CASE STUDY | TSP

CONNECTING ARCHITECTS & ENGINEERS ACROSS MULTIPLE OFFICES

Migrating to NVIDIA GRID™ technology with NVIDIA GRID vGPU™ support allows seamless collaboration between multiple offices and client locations.

TSP relies on NVIDIA GRID technology to deliver seamless remote access to 2D and 3D applications to users in multiple offices and beyond.

GRID CASE STUDY | TSP | CONNECTING ARCH

AT A GLANCE

CUSTOMER PROFILE

Company: TSP

Industry: Architecture and Engineering

Locations: Eight offices in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming

Size: 120 employees

SUMMARY

> Architecture and engineering firm in the upper Midwest with eight offices

> Centralized data for version control led to unacceptably long model load times

> Built out a VDI deployment using NVIDIA GRID K1 technology

> Remote users have workstation-like performance from any location

> Simplified partnership with external firm

SOFTWARE

Hypervisor: VMware vSphere

Desktop and Application Remoting: VMware Horizon

Key Applications: Autodesk AutoCAD and Revit, Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator), general office applications

HARDWARE

NVIDIA GRID Boards: K1

Servers: Three Dell PowerEdge R720 an done Cisco C240 M4

Clients: Various desktop, laptop, and mobile devices

TSP is an architectural and engineering (AE) firm headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with seven satellite offices located in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The firm was founded by Harold Spitznagel in 1930, when one’s word was a bond and a handshake was as good as a contract. The company grew by acquiring other architectural firms with similar values and ways of doing business, making TSP stronger through deeper capabilities while still remaining close to the communities around each office. The spirit of the handshake and the “word as bond” remains alive and well in the modern era of written agreements. Spitznagel’s philosophy of designing projects like one owns them continues to influence what TSP does for their clients.

CHALLENGE

TSP currently has eight offices spread across five states in the upper Midwest region. Each office includes engineers and design professionals who need access to applications such as Autodesk Revit and AutoCAD, Adobe® Creative Suite® (InDesign®, Photoshop®, and Illustrator®), and other office applications. Multiple offices routinely collaborate on individual projects, and the firm also works with external partners that include other design firms, contractors, and specialty firms. Robust version control was therefore essential for productivity and quality. This spurred the company to transfer project files from local workstations to the datacenter, which also improved disaster recovery capabilities. Before virtualization, teams in the satellite offices launched applications on their local workstations and loaded models from the datacenter using T1 lines equipped with Riverbed network accelerators.

“This system was great for collaboration, version control, and disaster recovery, but the files kept getting larger and larger,” explained David Lokke, IT Manager for TSP. “We had people waiting up to 45 minutes for a model to open, and that was just not acceptable. We had been using virtual machines for some time but had never experimented with virtualizing the desktops. We implemented a pilot VDI deployment and solved the model opening time problem; however, actually using the models was practically impossible because the system lacked graphics

ITECTS & ENGINEERS ACROSS MULTIPLE OFFICES

GRID CASE STUDY | TSP | CONNECTING ARCH

REASONS FOR GRID

1 Workstation-class graphics performance from any office.

2 Rapid scalability to partner with external firms.

3 Full BYOD support from any office, home, client, or job location.

4 Long term cost savings versus replacing individual workstations.

5 Greatly simplified IT management and maintenance.

acceleration. There was talk of reverting to our previous decentralized model and putting up with the version control challenges.”

TSP attended a Revit conference in 2012 and learned that they could use NVIDIA GRID technology with vSGA to handle graphics acceleration. They purchased GRID K1 cards and rolled out VDI. This solution solved the problems until a new version of Revit came out that did not support vSGA.

SOLUTION

At VMworld 2013, TSP learned about testing then underway to pass the GPU drivers directly to the virtual machines, which would resolve the compatibility issues. Together with Design Technology Manager Jason Nelson, Lokke convinced management to build a beta system using this new technology. The beta was so successful that the number of users quickly overran the available resources. Additional servers and NVIDIA GRID K1 cards were purchased and pressed into service as quickly as possible.

The current GRID-enabled deployment at TSP consists of three Dell PowerEdge R720 servers and a Cisco C240 M4 server with two NVIDIA GRID K1 cards per server and SD cards for fast storage. VMware was already in use at the datacenter, so the new VDI deployment was built on VMware vSphere as the hypervisor with VMware Horizon handling virtual desktop delivery. Adding Horizon to the existing VMware deployment was fast and easy.

