Customer Solution Case Study
/ MGM MIRAGE Server Consolidation Beats a Full House
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Entertainment
Customer Profile
MGM MIRAGE owns and operates 11 casino resorts in Nevada, Mississippi, and Michigan. MGM MIRAGE is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, with 43,000 employees worldwide.
Business Situation
MGM MIRAGE needed to reduce the costs of purchasing and maintaining an increasing number of servers while improving manageability and providing future expandability.
Solution
MGM MIRAGE deployed clustered Unisys servers running Microsoft®Windows Server™ 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000. The servers support the organization’s enterprise application databases.
Benefits
Reduced operating costs
Simplified administration
Improved flexibility
Reduced implementation time
Improved scalability / “We realized that to implement an enterprise-wide SQL Server environment, we needed the power to run it—that’s when the 64-bit strategy became clear…. It would provide us a controlled path for growth."
Charles Shepard, Lead Systems Engineer, MGM MIRAGE
MGM MIRAGE, one of the world’s leading and most respected hotel and gaming companies, sought to reduce the associated costs of purchasing and maintaining an increasing number of servers by consolidating over 125 Microsoft® SQL Server™2000 databases while improving manageability and providing future expandability. MGM MIRAGE deployed two eight-processor Unisys ES7000 Aries Model 410 servers employing 1.3 gigahertz (GHz) Intel Itanium 2 processors and running in a Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Enterprise Edition and SQL Server 2000–based environment. The company eliminated 30 servers—with more to come—resulting in decreased costs. The consolidated environment improved the time-to-deployment for new applications. Finally, the transition to 64-bit technology has been problemfree and positions MGM MIRAGE to meet new and changing business needs.
Situation
The hospitality and gaming industry has always been highly competitive—requiring companies to continually improve its products with better accommodations, better entertainment, finer dining experiences, and better service for the consumer. The ante is being further “upped” by new competition, including Native American–run casinos, racetrack casinos, the Internet, and interactive television gambling. With so many choices available to consumers, MGM MIRAGE executives know the company must work hard to build loyalty and keep its customers coming back again and again.
MGM MIRAGE, one of the world’s leading and most respected hotel and gaming companies, owns and operates 11 casino resorts in Nevada, Mississippi, and Michigan. It also has investments in two others in Nevada and New Jersey. Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, with 43,000 employees worldwide, MGM MIRAGE is renowned for its unique destination properties designed to offer a total resort experience. The company’s focus is on providing unsurpassed service and amenities to its guests. Fostering diversity in all aspects of the company is a business imperative, and it is considered critical to the continued success and growth of MGM MIRAGE. By being the best at what it does, MGM MIRAGE provides opportunities for employees, serves the communities in which it operates, and maximizes value for shareholders.
At MGM MIRAGE, technology plays an important role behind the scenes—supporting employees as they deliver customer service that is second to none. MGM MIRAGE’s IT division prides itself on savvy use of technology. But as with many highly successful IT organizations, the focus at MGM MIRAGE is on technology to serve a business purpose—not just for technology’s sake. Laura Fucci, Chief Technology Officer at MGM MIRAGE, advises, “MGM MIRAGE’s IT organization is a clear business partner with the MGM MIRAGE business units, working together to select technologies that support the business strategies and ultimately enhance the guest experience.”
An important strategy at MGM MIRAGE has been the decision to standardize on the Microsoft® Windows Server System™ integrated server software environment. As more properties have been added and more applications deployed, MGM MIRAGE’s IT team has been able to benefit substantially from Microsoft products, particularly the Microsoft SQL Server™2000 enterprise data management system, part of Microsoft Windows Server System integrated server software.
By early 2003, MGM MIRAGE had over 125 SQL Server 2000 databases deployed on two- and four-processor commodity servers. Lee Margulin, Director of Database Administration, explains, “We have a variety of different applications that we implement here in a hotel and casino environment. That’s further multiplied by the number of different properties we support. We found ourselves in a situation where we were constantly buying new servers—and we were in a cycle of adding four or five servers a week.”
Server proliferation was costing the organization money and time—and making it tough for IT to be responsive to the needs of the business. Charles Shepard, Lead Systems Engineer, says, “We’re in a very unique and specialized business. So, when someone develops an application that works in our industry, we've got to be in a position to supply the infrastructure for that application. There often aren’t other alternatives.” In a “one-server-per-application” environment, getting the hardware in, configured, and ready for deployment adds to the time it takes to get new software applications up and running. The 64-bit architecture gave the IT team the ability to consolidate SQL Server–based applications, thereby reducing operating costs and improving agility.
