Provided by: VMware, Inc.

Application Focus: Server Consolidation                            Industry Focus: Industrial/Manufacturing

The company was experiencing growing pains, says Ng Sun Hock, DENSO's general manager of Information Systems. "Today, we support more than 500 end users, which is twice as many users as we had five years ago," Ng says "As our business requirements grew, we found it increasingly challenging to manage our server numbers. Every new business application requires its own dedicated server. We expect IT requirements to double again in the near future as we roll out new applications to support our business."

The company turned to VMware ESX Server and IBM HS20 blade servers to achieve 3 to 1 server consolidation, to get faster server provisioning and application testing improvements, instant cost savings, and better disaster recovery and business continuity.
 

Blade server PRODUCTS linked to this case study

IBM BladeCenter remains an innovative solution to running business solutions. IBM BladeCenter builds on the IBM commitment to integrating server, storage and networking functionality with technology exchange and heterogeneous management. IBM BladeCenter offers the ease, density, availability, affordability, and scalability that are central to the blade technology promise.

Blade servers have captured industry focus because of their modular design, which can reduce cost with a more efficient use of valuable floor space, and its simplified management, which can help to speed up such tasks as deploying, reprovisioning, updating, and troubleshooting hundreds of blade servers. In addition, blade servers provide improved performance by doubling current rack density. By integrating resources and sharing key components, not only will costs be reduced but also availability will be increased.
 

Start Achieving the Benefits of Virtualization

• ESX Server installs on the “bare metal” and allows multiple unmodified operating systems and their applications to run in virtual machines that share physical resources.
• Each virtual machine represents a complete system, with processors, memory, networking, storage and BIOS.
• Advanced resource allocation policies for virtual machines allow you to guarantee resources to even your most resource-intensive applications.

Click to download tutorial "Configuring and Installing IBM BladeCenter".

Click to download document "VMware ESX 2.1 NIC Bonding and VLANs On BladeCenter HS20".
 

Other Blade server-oriented Case Studies from this company

When one client wanted to migrate 128 production servers plus 43 development and test servers from Chicago to VTL's headquarters in Montreal in two months, the VTL technical staff knew it would be a challenge. They were able to migrate 171 servers from Chicago to Montreal in seven weeks with VMware software.
 

CCBC is currently running ESX Server on an IBM BladeCenter with 14 HS20 server blades and is expanding their deployment to a second BladeCenter with seven HS80 blades. The HS20s are connected to a storage area network (SAN) with IBM TotalStorage “Shark” Enterprise Storage Server and an IBM TotalStorage DS4100 SAN array. Thus far, the ESX Server implementation has provided benefits beyond the IT group’s initial expectations.
 

In October 2004, Bell Canada began an initiative to provide desktop solutions at reduced costs . With 8,000 call center agents, Bell Canada faced hardware attrition and rising costs. Streamlining systems, facilitating outsourcing and increasing capabilities to telecommute would reduce costs while improving service. This would require creating customized workstations for users.

After successfully deploying 400 desktops for a remote call center, the company has grown the solution and is now hosting 1800 virtual support desktops.
 

Other Blade server-oriented SOLUTIONS from this company

To contain costs while growing their data centers, IT managers are consolidating computing resources into a smaller number of physical and logical components and working to automate resource allocation, application deployment and server management. Server consolidation using IBM BladeCenter™ and VMware® Infrastructure addresses the high-level architecture and opportunities created by combining IBM BladeCenter and VMware Infrastructure as complementary technologies to deliver maximum server consolidation.

VMware Infrastructure and IBM BladeCenter together provide a solid foundation for building dynamic, automated and self-optimizing data centers, delivering the highest levels of performance, scalability, robustness and security required for mission critical IT environments.

In one customer success story, this solution was employed to streamlines the computing infrastructure of Community College of Baltimore County via Faster Deployments and Improved Hardware Manageability

Virtualization was particularly intriguing, said a college official, because CCBC was in the midst of migrating to an IBM BladeCenter? system featuring IBM HS20 servers. By themselves, the blades would ultimately allow CCBC to run 14 server blades in the space previously required by just two full-size servers. Combined with a virtualization strategy, however, the BladeCenter could accommodate the power of 70 virtual servers in a single rack. For an organization intent on building efficiency, this was a dream scenario.

