Microsoft Virtualization: Data Center to DesktopCustomer Solution Case Study

Lays groundwork for resource sharing and standardization by

virtualizing 100% of system resources within university

OverviewCountry or Region: KoreaIndustry: EducationCustomer ProfileRed Cross College of Nursing, established in 1945, has focused on nursing education and was selected as a specialized business for the 10th consecutive year after starting specialized business sponsored by a nation in 1999.Business Situation16 task systems were not centrally managed and there was no full-time manpower which concentrated on IT. Maintenance to old systems was closed, resulting in adding difficulties for management.SolutioWith Hyper-V, it implemented the environment that enabled monitoring, security patch, management and failure recovery on one system image as well as maximizing resource usage.Benefits Reduces server management task Controls the entire server in single

window Minimizes service disconnection

according to failure Achieves green effect by streaming IT

department

“With virtualization, the point of management was reduced by over 8 times.

Owing to the tools that enable to clearly check and control the entire

infrastructure, it became much easier to manage systems, resulting in

checking CPU usage or event log every day in a simple way.”Suk-Man Kim, team lead of industry-university collaboration department

Red Cross College of Nursing(RCCN) attracted attention among university officials by virtualizing

the entire server resource that operated in its IT department. RCCN, which reformed the entire

task systems in 2002, operated a total of 17 systems including undergraduate school

administration, learning management and remote training. The systems were based on multi

platform environment such as Windows Server, Unix and Linux. After operating the systems,

RCCN faced a daunting challenge. It was not easy for only one manager who is in charge of both

IT and administration to operate multi platform. The difficulties added after closing support

period for old systems. When failure occurred in software, we had to recover it and when failure

occurred in hardware, it was not easy to replace them. The reason why to use systems over the

point of replacement was that there was no need for new systems in terms of resource usage and

performance. RCCN worked hard to approach all problems on the whole and found the answer in

‘Virtualization’ in 2010. It concluded that it would be efficient to virtualize and share all resources

considering of limited manpower and lower requirement on resource and performance. RCCN’s

prediction was right. In the second half of 2010, it became much easier to operate systems and

made it possible to support services with no single point of failure.

SituationSince established in 1945, RCCN has been walking a single path for nursing education. Its IT environment was no less than that of universities. As a specialized college in nursing education, the number of teaching staff and students is around 1,000. However, the requirement on undergraduate school administration and U-campus server was just like that of universities. The framework for RCCN’s IT environment was established in 2002.

In 2002, which is the time that university informationization became popular, RCCN laid groundwork for U-campus including learning management system, remote training and VOD. It had majority of systems needed for university even though the number of users was not many. However, RCCN was confronted with difficulties in operation.

Suk-Man Kim, team lead of industry-university collaboration department in RCCN, said, “As a result of introducing systems by each task in 2002, the number of management point was 17, which was not many. However, since we had no IT manpower, one manager had to control administration and IT task, adding difficulties. Also, the manager could not focus on only IT and we had to solve the problems after they occurred rather than finding failures in advance and responding them.”

The disadvantage of the way to solve the problem after they occurred was that there were possibilities to repeatedly occur similar problems because of focusing on returning them to the situation before the problems occurred rather than solving the

cause of failure. Kim mentioned, “Most of failure can be prevented by continuously enabling monitoring such as DDoS or outside hacking and path update. However, there is no enough time to login and check 17 systems every day because they were based on various operating systems such as Windows Server, Unix and Linux, not on SSO systems. Therefore, we introduced backup solution to minimize user inconvenience according to service failure by protecting data and reducing recovery time.”

By the late 2000s, RCCN faced the challenge which was simple but difficult to overcome. As the systems were getting old, maintenance and part replacement of systems had become concern. RCCN expected the time of usage to be 5 years. However, most of resources were being wasted considering the usage status of the systems. There was no reason to replace the systems because of performance or capacity shortage. Kim explained, “In general, CPU usage was below 10% and in the service traffic congestion such as the exam season announcing the results of the examinations. CPU usage was over 30%. Therefore, we delayed the replacement time and there were no big problems in operation such as lack of performance.

SolutionWhile Kim worried out to overcome the situation that hardware maintenance was not easy with lack of expertise, he found the answer to solve the problem. Kim said, “When I participated in the seminar held by the university education council for computer network in 2008, I listened to a university’s case study and thought that it

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would be suitable for us.” After that, Kim reviewed its application with internal research. In 2009, he had busy time by meeting virtualization specialized companies and visiting the companies that virtualization applied.

Kim added, “I looked into Hyper-V and VMWare. I met officials for consulting and went to the companies using each solution to ask details. I visited Bokwang for Hyper-V and a domestic multinational company for VMWare. First, there were concerns that Hyper-V was newcomer. But I changed my mind after meeting real users.” Then the most impressive point that he felt in Bokwang was to monitor even application layer as well as to consistently access and manage physical environment and virtual environment using SCVMM and SCOM in a unified point.

