Doubling down on a new Customer profile data center WMS Gaming equips new facility with 40GbE Active Fabric and next Company WMS Gaming generation storage, improving application performance and reliability Industry Sports and Gaming while saving six figures Country United States Employees 1,750 Web wms.com Business Need WMS Gaming needed to design and configure a new data center for efficiency, performance and scalability. Network throughput was a key consideration for the global company. Solution WMS selected an end-to-end Dell solution including Dell™ Networking switches, Dell Compellent™ Storage Center SANs, Dell EqualLogic™ storage solutions, and engineering assistance from Dell Services. Benefits • Network and storage bottlenecks removed, improving application performance • Projected 50 percent 3-year reduction in TCO for network, saving six figures • Two helpdesk FTEs repurposed to more strategic roles • 50 percent reduction in recovery time after eliminating tape • 100 percent payback in about a year for replacing tape with “We’ve been able to make a significant disk-based backup difference, aided by Dell. They have been Solutions Featured a strategic partner in helping us mature • Data Center Virtualization • Database infrastructure and operations across • Desktop Computing the board.” • Mobile Computing • Networking Trina Gizel, Executive Director, Global Infrastructure, WMS Gaming • Storage Services • Configuration Services • Dell IT Planning and Consulting Services From pinball to arcade videogames to casino gaming, Chicago- based WMS Gaming (WMS) has been helping people have fun for decades. Today, the company is an innovator in the fast-growing online gaming market, as well as a leading supplier of gaming products and enabling technologies to casinos worldwide. The company’s portfolio includes many popular games, including Reel ‘em In!®, Technology at work Life of Luxury®, Zeus™ and Jackpot Party® themes, as well as licensed titles such as Services ™ ™ MONOPOLY , THE WIZARD OF OZ , THE Configuration Services LORD OF THE RINGS™, CLUE™ and THE ™ ™ PRICE IS RIGHT™ themes. Dell Compellent Copilot Support “ We reduced Dell Enterprise Service Desk When the company’s existing data center Dell IT Planning and Consulting Services our three-year facilities could no longer scale to support business growth, WMS saw a greenfield Dell Support Services networking total - Dell ProSupport™ Mission Critical opportunity to build a new converged with four hour onsite response cost of ownership data center using technologies that Hardware for the new data would improve performance, increase efficiency and reduce total cost of Dell Compellent Storage Center SANs ownership (TCO) for IT. The new facility center by about Dell EqualLogic™ PS6010 and would support legacy and emerging PS6510 iSCSI SANs 50 percent using a applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite modules and a VMware vSphere Dell XPS laptops Dell Active Fabric virtual server environment. Dell Latitude™ E6420 laptops solution. We save in Dell Networking Z9000 10/40GbE Life in the fast lane switches the mid-to-high six “It made sense for us to build from Dell Networking S4810 top-of- scratch instead of taking a Band-Aid rack 1/10/40GbE switches figures compared approach,” says Trina Gizel, executive director, global infrastructure. “We Dell Networking S55 switches to a Cisco solution.” serve 1,750 users on six continents, Dell Networking C300 chassis- Trina Gizel, Executive Director, and we needed a network and storage based switches (for headquarters) Global Infrastructure, infrastructure that would take any Dell OptiPlex™ 790 Mini Tower, WMS Gaming performance issues off the table. It 790 ultra small form factor also had to scale to support 10 percent desktop PCs annual growth for the next 10 years, Dell Precision™ M4600, M6600 because gaming is expanding worldwide, mobile workstations and we’re growing fast.” Software WMS had used Cisco networking Dell Compellent Data Instant Replay components for years, and Gizel initially Dell Compellent Data Progression intended to do the same for the new Dell Compellent Dynamic Capacity data center. “At the time, Cisco was experiencing some supply chain difficulties Dell Compellent Enterprise Manager that led us to look at other options,” she ActiveRoles Server says. “Our Dell rep suggested we look at Oracle® 11g database (11.2.0.3) Dell Networking switches.” VMware® vSphere™ 4.1 Gizel and her team were keen on what Windows® 7 they saw. “We liked that certain models Windows Server® 2008 R2 of Dell Networking switches have wire 2 speed to every port,” she says. “We’ve had about 50 percent using a Dell Active significant port density challenges in the Fabric solution, counting lower hardware past, because we isolate our VoIP traffic. and maintenance costs. We save in the So we use a lot of chassis switches, and mid-to-high six figures compared to a we needed Power over Ethernet (PoE). At Cisco solution.” the time, several vendors did not make PoE blades for their chassis switches. We iSCSI SAN storage speed also had an established knowledge base WMS