“We had some pushback from people who were attached to their personal workstations, but they came around as soon they saw how well NVIDIA GRID technology performed,” Lokke continued. “The GRID-enabled VDI gave us the best of all worlds: collaboration, version control, better disaster recovery and security, fast model load times, and performance on par with our best workstations if not better.”

ITECTS & ENGINEERS ACROSS MULTIPLE OFFICES

GRID CASE STUDY | TSP | CONNECTING ARCH

We had people waiting up to 45 minutes for a model to open, and that was just not acceptable. We had been using virtual machines for some time but had never experimented with virtualizing the desktops. We implemented a pilot VDI deployment and solved the model opening time problem; however, actually using the models was practically impossible because the system lacked graphics acceleration.

David LokkeIT ManagerTSP

TSP created five desktop pools. The general office and AIA (Owner/Architect Agreement) teams use the K120Q vGPU profile with 512MB of video RAM, and the higher-end architect pools use the K140Q profile that allocates 1GB of RAM to each user. Ninety of the 120 people at TSP are currently using the GRID-enabled VDI, and the remaining 30 people are being switched over in the near future. When that happens, TSP will be completely migrated to virtual desktops.

A few issues were experienced during the migration. Chief among these was a memory leak that forced weekly server reboots, but this problem was quickly resolved in time for the beta expansion. Users access virtual desktops using a wide variety of company and personal desktop, laptop, and mobile devices.

“Marrying hardware, network, and software into a cohesive system that works was imperative,” added Trygve G. Fredrickson, Principal and CFO at TSP. “There is some cost savings from moving the graphics horsepower to the datacenter because we can issue relatively inexpensive laptops for our professionals to take on the road, so long as they have connectivity. Cost wise, we anticipate long-term savings by reducing the number of software licenses we need along with increased productivity, but this is secondary to our need to collaborate across multiple internal and strategic partner locations. One key bit of anecdotal evidence is that Mr. Lokke was able to take a week off recently, something that was literally impossible 18 months ago.”

RESULTS

“Our users love the GRID-enabled VDI system,” said Lokke. “Support calls are virtually nonexistent, and in my field, no news is good news. From an IT perspective, I’ve replaced all of the T1s with cable modems at our satellite offices, and they are working just fine. Performance is as good as our previous workstations if not better. We don’t officially support BYOD, but our people love being able to access applications and data on their personal devices from the office, home, or on the road. We’re also using tablets to deliver presentations at client locations using live data. Going forward, we’re looking at a new program for construction administration that we can use from job sites.”

ITECTS & ENGINEERS ACROSS MULTIPLE OFFICES

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One key bit of anecdotal evidence is that Mr. Lokke was able to take a week off recently, something that was literally impossible 18 months ago.

Trygve G. FredricksonPrincipal and CFOTSP

Centralizing the servers and data has yielded other benefits as well. Applying upgrades and patches can be done once for each pool within minutes. Field service calls, such as a hard drive failure in a remote office that could require a full day’s drive—each way—to resolve are a thing of the past. Equipment failures at remote offices have no impact on productivity or data integrity because data and applications no longer reside in those offices. A dedicated disaster recovery circuit to a secondary datacenter protects against any centralized failures.

TSP also has a longstanding partnership with RPA Design in Charlotte, North Carolina, which specializes in healthcare-related projects. The two firms help each other by referring business back and forth and through collaboration on some projects. Adding RPA personnel to a shared project with TSP is as easy as creating a new desktop pool and making sure the applications are properly licensed—a procedure that can be completed within about two hours.

“My original workstation worked well but I could not work remotely,” added Emma Wey, Architectural Graduate at TSP. “The first iteration of virtualization was very slow and limited me to about 70% productivity, but the GRID upgrade changed all that. Today, I can use a laptop to access the virtual machines from home or anywhere I happen to be with full performance. Revit is just as fast on the GRID-enabled virtual machines as it was on my previous workstation. There is still some tweaking going on to make AutoCAD run faster, and there was a period where the virtual machine would randomly shut down for no reason and force me to log back in. Accessing the virtual machine is an extra step that I didn’t have to take before, but the convenience, performance, and flexibility are well worth it and it keeps getting better and better.”

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