As in many other enterprises, Cisco dominates Life Time's network infrastructure, supplying routers, PIX firewalls, Catalyst switches and the VoIP system. But Life Time is veering a bit off the beaten path by using open-source Squid Web proxy cache software running on FreeBSD instead of Cisco's content-delivery solutions.
Jud McKee, director of network operations, and Eric Edgar, systems engineer for Life Time Fitness, says that to maintain control over a growing infrastructure, strong server administration and build processes were critical. Because Solaris and FreeBSD dominate the server population, open-source software seemed a perfect fit. The solution was Cfengine, which helped automate the server administration and rebuild of the Sun server environment to the point that "we can rebuild a server in less than one hour," Edgar says.
As MMS gained acceptance within Life Time, the need for a testing and quality-assurance infrastructure led to the creation of Testworld, an environment that emulates the production MMS system.
People Who Need People
Life Time's IT department now has a staff of 48 people, comprising four main parts: operations, software, project management and administration. The well-defined roles of the technology teams is impressive, especially when you consider that none of it existed a few years ago. We've seen many start-ups forego structure when in high-growth mode, leading to flat organizations with no clear reporting responsibilities and weak role definition. That model does work--for a while. Then things start to unravel. But Life Time created an IT organization that provides logical career paths for its employees and should be able to scale as the company pursues its 50 percent per year growth goal.
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Nice Fit
Thank goodness for open source. IT standardized on Cfengine to configure and manage Life Time's Unix servers, allowing for a complete server rebuild in about an hour. Who GNU?
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In the near future, however, scaling won't be an issue: A hiring freeze has been placed on the IT organization as the company prepares for continued facility growth and an anticipated IPO. Increasing efficiency has become the main focus. Streamlining project-request processes has helped better track line-of-business initiatives that require IT's help (for more on the decision-making process, see "Where the Gloves Come Off").
The Sky's the Limit
Despite the hiring freeze, Life Time IT has a full project list that keeps growing to keep pace with the expansion of the company. One concern: The selection of a Siebel CRM system will strain the current infrastructure and raise MMS integration issues. Installing the CRM application outside the corporate offices will require a complete assessment of the club server and network infrastructure.
To help future application rollouts to the clubs, Life Time is rebuilding its WAN topology, looking to do frame-link consolidation at strategic geographic termination points, thus pulling them back to corporate via larger bandwidth links. Life Time says this change should cut costs and allow for easier provisioning of new club WAN services. That's critical because the company plans to add six clubs per year.
McKee is evaluating QoS software to help prioritize critical business traffic coming from the club facilities. The products he is considering are software-based and would operate in conjunction with the Squid proxies at each club. The QoS and Siebel CRM projects represent the bulk of funded initiatives for the network operations group. But as is often the case, projects lacking formal funding are just as critical to the success of the IT organization and company as a whole. Strategic initiatives, such as antivirus software to the desktop, evaluation of dDOS (distributed denial of service) prevention technology, and creation of custom applications for the accounting and payroll departments, are creating serious challenges for an organization with a hiring freeze and fixed budget. Stay tuned for updates on how Life Time IT is keeping its infrastructure in top shape.
James Hutchinson is Network Computing's director of editorial content. Send your comments on this article to him at jhutchinson@nwc.com.
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