VMware Infrastructure and IBM BladeCenter together provide a solid foundation for building dynamic, automated and self-optimizing data centers, delivering the highest levels of performance, scalability, robustness and security required for mission critical IT environments. It is the flexibility provided by VMware Infrastructure 3 that offers solutions for the highest level and availability of IT services. After a VMware virtualization deployment, nurses have noted improved performance levels and no longer have systems that are down due to maintenance.

No one vendor can claim to have a total solution to securing access to data and patient records, but talking about challenges for healthcare without mentioning this issue would be irresponsible. It is a daunting task with many unknowns such as legal regulation and standards, the uncertainties of which drive perpetual change. The costs will be high and it is unclear who should bear the burden. Yet, IT can not just say, “wait until it’s all figured out.”

Virtual infrastructure can help give you the agility and cost controls that will better enable you to successfully execute and manage change.

VMware has a considerable customer base in healthcare, including service providers, pharmaceutical and equipment manufacturers and insurance. Our healthcare service customers range from regional hospitals to large government health and safety organizations. These customers all reference cost savings, high utilization rates, efficient staff management and zero downtime. This is a strategic investment that you can be confident about.

This infrastructure solution can be deployed on an x86 based BladeCenter server in any geography. The target market is the entire healthcare IT market.
 

With respect to disaster recovery, having a duplicate datacenter is a costly insurance policy. And building a datacenter from scratch in the event of great damage or destruction can take weeks. Even provisioning one new server or PCs that is required to support the emergency response staff can take hours. And your existing systems will be strained with the sudden increase in throughput. Few articles reflected the sleepless nights that IT organizations put in after Katrina to add services and scale IT capabilities to ensure emergency workers had 24 x 7 access.

VMware virtualization can ease your pain with respect to these problems. As a low cost solution to disaster recovery, you can store copies of your virtual machines—all configured, tested and ready to deploy. Should a disaster require you to rely on a secondary datacenter or rebuild damaged systems, you can copy VMs to any x86 hardware and reestablish service within minutes.

For those who require a duplicate datacenter, the partitioning capabilities allow you to deploy a datacenter with a tenth of the physical servers you need without virtualization. Many of our customers build a secondary site with ZERO additional dollars for hardware by using the decommissioned servers from when they consolidate and virtualize the primary data center.

VMware virtualization also allows you to move a VM while running from one piece of hardware to another, giving you the ability to scale and manage peak loads without the cost of idle hardware. You can even automate the load balancing and server utilization for 100% uptime.

When was the last time you tested your disaster recovery plan? Perhaps never? Testing of DR systems is yet another challenge. Your choice is to throw money at the problem for duplicate equipment that may never be used or have large chunks of downtime for testing. By combining these use cases---utilizing decommissioned hardware, rapidly provisioning and moving flexibility of movement---you can fully test your DR systems without disruption to operations.

Virtualization works for desktop recovery in much the same way and you have two ways to deploy virtual desktops—on-line or off-line. If you need to equip a large number of people with PCs you can copy a virtual desktop that is preconfigured with software, OS and hardware to any x86 PC. This will save you hours for each system. In the even of a pandemic, staff can not go into the office to work on PCs and handing out laptops does not resolve your issue of contact. With VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) you enable on-line access to an individual desktop that remains behind the firewall. Each person has their own desktop that functions just like the one at their office, and may in fact be a backup of their desktop depending on your backup policies. Not only do you provide the needed access, but you maintain tight control and security over sensitive data.

VMware has considerable experience in the public sector. In addition to large federal deployments, we’ve worked with States like Florida, Delaware and Montana. Operations include transportation, water, and city/state operations. These customers all reference cost savings, high utilization rates, efficient staff management and zero downtime. This is a strategic investment that you can be confident about.