“Our original plan for an upgraded computer room would have cost £150,000, so we’ve saved around £80,000 by adopting Microsoft virtualisation software.”

Rod Adam, IT Team Leader, Server Management Team, East Lothian Council

The IT team at East Lothian Council needed to expand its existing hardware capacity, but wanted to avoid the cost of a major computer room upgrade. It also aimed to reduce electricity consumption. By deploying the Windows Server® 2008 R2 operating system with integrated Hyper-V™ virtualisation technology, the council has saved £80,000 compared with the cost of an upgraded computer room, and significantly reduced its carbon footprint.


Business Needs

East Lothian is one of 32 unitary council areas in Scotland, United Kingdom (U.K.), bordering the City of Edinburgh, Scottish Borders, and Midlothian. Its administrative centre is Haddington, where the IT team plays a critical role supporting council departments, schools, and online services used by the public.

Over the years, the team has deployed about 200 servers with a variety of applications. Most were running Windows Server 2003 and although the technology served the council well, the IT team faced one unavoidable challenge. Rod Adam, IT Team Leader, Server Management Team, East Lothian Council, explains: “When we projected our future requirements for the council, it became clear that we would soon outgrow our existing computer room—we didn’t have enough power or generator capacity. In addition, we lacked a powerful enough air conditioning system, which would keep the room at a manageable temperature.”

At the same time, Adam was concerned about the team’s ability to support the council’s carbon dioxide emission targets. The U.K. government has pledged to reduce carbon dioxide from its own buildings and transport by 12.5 per cent by 2012 compared with 1999 levels. He says: “When we originally spoke to our energy supplier about our projected requirements, it confirmed that this could potentially double electricity consumption at council headquarters.”

Although a budget of about £150,000 had been allocated for the upgraded computer facilities, Adam became increasingly convinced that wholesale virtualisation of the datacentre was a better way to address these issues. A few servers were already running Windows Server 2008, which included the first version of Hyper-V virtualisation technology. “We were impressed, but at the time we were unsure about whether it could deliver all the functionality we needed,” says Adam.

Solution

At the start of 2009, the council issued a tender, inviting suppliers to propose a virtualised computing environment that would remove the need to invest in an upgraded computer room. A number of organisations responded and Adam and his team had to decide between proposals including VMware ESX server, and another from systems integrator and Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Charteris, which was based on Windows Server 2008 R2.

When Adam spoke to Charteris, he realised that the latest version of the Microsoft operating system more than matched the council’s requirements. “We were particularly impressed by the Live Migration feature,” says Adam. “It means that you can move one virtual machine to another without taking it down.”

With all the functionality included in the cost of a Windows Server 2008 R2 upgrade, Adam had little doubt about the next steps and agreed the contract with Charteris. By mid-2009, the systems integrator had completed a proof of concept, and, in October of the same year, it deployed a four-server cluster running Windows Server 2008 R2. In addition, Charteris configured the existing storage area network (SAN) to support the entire virtualised environment.

Scott Calder, Technical Consultant at Charteris, says: “There’s no question that from a manageability and price–performance perspective, Windows Server 2008 R2 is the ideal choice for existing Microsoft customers who want to take advantage of virtualisation.”

Adam says: “With the inclusion of Live Migration, we believe that Microsoft virtualisation technology has come of age. We were confident selecting it rather than technology from a specialist supplier. We also have confidence that Microsoft will fully back future, affordable releases of the software so we’ll always be working with the latest virtualisation concepts.”

Benefits

The deployment of Microsoft virtualisation technology has generated enormous hardware and infrastructure savings. It is also helping to reduce the council’s carbon dioxide emissions. Says Adam: “Hyper-V helps us to meet budgetary targets and reduce our carbon footprint, which means that we can continue to deliver outstanding value to our internal customers as well as the citizens of East Lothian. It also provides us with a strategic platform for future server and application deployments.”

  • Cuts computer room costs by £80,000. The cost of hardware, SAN technology, consulting, and software comes to £70,000. “Our original plan for an upgraded computer room would have cost £150,000 so we’ve saved around £80,000 by adopting Microsoft virtualisation software,” says Adam.
  • Saves 90 per cent in initial hardware costs. Adam says: “We will migrate most applications to four new servers, which will each run approximately 12 virtual machines. The virtualised capacity is 90 per cent less expensive to acquire than the physical machines that they replace.”
  • Supports future hardware savings. “If we needed to increase capacity by 50 per cent, two new physical servers running 25 virtual machines would cost about £10,000. The same number of physical servers would cost £75,000,” says Adam.
  • Reduces server deployment time by 75 per cent. It now takes Adam’s team just 30 minutes to provision a virtual server. “Setting up a physical server used to take two hours—up to four weeks if you factor in procurement and delivery,” says Adam.
  • Increases business agility. As long as a virtual machine is available, an application can be deployed in a matter of days or less. Adam says: “We now have capacity to provision virtual servers for new applications, which means we can respond more quickly to our internal customers.”