Customer Solution Case Study
/ Scottish Council Saves £100,000 in First Year by Virtualising Server Estate
Overview
Country or Region: Scotland
Industry: Local government
Customer Profile
Perth and Kinross Council is a unitary local authority in central Scotland providing local government services to a population of 140,000 who live in both rural and urban communities.
Business Situation
The council wanted to save money by halting server proliferation and reducing electricity consumption in its data centres while continuing to support e-government services delivery to citizens.
Solution
Charteris proposed that Perth and Kinross join the Microsoft Virtualisation Rapid Deployment Program using Windows Server® 2008 and Hyper-V™, a hypervisor-based virtualisation technology.
Benefits
n £100,000 saved in first year
n Sustainability targets met
n E-government service delivery improved
n Efficient proactive IT management
n Disaster risk reduced / “We will be reducing 111 physical servers to 17 virtualised servers and that will contribute greatly to reducing the burden of our IT infrastructure on the taxpayer.”
Ken Wilson, Application Services Manager, Perth and Kinross Council
Perth and Kinross Council wanted a more cost-effective delivery environment for its growing portfolio of citizen-centric services, some of which required multiple servers consuming large amounts of electricity. The council decided to evaluate a virtualisation strategy where multiple, software-based servers are stored on a single machine. It joined the rapid deployment programme for the Windows Server® 2008 operating system with Hyper-V™ technology for a clustered virtualisation solution spanning its two main sites. The council forecasts that in the first year it will save £100,000 (U.S.$152,000) compared to the cost of buying new physical servers. Its carbon footprint has improved with annual power savings of 350,000 kilowatt hours of electricity equating to an annual cost saving of £26,000 and 151 tonnes less in carbon dioxide emissions from April 2009.
Situation
Based in the city of Perth in central Scotland, Perth and Kinross Council provides local government services to 140,000 people in an economy dominated by small businesses, mainly in tourism, distilling, farming, and forestry. As a Scottish unitary authority, Perth and Kinross provides a full range of municipal services to its residents and visitors, spanning transportation, education, environment and leisure, and housing. The council employs around 5,000 people. The Accounts Commission in Scotland, the public spending watchdog, has praised the authority for effective leadership at both political and official level with a strong commitment to value for money for the taxpayer.
In 2003, Perth and Kinross migrated its network from Novell to the Windows Server® 2003 operating system and subsequently has run most of its business applications on Microsoft® software. However, with the council introducing even more e-government initiatives and Web-based transactional services to meet public expectations, the demands on the network and the operating costs were rising. These public-facing systems—such as for managing information about town planning applications, parking fines, and council tax payments—sometimes required the support of multiple servers. The data centres also manage infrastructure applications such as e-mail messaging, file and print, and domain controllers, as well as line-of-business and database management software.
Ken Wilson, Application Services Manager, Perth and Kinross Council, says: “We were facing complete overload in our existing data centres and the need to curb rising power consumption on cooling systems and electricity. If we could reduce the amount of power and cooling through server virtualisation, it would be good for sustainability, stop server proliferation, but also save taxpayer’s money on electricity bills.”
The council also carried out an asset management plan for its servers and knew that a large number of servers were due for replacement over the next few years. Wilson says: “We were wondering how to continue to expand our services without the expense of adding a new data centre and hiring more people. We also wanted to ensure we were using every existing system to its full potential.”
Perth and Kinross Council is highly focused on value for money in procurement. The councillors look for solutions that support the authority’s sustainability agenda and reduce the risks of failure in critical systems by improving disaster readiness. The council had set aside £230,000 (U.S.$349,500) annual capital for the 2008-09 financial year for server related hardware replacement, recognising that many of the existing servers were reaching the end of their life cycle. Virtualisation was an attractive and logical option to replacing like with like.
Wilson adds: “Nevertheless, our choice of virtualisation vendor was based on what was best for the council—it was a business decision and not just a technology one. We considered the latest virtualisation technology from VMware, but Microsoft was the preferred choice. Our approach is to stick, where possible, to tried and tested suppliers and even though the Microsoft product was the pre-release version, we know that Microsoft always delivers.”
Solution
In 2003, Perth and Kinross had worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Charteris on its infrastructure maximisation project to lower costs, improve quality of service, and boost agility across the council’s network. Steve Black, Head of IT Service Transformation, Charteris, says: “We approached Perth and Kinross because the authority was one of the leading deployers of Windows Server 2003. We knew the council’s IT people were quite positive about working with pre-release software. The opportunity had arisen for the council to enrol in the Microsoft Virtualisation Rapid Deployment Programme (RDP). It helped them to get where they wanted much quicker and at far less cost.”
