At the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA), Ben Faulkner Information Communication

Microsoft Virtualization: Data Center to Desktop Customer Solution Case Study

Institute Picks Hyper-V over VMware; Doubles Productivity, Saves

Overview “With the size of our Country or Region: United Kingdom environment doubling, Industry: Higher education we couldn’t have Customer Profile The Liverpool Institute for Performing continued to manage it Arts (LIPA), based in Liverpool in the with two people without United Kingdom, is among the country’s leading institutions for The Liverpool Institute for education in the performing arts. It Performing Arts in the employs 120 staff and faculty and has about 1,000 full-time students in United Kingdom educates degree-level courses. students in the most

Business Situation innovative forms of The institute’s technology performing arts, as well as environment was growing rapidly, but its IT staff wasn’t. To support related design, continued growth, LIPA wanted to management, and ease IT management, reduce costs, and boost availability. technology. But what the institute needed was Solution After experiencing the limits and innovation in its costs of a virtual environment based technology infrastructure, on VMware, LIPA adopted Microsoft Virtualization technology. which was expanding quickly and becoming Benefits Server provisioning time reduced by increasingly 75 percent unmanageable and costly. Overall productivity up 100 percent Saves 90 percent on licensing cost After trying server compared to VMware virtualization with Situation additional services. We had to address the At the Liverpool Institute for Performing cost of serving these growing needs before Arts (LIPA), Ben Faulkner—Information it got completely out of hand.” Communication Technology Officer— manages the institute’s rapidly expanding While LIPA wanted a system that cost less technology infrastructure, which has grown and that took less time and effort to to 28 computer servers, with the assistance manage, it also wanted more availability. of just one colleague. Given the schedules of students and performing artists, the LIPA facility had The IT infrastructure growth had taken always operated on a 24 hours a day, seven place for good reason. The institute, co- days a week schedule. The increasing founded by Sir Paul McCartney, had availability of high-bandwidth Internet expanded rapidly since it opened in 1996, access meant that students could work and it has become one of the United online even with massive design files—as Kingdom’s most prominent institutions for long as the institute made those files training in performing and community arts, available. dance, theatre and performance design, and sound technology and management “The students had very high expectations disciplines. As LIPA broadened its offerings, of our system and the services that should it needed an increasing number of software always be available to them,” says Faulkner. applications, many of which required their “Whenever there was downtime, no matter own servers. The server population grew by how brief, we would get complaints. So we 50 percent over five years. The institute wanted a way to mitigate downtime as couldn’t achieve economies of scale when much as possible.” many computer servers sat underutilized, each running a single application. Plus, Despite its large and growing number of managing them had become a strain. computer servers, the system lacked features that would promote high “The environment had become too large, availability, such as redundancy and failover and we were continuing to buy server after clustering. It also lacked the technologies it server,” says Faulkner. “Given that we also needed for backup and business continuity. had to support all the technology needs of LIPA backed up its servers nightly, but the our students, faculty, and staff, it was backup window was extending into the getting chaotic. We wanted a more morning and interfering with system access manageable system.” by students, faculty, and administrators. The business continuity plan called for the LIPA also needed a more cost-effective system to recover from a full disaster within system. “The cost of buying and 14 days, which was an unacceptably long maintaining servers had grown so much time. that it was having an impact on the operational budget of the institute,” says Administrators were also concerned about Faulkner. “And we were continuing to get the energy consumed by the increasing demands from faculty and staff for numbers of computers, given that LIPA was