also wanted to move away from around the Cisco operating system, and maintaining a separate Fibre Channel we liked the fact that Dell Networking was infrastructure for its storage area network not vastly different. Our engineers would (SAN), and looked for a storage solution be able to make the transition quickly.” that was iSCSI-capable. “We evaluated four storage vendors,” says Gizel. “We Reducing networking TCO by went through a very thorough analysis 50 percent that included a double-weighted matrix Designing the optimal network of the technologies across 12 categories “ My entire team architecture was critical, and Dell IT such as expandability, redundancy and Consulting Services provided needed reporting. Across the board, when we felt that Dell was assistance. “Many meetings took place looked at all the factors and added in extremely helpful in to determine the proper design,” says the strength of our business relationship Gizel. “My entire team felt that Dell with Dell, it was a very easy decision to enabling us to design was extremely helpful in enabling us go with Dell Compellent Storage Center to design the best solution for the SANs. We deployed one Dell Compellent the best solution applications from a performance SAN for Oracle, and another to support for the applications perspective, as well as a solution that our new VMware environment.” would scale down the road.” from a performance WMS has virtualized 80 percent of its Ultimately, WMS decided to deploy a “leaf/ 700 servers. Virtualized applications perspective, as well spine”-based Active Fabric architecture include Microsoft SharePoint, Windows as a solution that using Dell Networking Z9000 fabric print services, SAP Business Objects, switches as the 40 Gigabit Ethernet spine, Microsoft Lync and Kronos. Says Gizel: would scale down and Dell Networking S4810 switches as “Dell Compellent’s ability to leverage 10 Gigabit leaf nodes. For management/ large amounts of spindles gives VMware the road.” auxiliary nodes, the company chose Dell excellent throughput.” Trina Gizel, Executive Director, Networking S55 switches. Global Infrastructure, Storage tiering accelerates responses WMS Gaming The Active Fabric design offers both To optimize application performance, scalability and high performance. It WMS uses Dell Compellent Data flattens the traditional data center Progression software to automatically network architecture using high-density move the most frequently used data and low-latency, fixed-form factor to high performance drives and less 10/40GbE switches that can be deployed frequently used data to high capacity quickly and easily, compared to traditional drives, all without manual intervention. chassis-based network designs. “We’ll be using Data Progression a lot Reduced TCO was an important more in the future, because right now we benefit. “We determined that there have a lot of data pinned to Tier 1 drives would be significant cost savings with intentionally,” says Gizel. “As data ages Dell Networking, not just from an initial and is accessed less frequently, it will per-port cost, but also in support costs automatically be moved to lower storage thereafter,” she says. “We reduced our tiers without anyone on our team having three-year networking total cost of to be involved. Data Progression suits ownership for the new data center by Oracle’s performance needs very well.” 3 Application performance improved For local storage at remote office locations, and Dell Latitude laptops, Dell Precision immediately when the new data center the company uses Dell EqualLogic iSCSI mobile workstations and Dell OptiPlex went live. “Previously we had some SANs. “We like Dell EqualLogic SANs desktop PCs running Windows 7 for their performance issues, because the fiber because they are very easy to deploy and daily work. A managed helpdesk solution forced us to have our storage farther administer,” says Gizel. “We have dozens of from Dell provides end-user support. away from the front-end host,” says Gizel. them. They’re a natural for our distributed “Our converged network has solved locations because we team up CommVault “We’ve been able to repurpose two that problem. We’ve taken network and Simpana replication capabilities with them full-time employees to other very storage bottlenecks out of the equation. to ease our nightly backup requirements. productive roles in our IT organization Performance is just no longer an issue We’re replicating all over the globe.” because we outsourced our helpdesk to in our world, and that was not the case Dell,” says Gizel. “Our users get 24x7x365 two years ago.” Scaling the EqualLogic environment local language support, which we didn’t is also very easy, Gizel adds. “Dell have before—and that’s really essential More time for innovation EqualLogic has replaced our tape backup for a global business such as ours.” Ease of use and fast access to infrastructure. We back up hundreds of information about system health and terabytes to EqualLogic and replicate For support in the data center, WMS configuration were also goals for the them to other locations for continuity.