Customer Solution Case Study
/ Gas Provider in Yemen Meets Substantial Market Growth with Virtualisation
“With Hyper-V technology from Microsoft, server availability has increased by 70 per cent, helping us deliver better support to personnel.”
Yousef Aljaro, Head of Information Systems and Telecoms, Yemen LNG
With a major rise in gas consumption worldwide, Yemen LNG wanted to remain highly competitive. The firm needed to maximise employee productivity, so it launched a programme to improve its IT systems, focusing on virtualising the core server infrastructure with Hyper-V technology from Microsoft. Now, employees are more productive thanks to the virtualised network and servers are launched 90 per cent faster.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published August 2011
Business Needs
Yemen LNG, headquartered in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, produces and delivers liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe, the United States, and Asia. The company is entering a golden age in gas consumption as industries around the world move away from coal, regarding gas—alongside oil—as the most sought-after fuel for their energy needs. But a number of challenges lie ahead. Yemen LNG faces increasing competition from other suppliers in the market, as new gas fields are discovered and extraction becomes easier.
To remain competitive, Yemen LNG looked at ways to boost productivity. It became clear that the IT systems underpinning daily operations played a crucial role in maintaining efficiency across the firm. Even relatively short periods of downtime could have a large impact on basic business processes that were crucial to gas production and delivery. In addition, IT was an increasing overhead that could affect the company’s overall profitability if left unchecked.
The firm wanted to expand its use of server virtualisation to help boost productivity and lower IT costs. It already had success with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, which it deployed on a few servers when the software came to market, and began to assess how virtualisation technology had evolved. Yousef Aljaro, Head of Information Systems and Telecoms at Yemen LNG, says: “We were impressed with Virtual Server 2005 when it came onto the market, but virtualisation technology has come a long way since then—particularly in terms of manageability.”
The selection of technology was crucial because it would influence IT development for years to come. “We had to be sure that the virtualisation solution was right to support a global business with high expectations for its IT systems,” says Aljaro.
Solution
While studying virtualisation solutions such as Hyper-V technology and VMware, Yemen LNG engaged with long-standing IT partner Networld Systems. A leading Microsoft reseller in the local market, Networld Systems gave Aljaro guidance on Hyper-V technology as part of the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system and organised a demonstration at the Microsoft Technology Centre in Dubai. Aljaro says: “Two features stood out for us. Live Migration made it possible to perform maintenance on virtual hosts with zero downtime, and Cluster Shared Volumes ensured that storage was simple to control.”
After a detailed analysis of possible solutions, Yemen LNG chose Hyper-V for its virtualisation platform and proceeded to deploy the technology across the infrastructure. Implementation was completed by an internal IT team, led by Kevin Debono, System Architect for Yemen LNG. “Using our in-house Microsoft skills, we could deploy the technology without any issues. In addition, Networld Systems was available if we had any questions,” he says.
The Yemen LNG team created two virtual machine clusters with failover – one at the main datacentre in Sana’a and the other at a secondary site in Balhaf. Personnel migrated around 80 per cent of its physical servers to virtual machines, which now deliver key applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. Aljaro says: “Deployment went well and we made the transition to Hyper-V on time. We plan to virtualise more of our physical servers in the coming months.”
IT personnel now manage storage effectively and maintain the virtual machines without affecting availability. In short, it’s easier for them to ensure that the company’s IT systems are highly available to employees at all times. Aljaro says: “After the success of our Hyper-V rollout, we will proceed with a disaster recovery project, which will include virtualised standby servers at our main datacentre.”
Benefits
Yemen LNG can successfully compete in gas markets worldwide with the support of highly reliable IT solutions. Personnel can be more productive because servers and software are stable and quicker to install. Plus, the company now makes significant savings on IT, helping improve the business’s overall profitability.
- Personnel maximise productivity with 70 per cent higher server availability. Yemen LNG can meet the challenges of an increasingly competitive market because of the reliability of its IT systems. “With Hyper-V technology from Microsoft, server availability has increased by 70 per cent, helping us deliver better support to personnel,” says Aljaro.
- Employees gain new servers 90 per cent faster. When new software is required, IT administrators can react instantly, delivering the tools that staff need to be more productive. Aljaro says: “We no longer face long procurement cycles for server hardware, and we can launch a virtual machine 90 per cent faster than a physical server.”
- Yemen LNG benefits from more efficient IT. Because the company gains four free virtual machine licences with each Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise licence, it can scale the infrastructure cost effectively. “Over time, we expect to make significant savings,” says Aljaro.
- Company reduces IT energy use by more than 65 per cent. Yemen LNG has consolidated its hardware platform through virtualisation, and, as a result, cut energy use by more than 65 per cent. Aljaro says: “Apart from the savings, the energy reduction helps align IT more closely with the company’s policy on sustainability.”
- IT lowers cost of disaster recovery plan by 50 per cent. Aljaro says: “Thanks to Hyper-V, we’ve halved the hardware costs for our disaster recovery plan because we need to buy far fewer physical servers.”
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published August 2011