27 environmentally conscious and promoted By the end of 2009, LIPA was again looking the use of “green technology” in the for a virtualization solution to fulfill its performing arts industry. However, the expectations. This time it found it. institute failed to meet these standards in its own technology infrastructure. The institute began this search by seeking a solution provider that could guide it to a “We couldn’t continue in this vein,” says successful choice. LIPA chose Gardner Faulkner. Systems. The provider had helped LIPA Solution acquire a NetApp storage area network By 2006, addressing the issues with its (SAN) device that was originally destined technology environment had become a for the institute’s VMware servers, and now priority for LIPA. Virtualization—in which it helped with a new virtualization solution. several logical or software-based servers The recommendation from Gardner was to could reside on a single physical server or look to Microsoft Virtualization. host—seemed a way to achieve the institute’s goals for easier management, Since the institute’s initial product reduced costs, higher availability, and evaluation three years earlier, Microsoft disaster recovery. had released the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system with Hyper-V LIPA chose to virtualize on VMware, and it virtualization technology. Faulkner and his moved its workloads to 14 virtual machines IT department colleague looked at the running on two physical hosts. The physical Microsoft path to virtualization, and liked hosts ran the VMware ESXi hypervisor, a what they saw. The features they needed free download from the VMware website, for virtualization management are included giving the institute the lower total cost of in Hyper-V, which comes as part of ownership that it sought. What LIPA didn’t Windows Server 2008 R2 without additional get with VMware was manageability, high charge; with VMware, they would need to availability, and disaster recovery. Virtual pay licensing fees for a similar set of machines on one host couldn’t be moved capabilities. Better manageability, easily to the other host. That ruled out the availability, and business continuity, along ability to have redundant or failover with lower cost, were all possible with the systems that could substitute for each Microsoft option. other in the event that one host ceased to function, or needed to be taken down Choosing the “Essentials” temporarily for servicing. It also eliminated The migration to Windows Server 2008 R2 the possibility of load balancing the virtual Datacenter with Hyper-V was planned for machines between the physical hosts to the summer of 2010, to minimize the increase availability. Meeting these impact on users. Although LIPA allotted 15 expectations would have required LIPA to days for setup and configuration of the upgrade to a fee-based version of VMware. NetApp SAN and migration of 14 virtual servers and two physical servers, the Finding a Better Solution process took only four days. The migration was expedited by using Microsoft System

37 Center Essentials 2010, which includes most This structure—along with Cluster Shared of the virtualization management Volumes technology and Live Migration functionality of Microsoft System Center capability in Hyper-V and managed Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, with a through System Center Essentials— user interface designed for maximum ease supports the high availability that the of use. institute wants. Planned movements of workloads from one host to another can be “We chose System Center Essentials accomplished without any disruption or because it was a great, highly cost-effective downtime. Unplanned movements in way for us, given our situation as a response to a physical host failure can be midsized organization, to get the accomplished in seconds. management features we wanted,” says Faulkner. “We used it for the migration and, Backup and business continuity are based now, we use it to manage both our virtual on hourly system snapshots carried out by environment and the systems that run in the institute’s NetApp SAN device. The the physical environment.” institute chose NetApp for its SAN device The migration, of course, required Gardner to take advantage of its interoperability and LIPA to bring the VMware virtual with Microsoft technology, its snapshot machines into the Hyper-V environment. technology for backup and recovery, and Because of specific management its unified protocol platform for effective capabilities lacking in VMware, they could data access. LIPA is now adding a third not use the virtual-to-virtual (V2V) physical host to the cluster, to support the capability in System Center Essentials. continued virtualization of its workloads Instead, they accomplished the migration and to increase the high-availability using the software’s physical-to-virtual capability. (P2V) migration capability. Benefits “It took only about 15 minutes to migrate The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts each virtual machine,” says Faulkner. “It all has achieved its technology goals with its happened with a few mouse clicks, and it adoption of a Microsoft Virtualization was done.” solution based on Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V technology. The environment Gardner and LIPA brought all the virtual is faster and easier to manage, costs have machines into a single physical host, a two- been reduced, and high availability and processor Dell PowerEdge R710 server that business continuity contribute to increased was already part of the institute’s network. reliability. Then, they created a second physical host, also using existing hardware, and spread Server Provisioning Time Reduced by 75 the virtual machines across the two physical Percent; Overall Productivity up 100 hosts, which became two nodes in a Percent clustered configuration. Faulkner and LIPA wanted to streamline the management of their environment. They’ve

