I find out from my users that their
machines aren’t working properly. I like everything about it. I like the way it
works. It works with me.
Gardner: It sounds like Bitdefender had people like you, a jack of all trades, in mind when it was architected, and that wasn’t always the case with security. Usually before the security would play catch-up to the threats, rather than anticipating the needs of those in the trenches fighting the security battle.
Reynolds: Yes,
very much so. At other places I have worked and with other products, that was
an absolute true statement, yes.
Gardner: Let’s
look at some of the metrics of success. Tell us how you measure that. I know
security is measured best when there are no problems.
But in terms of people,
process, and technology, how do we evaluate in terms of costs, man hours, of
being proactive? How do we measure success when it comes to a good security
posture for an organization like yours?
Security supports steady growth
Reynolds: I
will be the first to admit I am a little weak in describing that. But I do have
some metrics that work. For example, we didn’t need to replace our desktops often.
We had been using our desktops for eight years, which is horrible in one sense,
but in another sense, it says we didn’t have to. And then when those desktops
were about as dead as dead could be, we replaced them with less expensive thin
clients, which are almost disposable devices.
I envision a day when we’re
using Raspberry Pi as our
thin clients and we don’t spend any big money. That’s the way to sum it up. All
my money is spent on maintenance for applications and platform software, and you
are not going to get rid of that.
Another big payoff is around
employee happiness. A little over two years ago, when we had to collapse the
offices, more people could work from home. It kept a lot of people that
probably would have walked out. That happened because of the groundwork and
foundation I had put in. From that time, we have had two of the best years the
company has ever had, even after that consolidation.
And so, for me, personally,
that was kind of like I had something to do with that, and I can take some
pride in that.
Gardner: Dan,
when I hear your story, the metrics of success that I think about are that
you’re able to accommodate growth, you can scale up, and if you had to – heaven
forbid -- you could scale down. You’re also in a future-proofing position
because you’ve gone software-defined, you have centralized and consolidated,
you’ve gone highly virtualized across-the-board, and you can accommodate at-home
users and bring
your own devices (BYOD).
Perhaps you have a merger and
acquisition in the works, who knows? But you can accommodate that and that
means business agility. These are some of the top business outcome metrics of
success that I know companies large and small look for. So hats off to you on
that.
Reynolds: Thank
you very much. I hate to use the word “pride” but I’m proud of what I’ve been
able to accomplish the last few years. All the work I have done in the prior
years is paying off.
Gardner: One
of my favorite sayings is, “Architecture is destiny.” If you do the blocking
and tackling, and you think strategically -- even while you are acting
tactically -- it will pay off in spades later.
Okay, let’s look to the future before we end. There are always new things coming out for modernizing data centers. On the hardware side, we’re hearing about hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), for example. We’re also seeing use of automated IT ops and using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help optimize systems.
Where does your future
direction lead, and how does your recent software and security posture work enable
you to modernize when you want?
Future solutions, scaled to succeed
Reynolds: Obviously,
hyper-converged infrastructure is upon us and many have embraced it. I think
the small- to medium-sized business (SMB) has been a little reluctant because
the cost is very high for an SMB.
I think that cost of entry is going
to come down. I think we are going to have a solution that offers all the
benefits but is scaled down for a smaller firm. When that happens, everything I
have done is going to transfer right over.
I have software-based
storage. I have some software-based
networking, but I would love to embrace that even more. That would be the
icing on the cake and take some of the physical load off of me. The work that I
have to do with switches and cabling and network adapters -- if I could move
that into the hyper-converged arena, I would love that.
When
I started, everybody said there's no way we could virtualize Revit and
Autodesk. We did and it worked fine. You have to be willing to
experiment and take some chances sometimes. It's a long road but it's
worth it. It will pay off.
Gardner: Also,
more companies are looking to use cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud. Because
you’re already highly virtualized, because your security is optimized for that,
whatever choices your company wants to take with vis-à-vis cloud and Software-as-a-Service
(SaaS) you’re able to support that.
Reynolds: Yes,
we have a business application that manages our projects, does our time keeping,
and all the accounting. It is a SaaS app. And, gosh, I was glad when it went
SaaS. That was just one thing that I could get off of my plate -- and I don’t
mean that in a bad way. I wanted it to be handled even better by moving to SaaS
where you get economy of scale that you can’t provide as an IT individual.
Gardner: Any
last words of advice for organizations -- particularly those wanting to recognize
all the architectural and economic benefits, but might be concerned about
security and performance?
Reynolds: Research, research, research -- and then more research. When I started, everybody said there’s no way we could virtualize Revit and Autodesk. Of course, we did and it worked fine. I ignored them, and you have to be willing to experiment and take some chances sometimes. But by researching, testing, and moving forward gently, it’s a long road, but it’s worth it. It will pay off.
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