Solution
One thing that sets MGM MIRAGE’s IT team apart from other IT organizations is its experience with 64-bit server platforms. Always a step ahead of the technology curve, MGM MIRAGE got its feet wet in the 64-bit arena with its player-loyalty tracking SQL Server database. The environment is a replication of the production database on a dedicated server to support reporting and analysis activities using SQL Server Query Analyzer and Cognos tools. As more properties were brought up on the solution in a clustered 32-bit environment, performance issues started to emerge. MGM MIRAGE consulted with Microsoft software experts who suggested using 64-bit technology for added power.
The company considered servers from various manufacturers—running benchmark tests on multiple platforms. MGM MIRAGE selected an Intel-based Unisys ES7000 Aries Model 410 server running the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, part of Microsoft Windows Server System integrated server software, and SQL Server 2000—largely because of Unisys technical consulting expertise. Performance improved 400 percent as a result of the more powerful server and Unisys recommendations for fine-tuning the hardware and SQL Server settings.
Given the positive first experience with 64-bit technology, MGM MIRAGE turned once again to Unisys and ES7000 servers to support its consolidation plans. IT staff had already begun the consolidation process by moving 60 databases onto a single, eight-processor, 32-bit server. But MGM MIRAGE needed to do much more consolidation and simplification—plus position the organization for future growth.
The MGM MIRAGE IT team decided to create an enterprise-wide SQL Server 2000–based system to house most of the organization’s SQL Server databases. It believed that a single environment would reduce costs, simplify administration, and decrease the time needed to deploy new applications. The right platform to support consolidation was a straightforward decision. Shepard explains, “We realized that to implement an enterprise-wide SQL Server environment, we needed the power to run it—and that’s when the 64-bit strategy became clear to us. It would provide us a controlled path for growth.”
MGM MIRAGE purchased two eight-processor ES7000 Orion 410 servers running Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition and SQL Server 2000. The Intel-based ES7000 platforms are clustered using Windows Server 2003 Clustering Services. There are six instances of SQL Server on the platform—four to support production SQL Server 2000 databases, one for archived applications and databases, and one dedicated to testing and training.
The MGM MIRAGE IT group migrated over 125 individual SQL Server 2000 databases to the clustered ES7000 64-bit enterprise servers in just 60 days. The process could not have been smoother. “Unisys kept waiting for us to call them up for assistance and we just kept rolling databases onto the new system,” Fucci further explains. “The consolidation process was very easy.”
Furthermore, there is plenty of room for growth on the new servers. Over 450 people use the enterprise-wide SQL Server system—and that number continues to increase as more databases are consolidated and new applications are implemented.
Benefits
The results at MGM MIRAGE are impressive. By consolidating 125 databases onto clustered ES7000 servers—with more coming on board every week—the company has eliminated close to 30 servers, and reduced server proliferation and the associated high maintenance costs. According to Fucci, this translates into cost savings from reduced support requirements, fewer software licenses, and reduced floor space and power consumption. The two ES7000 servers serve as a central point for administration—eliminating the complexity of overseeing 30 separate servers in multiple locations. And, the highly reliable platform delivers more uninterrupted access to information, which in turn improves overall productivity.
As new applications are deployed, MGM MIRAGE continues to realize benefits from the Intel-based ES7000 server and Windows Server 2003–based solution. Margulin notes, “The majority of our new applications utilize a SQL Server database. We can put those databases on our enterprise-wide SQL Server platform quickly and economically. That’s a very big benefit for us.” Shepard adds, “We haven't maxed-out anything yet—memory, services, input or output—anything. That's a great feeling because it means that we have plenty of room to expand.”
Fucci also cites the improved ability to respond to changing business needs as a big benefit of the project. She comments, “We’re reducing costs while improving agility at the same time. With our new environment, we’re able to implement new applications in 50 percent of the time it used to take.”
MGM MIRAGE is moving forward with a number of new initiatives to further improve its infrastructure. The company is planning to strengthen its business continuity plans by adding a third ES7000 server to its cluster—geographically separated from the original two servers. This approach offers an extra safeguard to operations when localized outages occur. Further deployments of 64-bit servers are planned as well.
Laura Fucci sums up the value of 64-bit servers to MGM MIRAGE, saying, “Our mission is to provide the best guest service that we can in a timely fashion with the least interruptions. The combined power of the Windows Server and Intel-based 64-bit architecture enables us to do that at a low cost through consolidation of systems.”
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System integrated server infrastructure software is designed to support end-to-end solutions built on the Windows Server operating system. Windows Server System creates an infrastructure based on integrated innovation, Microsoft's holistic approach to building products and solutions that are intrinsically designed to work together and interact seamlessly with other data and applications across your IT environment. This helps you reduce the costs of ongoing operations, deliver a more secure and reliable IT infrastructure, and drive valuable new capabilities for the future growth of your business.
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