1. Cisco Data Virtualization
A Recipe of Best Practices to Move from Project Oriented to Enterprise-Scale Data Virtualization
April 2016

2. Introduction
STEP 1: Clients initially start their DV journey with a project
I need data from these sources – i.e. Netezza, Oracle, SQL Server
I need to consume it from these client tools – i.e. Cognos, MicroStrategy, SAS, Tableau, Informatica, etc.
Build project-level (Business) artifacts to transform from source (Physical) format to target (Application) format
Business is happy with the results

3. Introduction STEP 2: Your success is noticed!
Another project or group wishes to use DV for their project
Share or purchase additional infrastructure
New group on-boards their data sources and clients, builds their artifacts
STEP 3…n: Rinse and repeat step 2

4. Introduction
BUT WAIT
WHO is supporting the infrastructure and platform?
HOW do I know my usage doesn't impact other teams?
WHERE can I get development, management, and other help?
WHEN is it time to add more capacity, upgrade the platform?
WHAT happens if I need to perform maintenance?
WHY don't we have a group to answer these questions?

5. Introduction It's time to take the NEXT STEP
You need enterprise-scale data virtualization
Requires vision, sponsorship, leadership, and investment
Someone needs to SEE the value of DV for the enterprise
Someone needs to PLAN the enterprise implementation
Someone needs to LEAD a team to support the platform
Someone needs to SPEND some money to implement the vision
Let's look at a recipe of a dozen best practices to move from project- oriented to enterprise-scale data virtualization

6. 1. Evaluate Infrastructure
Across my enterprise, what infrastructure is available?
Virtual / Physical servers provisioned
(Non-)Production licenses acquired
Pool resources to improve everyone's experience
Shared infrastructure allows unused capacity to be redistributed
What additional infrastructure is needed?
Increase memory, CPU's, network capacity, etc. on existing servers
Clustering license to support high availability (HA) , capacity sharing
Disaster recovery (DR) server / license
Integration with SNMP, SMTP, and load balancers
-2 groups, each with DEV, UAT and PROD
-Combine to have a SANDBOX, DEV, UAT, DR, and 2xPROD
-Acquire AC
-Front everything with a load balancer / VIP to get business-friendly server addresses
-Integrate with SNMP / SMTP for monitoring and notifications

7. 2. Plan for Availability
Evaluate current High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) policies
Clustering
DR site
Research your organization's policies, processes, and products
Load balancing, high availability, and disaster recovery
What changes are required?
Use Active Cluster combined with a load balancer for high availability
Use virtual IP or friendly domain names
Deploy architectural changes and practices to support disaster recovery

8. 3. Evaluate Support Structure
Across my enterprise, what expertise is available?
Who has been working as a DV developer, administrator, tester?
Who has been managing procurement, monitoring, project planning?
Pool expertise to improve everyone's experience
A “central” team that manages intrastructure and troubleshooting is required
A “central” team that manages development, deployment, testing may be ideal
What additional expertise is needed?
Bring new team members to fill knowledge gaps
Schedule training
-Take individual group's administrators, developers, testers, etc. and combine into a center of excellence team

9. 4. Prepare for Excellence
Consolidating the team that supports CIS is a first step to creating a Center of Excellence (COE)
Evangelize data virtualization internally through tech talks, brown bag lunches, project planning meetings, etc.
Perform proof of concept (POC) activities for internal projects
Loan a data virtualization developer to other projects
Support and maintain the CIS infrastructure
Perform code deployments
Facilitate regression, performance, and functional testing practices

10. 5. Drive Toward Enterprise Data Models
Evaluate DV artifacts versus desired enterprise end-state
Physical, business, application, and published layer best practices
Enterprise canonical data models, common (shareable) objects
Plan for desired end-state
Identify required changes to existing artifacts
Identify new (less project-centric) resource organization
Set go-forward modeling policies and best practice processes
Execute migration and reorganization
Develop, test, and migrate specific artifacts
Studio makes it easy to cut and paste resources into a new organization
-Project level folders need to be reorganized into an enterprise structure
-Align to organizational structure
-Line of business / business unit / team / project
-Lending
-Credit Cards
-Mortgage
-Risk
-Market
-Wholesale
-Consider creating a common area for data source connections, control access with security -