47 accomplished that with the move to Hyper- colleague. He says that the ability to V. manage the expanded virtual environment with the same personnel represents a 100 “Hyper-V and System Center Essentials percent productivity gain. have freed us from much of the daily management tasks we had before,” says “We plan to have all of our workloads Faulkner. “The Virtual Machine Manager virtualized over the next 6 to 12 months,” capabilities built into System Center says Faulkner. “You can take that as an Essentials are very intuitive. I learned it as I indication of our satisfaction with Hyper-V. was creating the cluster, with just a brief With the size of our environment doubling, product overview from Gardner. My ICT we couldn’t have continued to manage it colleague Mark Pritchard and I both find it with two people without Hyper-V,” says easy, quick, and efficient to work with.” Faulkner. “It’s definitely given us back hours that we can reinvest to manage the As an example of this efficiency, Faulkner increasing load.” cites the process of provisioning a new virtual machine, which requires accounting Saves 90 Percent on Licensing Cost for disk space, CPU, memory, and other Compared to VMware factors. Previously, it took him LIPA also looked to reduce the cost of its approximately 45 minutes to provision a technology environment. Faulkner says the virtual machine, and he had to monitor the institute has accomplished that goal. When process throughout that time. Now, using LIPA considered its options in upgrading or System Center Essentials and its templates migrating from its VMware installation, it and library functionality, he says that time conducted a price comparison of software has been cut by more than 75 percent, to licensing for VMware vSphere v 4 and for 10 minutes. “That’s not just a savings of Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter with time,” says Faulkner. “Given the multiple Hyper-V technology. Both prices were demands on our time, that shorter based on a three-node cluster with two provisioning process can make the CPUs per node. For Windows Server with difference between accommodating a Hyper-V, the cost per node was just 10 sudden request or needing to wait until the percent of the cost of VMware. LIPA also next day.” acquired a low-cost license for System Center Essentials. The increased manageability that comes with Microsoft virtualization technology has “We saved 90 percent of the price of also made it possible for LIPA to manage a VMware by going with Hyper-V,” says continually expanding environment without Faulkner. “And that just covers the cost of additional Information Communication virtualization software licensing because, Technology (ICT) staff. From the 14 virtual once we saw this, it was clear that Microsoft machines migrated from VMware to Hyper- and Hyper-V were offering the best value V, LIPA has expanded the virtual for the money. So we never factored in the environment to a total of 28 servers, which additional cost of the necessary Windows are still managed by just Faulkner and one Server licenses had we gone with VMware.”

57 Faulkner attributes the price difference to “Our availability, measured by unplanned several factors. First is the education downtime, is now close to 100 percent,” discount that LIPA enjoys, thanks to its says Faulkner. “That meets our needs quite Campus Agreement with Microsoft. In nicely—and should continue to do so for addition, LIPA benefits from the favorable some time to come.” licensing model for virtual machines running on Windows Server and Hyper-V. The institute’s business continuity has also Microsoft offers unlimited free virtual gained a boost from Hyper-V. In the event machine licenses with each license of of an unresolvable outage, the system can Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter. The be restored within an hour of the use of VMware would have incurred further disruption. Previously, the institute could costs to deliver the dynamic features that lose as much as a day’s worth of data. In LIPA required. In addition to being less addition, without the need to source, ship, expensive for comparable environments, and deploy replacement physical servers, the Microsoft license model also gives LIPA the ICT Department’s service level the flexibility to add virtual machines to agreement for disaster recovery has been existing hosts as needed, and to move slashed by 75 percent. LIPA is now looking virtual machines from host to host, without to host its backup site over the Internet, incurring additional licensing charges. with Gardner Systems. Faulkner expects the move to provide even faster data recovery, High Availability Achieved; Uptime Near should it ever be needed. 100 Percent LIPA wanted a solution with high Eliminated 23 Tons of Carbon Dioxide availability to keep the servers running day Emissions Per Year and night for students. The institute has The institute even promotes its goal of achieved this through Microsoft conserving energy and reducing its carbon technologies including Live Migration and footprint by adopting virtualization Cluster Shared Volumes. technology. As LIPA shifts from underutilized to properly utilized servers, Previously, LIPA had to take half of its and decreases the number of physical virtual machines offline every time one of servers relative to the total computing load, the two VMware ESXi host servers needed the energy consumed per computing load, updating, so that the host server could be and for the environment overall, declines. rebooted. The process could take up to 20 Faulkner notes that LIPA not only saves on minutes each time. In contrast, when the energy cost to run servers, but also on Hyper-V host servers need updating, their the energy needed to manufacture servers, workloads can be live migrated to another as it purchases fewer servers and relies on physical host across the cluster; the host virtual machines. server is then updated and rebooted, and users work from the migrated virtual Considering the energy consumption of its machine in the interim, without any virtualized servers, LIPA estimates that it perceptible downtime to users. has reduced its carbon footprint by nearly

67 23 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per Microsoft Virtualization year, and saved £2,312 (U.S.$3,712) Microsoft virtualization is an end-to-end annually. And, that sum doesn’t include any strategy that can profoundly affect nearly savings from the acquisition of fewer every aspect of the IT infrastructure computers, or from the reduced management lifecycle. It can drive greater expenditure for cooling required for a efficiencies, flexibility, and cost larger computing environment. effectiveness throughout your organization. From accelerating application deployments; “With Hyper-V virtualization, we’re not only to ensuring systems, applications, and data doing a better job for our institute, we’re are always available; to taking the hassle doing a better job for the environment,” out of rebuilding and shutting down says Faulkner. 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