Kim found out that Hyper-V was technically no less than VMWare on the field and finally made up his mind in cost. The cost difference between two solutions was more than 5 times considering even license cost apart from maintenance cost. The problem was not to use the most necessary function even though paying high cost. Kim said, “With allocated budget, we had to only choose the standard version of VMWare. The problem was that the standard version did not include V motion, which was the most important function in virtualization. On the other hand, Hyper-V did not need to pay license cost and provided V motion responding function for free.”

In the first half of 2010, that industry-university collaboration department set to virtualization project, Hyper-V has grown to be more powerful solution as R2 version

was released. Industry-university collaboration department introduced 2 systems with multi core processor and 40GM of memory capacity and distributed 16 tasks excepting meta search system operated based on Linux among 17 tasks, on the two systems. We had to consider one important thing in a series of introduction. Undergraduate school administration system, which is considered as a backbone of universities, used to be based on Unix and Oracle. The thing was how could move it on virtualization environment.

Kim mentioned, “It was possible to move meta search system to Hyper-V environment since it was based on Linux. However, maintenance period was over since the time of introduction was long over. Its company is developing Windows Server version and we decided to upgrade later on. It was simply solved to change undergraduate school administration to Oracle for Windows. Existing Oracle was based on enterprise version. However, considering that its system was being wasted, we chose standard version.”

Movement from 16 out of 17 existing systems to 2 new systems and configuration started in July 2010 and finished in August 2010.

Benefits

Reduces server management task

Industry-university collaboration department of RCCN is not IT department as we know from its name. The number of manpower, who is in charge of informationization plan

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and operation, was only one. Moreover, only 30% of time in daily task is allocated to IT and 70% should be allocated to administration.

Kim said, “In the past, it took 3~4 hours to login every single system that has each different password and check only event log since there was no account integrated base such as Active Directory. It was difficult to even monitor them every day because of no enough time. With virtualization, the point of management was reduced by over 8 times. Owing to the tools that enable to clearly check and control the entire infrastructure, it became much easier to manage systems, resulting in checking CPU usage or event log every day in a simple way.”

Controls the entire server in single window

System Center must be mentioned as the factor that improves management and control level incomparably with convenience. In the past, we had to separately login each system because it was not centralized. In order to overcome the disadvantage of repetitive task, RCCN introduced SCVMM and SCOM to integrate system management path.

Kim emphasized, “It was difficult to go even business trip because there was no replacement for a manager in the manager’s absence. For application problem, we could have contacted the company. When there was some problem in server layer, we had to solve them by ourselves. It meant that the manager’s absence lead to service failure. However, it became possible to promptly respond even though failure occurred.” Minimizes service disconnection according to failure

While the number of management point was reduced, the time of service disconnection was reduced to almost zero with powerful centralized management systems. When problem occurred on server, we had to re-deploy operating systems and recover data with backup solution. It took 3~4 hours to re-deploy operating systems and 1 hour to recover data, spending over a quarter of a day. However, now we do not need to put effort into recovery or operating system deployment.

Kim, “When problem occur on server or sever stop, it is possible to respond immediately with Live Migration on Hyper-V. It means to manage operating systems as a concept of deployment rather than installation. The efficiency of recovery was dramatically enhanced over IT infrastructure. While data used to be recovered with backup solution, now even operating system and application on virtualized server could be backup and recovered with DPM. As a result of regular recovery, the time taken for recovery reduced to just 30 minutes or so.”

Achieves green effect by streaming IT department

The space reduction and energy saving effect, which is considered the general advantage of virtualization, appeared right in RCCN. Kim concluded, “16 systems distributed on 4 racks were integrated to 2 systems, reducing the number of rack to 1. The cost for facilities such as thermo-hygrostat was reduced to a fifth of the existing cost as IT department was streamlined. It is not a big deal to reduce 16 to 2. However, it means a lot to us. In the

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virtualization project, we tried to seek humanitarianism and philanthropy of the Red Cross at IT level. Its value was enough to prove our commitment as a part of our contribution by protecting global environment from Global warming like nursing patients.” Microsoft VirtualizationMicrosoft virtualization is an end-to-end strategy that can profoundly affect nearly every aspect of the IT infrastructure management lifecycle. It can drive greater efficiencies, flexibility, and cost effectiveness throughout your organization. From accelerating application deployments; to ensuring systems, applications, and data are always available; to taking the hassle out of rebuilding and shutting down servers and desktops for testing and development; to reducing risk, slashing costs, and improving the agility of your entire environment—virtualization has the power to transform your infrastructure, from the data center to the desktop.

For more information about Microsoft virtualization solutions, go to: www.microsoft.com/virtualization

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Red Cross College of Nursing, visit the Web site at: www.redcross.ac.kr

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

Document published November 2009

Software and Services Products

− Windows Server 2008 R2− Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V− Microsoft System Center Operation

Manger− Microsoft System Center Data

Protection Manger− Microsoft System Center Virtual

Machine Manager