11. 6. Evaluate Security Structure
Across my enterprise, what security for DV has been put in place?
LDAP / AD vs. Composite domain security
Groups, users, and group membership
Plan for a new security structure
Centralize in LDAP / AD, standardize group / service account names
Map existing users, groups, etc. to new standardized groups
Process for requesting group membership
Execute a re-structure
Move existing users / groups to new security structure
Update privilege / rights assignments in CIS

12. 6. Evaluate Security Structure
Privilege assignment can become messy
Who can access what resources?
Who may modify what resources?
Need to satisfy security audits
Centralize group / user privilege assignments
Maintain mappings in a database or spreadsheet
Use SQL Scripts to automatically apply privileges to resources
-Centralizing mappings allows at-a-glance auditing
-Centralizing assignment of privileges means that no unintended / unmapped privileges are assigned, removes responsibility from developers and admins

13. 7. Evaluate Testing Practices
Across my enterprise, how do I certify a resource or release?
One-off testing, eyeballing, side-by-side comparison
Implement a new testing practice
Some of the above is useful, some is dangerous!
Use industry-standard tools, such as JMeter, to perform automated regression testing, performance testing, etc.
-Centralizing mappings allows at-a-glance auditing
-Centralizing assignment of privileges means that no unintended / unmapped privileges are assigned, removes responsibility from developers and admins

14. 8. Reconsider Deployment Strategy
Across my enterprise, what deployment strategies / tools are used?
CAR files / PDTool / CI tools
Plan for a new deployment strategy
Centralize deployments if possible
Publish deployment schedule
Use Deployment Manager to simplify the deployment process
Execute a new deployment strategy
Create bundles and plans in DM
Execute deployments as requested or required

15. 9. Establish a Sandbox We all like to play!
Internal POC's
Learning about new features
Trying new approaches
Testing upgrades or hotfixes
Using Discovery
Reproducing issues in project code, or base product
Sandbox environment is critical
DEV is DEV; not a playground!
Implement a Sandbox to separate experimentation from development

16. 10. Work Collaboratively Approach your team as a team
Include all stakeholders at each step, and meet regularly
Track issues, resolutions, internally using JIRA or another tool
Each team member should register at Cisco.com, and use the CAC portal, support knowledge base, SCM, and DV Café
Centralize DV documentation on SharePoint, network drive, etc.
Create internal mailing lists for help, sharing tips, reporting issues, downtime notifications, deployment schedules, etc.

17. 11. Enable Self-Service The self-service revolution is here!
Install and configure Business Directory so business users, developers, analysts, and architects can discover and request access to existing resources, suggest modifications, etc.
Evaluate Cisco Data Preparation to enable business analysts to do additional “last-mile” data tweaking and refinement
Hook up additional self-service tools such as Tableau or Spotfire to let users drive trending and analysis

18. 12. Challenge the Status Quo
Be agile!
The business needs you to be agile, and Cisco's DV platform enables agility
Be light on process, heavy on innovation

19. Conclusion Requires vision, sponsorship, leadership, and investment
It seems daunting, but with careful planning, the benefits appear almost immediately
Cisco is your partner
Take advantage of enterprise-scale features in the latest releases
Optimize use of Customer Advisory Community and Support
Gain further leverage with Advanced Services and Technical Account Manager

21. Technical Account Manager (TAM) Overview
Customer advocate, single point of contact assigned specifically to your account
Expert in data virtualization solutions and data center technologies
Provides customized, high-touch, proactive technical support

22. Value and Benefits
A TAM’s role as the single point of contact is the most compelling value
Increased operational efficiency
Faster time to resolution on support cases
Proactive issue identification and risk avoidance
Increased up-time of data virtualization systems and applications
Lower TCO
Increased ROI