“Consolidating servers with Hyper-V and advances in hardware have reduced our power consumption per server by more than 50 percent.”

Mohamed Eid Metwally, Chief Network Engineer, Cairo Oil Refinery Company

Cairo Oil Refining Company wanted to reduce network costs and increase efficiency. It deployed Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V™ virtualization technology to convert several physical servers to virtual machines running on a single high-performance physical server. This solution significantly reduced hardware costs, power consumption, and administration time, and helped improve employee efficiency.

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published November 2008


Business Needs

To remain competitive, oil refining companies constantly focus on increasing efficiencies and reducing costs. Following that strategy, Cairo Oil Refining Company (CORC) turned its attention to its network computing infrastructure.

In 2006, CORC had 10 server computers at its headquarters in Mostorod, Egypt, and 2 more at its branch in Tanta, Egypt. In Mostorod, the servers ran Windows Server® 2003 and earlier Windows Server operating systems. These servers included two e-mail servers (running Lotus Notes), two database servers (one running Microsoft® SQL Server® data management software and the other running Oracle), two domain controllers, a Web server, a portal server, and file and print servers.

The servers averaged about 30 percent utilization, and the company was planning to replace them in 2009. “We wanted to increase utilization; reduce hardware and IT management, support, and maintenance costs; reduce power consumption; and increase performance and accessibility for our users,” says Mohamed Eid Metwally, Chief Network Engineer for Cairo Oil Refinery Company.

CORC employees used approximately 300 workstations to access business applications on the IBM AS 400 system. These workstations ran Windows® 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista® operating systems and Microsoft Office suite versions from Microsoft Office 97 to the 2007 Microsoft Office system. CORC wanted to minimize desktop hardware costs and simplify management and support while improving access to business applications.

Solution

The company decided that to increase utilization and performance it would convert physical servers to virtual servers on new hardware. CORC had been using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and VMware ESX in the test lab for several years. But with the release of the Windows Server 2008 operating system with Hyper-V™ virtualization technology, Metwally saw the opportunity to increase application support, performance, and manageability by extending the virtual environment to production.

CORC set up Windows Server 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V on a new Dell PowerEdge 2900 server with dual quad-core Intel Xeon processors, 16 gigabytes of RAM, and a 1-terabyte hard drive. The IT group converted five physical servers to virtual servers on the new hardware. These included a backup domain controller running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, an Oracle database running on Microsoft Windows NT® Server 3.5, a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database running on Windows 2000 Advanced Server, an e-mail server running Lotus Notes, and a Web server running IBM WebSphere. The process took seven working days.

CORC also configured a virtual server running Citrix Presentation Server 5.0 on Windows Server 2003 to publish Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003 to Windows Embedded–powered HP and Wyse thin clients. CORC is implementing Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) architecture and Hyper-V so that users can access business applications on the AS 400 through the thin clients. The remaining physical servers at both headquarters and the Tanta branch will be converted to virtual machines on Hyper-V.

On a second high-end server running Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, CORC built two virtual machines that run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and provide a virtual private network connection between CORC headquarters and the Tanta branch.

Benefits

By deploying Windows Server 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V technology, CORC is reducing costs and improving performance. Specifically, this solution:

n  Saves more than 60 percent on server hardware and maintenance costs. By consolidating six standard physical servers onto one high-capacity server, CORC reduced hardware purchase costs by 60 percent and reduced annual support costs by 80 percent.

n  Increases efficiency. With the new high-performance server computers and 64-bit support in Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V technology, CORC employees access applications and perform tasks faster. “Within a few days of migrating the databases to Hyper-V–based virtual machines, I got feedback from database users that they were getting two to three times the performance of the previous system,” says Metwally.

n  Reduces administration time by 50 percent. Shortly after converting the first five servers to virtual machines, CORC saw a 50 percent reduction in the time required for daily administration. Backup time has decreased by 65 percent because there are fewer physical servers to back up and because the new hardware offers faster performance.

n  Cuts power consumption in half. “Consolidating servers with Hyper-V and advances in hardware have reduced our power consumption per server by more than 50 percent,” says Metwally. That saves about 87,600 kWh per year and means CORC can purchase fewer and less powerful uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices, which further lowers costs.

Windows Server 2008

Windows Server 2008, with built-in Web and virtualization technologies, enables you to increase the reliability and flexibility of your server infrastructure. New virtualization tools, Web resources, and security enhancements help you save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and optimized data center. Powerful new tools like IIS 7.0, Server Manager, and Windows PowerShell™ allow you to have more control over your servers and streamline Web, configuration, and management tasks. Advanced security and reliability enhancements like Network Access Protection and the Read-Only Domain Controller option for Active Directory® Domain Services harden the operating system and help protect your server environment to ensure that you have a solid foundation on which to build your business.

For more information, go to:

www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published November 2008