By agreeing to join the RDP in early 2008, Perth and Kinross qualified for 20 free days of system integration consultancy work for its two main sites, paid for by Microsoft and Charteris. Indeed Black says the council only paid for 10 days out of 30 for the whole project. The first step was a proof of concept involving 20 virtualisation servers using the Windows Server 2008 operating system and Hyper-V™, a hypervisor-based virtualisation technology. The IT staff also used the integrated management features—including a single console—provided by Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to manage the virtualisation landscape and provide dynamic performance and resource optimisation of hardware.
Black says: “Perth and Kinross had a few apprehensions in adopting the technology, but the big winning factor for the council was that Microsoft was going to be involved in the project, so the council would have a lot of design input. The Microsoft involvement was a huge factor in the authority taking on the project. Microsoft consultants helped us with the best way to deploy functions such as Windows in cluster server mode.”
After the success of the pilot, Wilson is continuing with virtualisation of the remaining servers with a target to complete another 45 by March 2009, with the rest to follow over succeeding years as they need to be replaced. The goal is to have 90 physical servers taken out and also to close one data centre. Additionally, he plans to take advantage of the clustering and network load-balancing features in Windows Server 2008 to reduce operational risk and help the council manage downtime and quickly recover from unforeseen disasters.
Benefits
By adopting Microsoft virtualisation technology, the council has saved £100,000 from its capital budget and will make annual savings of 350,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. The power consumption reduction will produce revenue savings of £26,000 and 151 tonnes less in carbon dioxide emissions, contributing to the council’s sustainability targets from April 2009. Server proliferation has been slowed and one data centre can soon be closed. Disaster preparedness has improved and every system will be used to its full potential.
Council Saves £100,000 in First Year of Virtualisation Strategy
Virtualisation has delivered capital budget cost savings for the council estimated at around £100,000 in the first year to March 2009. Instead of spending £150,000 on new physical servers the IT team has spent a third of that amount—just £50,000—on virtualisation.
Other savings amounting to £40,000 will come from the reduced electricity consumption needed for new equipment and applications. Virtualisation will also result in the closure of one data centre after March 2009. Wilson says these projected savings are made up of £26,000 for the electricity costs and £14,000 for the data centre, including power for cooling systems.
“Hard savings in costs is our number one priority,” says Wilson. “To assess where we will benefit in the future is not quite so easy, but we will be reducing 111 physical servers to 17 virtualised servers and that will contribute greatly to reducing the burden of our IT infrastructure on the taxpayer. From now on, all applications will be considered for virtualisation.”
Councillors’ Sustainability Targets Boosted by Green IT Initiative
The authority is committed to reducing its carbon footprint by creating a more energy-efficient infrastructure and is already one of the leading Scottish local authorities for “green IT.” Wilson says: “The electricity consumption savings in the first year of virtualisation will deliver a reduction of 350,000 kilowatt hours of electricity equivalent to 151 tonnes in reduced carbon dioxide emissions. We are making a contribution to the councillors’ sustainability targets in three ways: by cutting the number of physical servers, lowering use of electricity, and reducing the need for air conditioning.”
E-Government Service Delivery Improves
By simplifying server management and freeing space in its data centres, the IT department can deploy additional servers more quickly to support more services for citizens. Wilson says: “Provisioning of servers can be done much more quickly in the new environment—what used to take days can be done in a few minutes.”
The council has also saved money and relieved concerns over reaching capacity. “Previously, our data centres were becoming completely over stretched, but soon we’ll be in a position to decommission one of them, saving £6,000 a year on cooling systems and £8,000 on the provision of an uninterrupted power supply,” says Wilson.
Hyper-V Helps Staff with Proactive Management of IT Assets
With Hyper-V and its new server management tools, the council is much better placed to proactively manage all its server assets. Black says: “Administration tasks within the virtual environment are far easier. And moving servers around different cluster nodes is simple.”
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 provides technicians with a centralised view of all virtual machines in the data centre landscape. This has helped ensure better business continuity for the council’s services. Wilson adds: “We have only had one failover so far and that was quickly rectified. We can make better use of our server resources without any disturbance to council employees. Specialised training also isn’t an issue with Microsoft technologies because we have plenty of skilled staff.”
Operational Risk of Disaster Reduced
Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V provide the council with a highly cost effective disaster recovery system and that will cut operational risk compared to before. And the need for standby servers held at disaster recovery sites has been reduced.
Wilson adds: “Senior managers bought into the case for virtualisation because they could see that the change had a sound business rationale and was not just about technology. Virtualisation is coming everywhere as councils struggle to cut costs and we wanted to be an early adopter. The timing was right and the solution is highly cost effective and scalable for our needs over the next two to three years.”
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx