Dell

Dell Deploys Scalable IT Management Solutions to Support Global Technology Base

With a worldwide IT infrastructure consisting of approximately 100,000 Windows®-based computers and 13,500 servers, Dell needs scalable IT management solutions to keep its global business running smoothly. To meet that need, the company chose Microsoft® System Center solutions, enabling Dell to manage its extensive IT infrastructure with minimal time and expense. Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 facilitates the deployment of new software and updates to desktop and laptop computers and servers, as well as their inventorying and support, thereby streamlining IT operations while increasing reliability and security. With Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, Dell can closely monitor its thousands of enterprise systems, including hardware and software, helping the company ensure that its mission-critical supply chain and manufacturing solutions remain continually up and running.

Situation

Founded in 1984, Dell is a premier global provider of technology products and services. The company attributes its success to a persistent focus on delivering the best possible customer experience through a direct sales model. By connecting directly with customers, Dell can best understand their needs and provide effective solutions.

To support its business model, Dell maintains a strong emphasis on operational efficiency, reducing costs and passing those savings on to customers in the form of greater value. Although Dell is focused on minimizing costs in all areas of its business, one area where the company continually works to “do more with less” is in the management and support of its globally distributed IT infrastructure, which includes approximately 100,000 Windows®-based desktop and laptop computers and 13,500 Windows-based server computers.

Of equal importance to Dell is ensuring the reliability and security of its global IT infrastructure. Based on a “Dell on Dell” philosophy, Dell’s IT approach calls for running virtually all areas of its business on the company’s own products.

More than half of Dell’s $57 billion in annual sales come through Dell.com. Dell relies on System Center to keep its global e-commerce presence and other mission-critical systems up and running 24/7. Takis Petropoulos Senior IT Systems Engineer, Dell

“We have 400 applications running on more than 4,000 Windows-based servers that are considered Class 1, meaning that they’re mission-critical,” says Larry Kiernan, Global Vice President of Technology Engineering for Dell IT. “Those applications range from Dell’s global Web presence, on which as many as a million systems may be configured each day, to the supply chain applications that support the manufacturing of customer orders around the clock and around the world. Every Dell system is built to order, which means that all applications that support our supply chain need to remain up and running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to meet customers’ expected delivery dates.”

In the past, Dell used a number of server monitoring products to help ensure the availability of its mission-critical systems. However, none of those products could scale to support the company’s worldwide environment, making it difficult to centralize server monitoring. In addition, none of the products provided sufficient monitoring capabilities to alert IT staff to all possible types of system failures.

Another capability that Dell needed to ensure the reliability of its mission-critical systems was a way to quickly and efficiently deploy new software updates—especially security-related ones—to its thousands of Windows-based servers, as well as to all its Windows-based computers. Similarly, Dell needed a software distribution solution that would help reduce the time and effort associated with the deployment of new software, allowing the company’s IT resources to focus on other needed work.

“At Dell, we’re all about scaling out rather than scaling up,” says Kiernan. “Although that approach has definite advantages from a cost perspective, it also presents some unique challenges from an IT management discipline. To properly manage the systems on which our business depends, we need IT management solutions that can scale to support the entire Dell enterprise—and that can help small centralized teams monitor, manage, and support that worldwide infrastructure.”

Solution

Dell is optimizing its ability to manage its extensive IT infrastructure with Microsoft® System Center IT management solutions, including Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 and Operations Manager 2005. “A primary reason that we chose System Center solutions was their scalability,” says Donnie Taylor, Infrastructure Engineer at Dell. “We looked at HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli, but System Center was the only management solution that could scale to our size without a massive investment in additional infrastructure. With System Center, we get an integrated IT management environment for all phases of the server and PC life cycles—from the initial provisioning of those assets through their daily use and support.”

Comprehensive Computer and Server Management

Part of the System Center family, Microsoft Systems Management Server provides Dell with a full-featured solution for the deployment, maintenance, inventorying, and support of both computer and server software. The company’s use of Systems Management Server began in 1999 with version 2.0, with five regional hierarchies used to support the company’s global computer environment. In 2004, Dell upgraded to Systems Management Server 2003, consolidating those five regional hierarchies to a single global hierarchy.

“Systems Management Server servers worldwide are managed centrally from our main data center in Austin, Texas,” says Takis Petropoulos, Senior IT Systems Engineer at Dell. “At the same time, we have the flexibility to support different configuration settings for various regions.”

Dell is using Systems Management Server to optimize the management of its global IT infrastructure in several ways, one of which is the distribution of new software to all Windows-based computers and server computers. “New PCs are delivered to users with only the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office Professional installed,” says Petropoulos. “All other applications are made available for installation on an on-demand basis through Systems Management Server. Users simply go to a list of several hundred advertised programs and choose what they need, and Systems Management Server pushes those applications down to users’ PCs.”

We looked at HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli, but System Center was the only management solution that could scale to our size without a massive investment in additional infrastructure. Donnie Taylor Infrastructure Engineer, Dell

Dell is now using the solution to upgrade user computers to the Windows Vista™ operating system. “Deploying Windows Vista by using Systems Management Server will save us a lot of time and money,” says Petropoulos. “To users, Windows Vista is just another on-demand software application. When a user selects Windows Vista from the list of advertised applications, the User State Migration Tool preserves the user’s data and settings, and then Systems Management Server reimages the user’s PC with Windows Vista and Office Professional 2007. Systems Management Server even allows our help desk to reimage PCs with Windows Vista remotely.”

Along with the delivery of new software, Dell is using Systems Management Server to deploy software updates to both computers and server computers. Dell can also push out hardware updates through the use of its Inventory Tool for Dell Updates feature pack for Systems Management Server 2003, which inventories the BIOS, firmware, and drivers on supported Dell servers and provides a way to remotely update them using the management software.

“Before Systems Management Server, the deployment of software and hardware updates was a labor-intensive, potentially error-prone process,” says Petropoulos. “Today, we can centrally package and push out updates to all Windows-based PCs and servers worldwide with only a few mouse clicks. In 2005, we used Systems Management Server to deploy roughly 5.5 million software update instances worldwide, with all the work handled by just a few people.”

A third way that Dell is using Systems Management Server is to inventory computer hardware—done biweekly—and software, which is inventoried once per month. Systems Management Server writes that inventory data to a Microsoft SQL Server™ database, from which users can access a variety of predefined reports using a Web-based interface.

“We can provide self-service reporting capabilities to all parts of the company, such as our IT security team, which can easily see which software people have installed and whether all necessary security updates are present,” says Petropoulos. “That same inventory data is used for audits, reports for license monitoring, and ensuring regulatory compliance. Similarly, we can see if users have enough free disk space for in-place upgrades or determine the size of users’ e mail mailbox files, as might be needed to justify a new archiving solution.”

Dell is using the new solution to support both local and remote users. “Systems Management Server gives help-desk technicians a single tool to access and troubleshoot any user system around the globe, regardless of whether that user is on the corporate network or accessing it remotely,” says Petropoulos. “In addition, the remote control capabilities provided by Systems Management Server allow the user to monitor what the help-desk technician does, making the user support experience a user education session as well.”

Global Server Monitoring

Dell started working toward a unified server monitoring infrastructure in 2005, when it began a formal evaluation of products from Microsoft, IBM, HP, and others. To streamline server monitoring and support, the company needed a solution that could facilitate consistency in monitoring standards, handle complex support groups and processes with seemingly contradictory requirements, and integrate with other systems already in use, such as the company’s IT trouble ticket system.

Dell selected Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 as the foundation of its server monitoring infrastructure because Operations Manager met more requirements than any other candidate product did. For example, in terms of scalability, a 5-server Operations Manager management group can support up to 4,000 monitored server computers, enabling a relatively small number of management groups to support the monitoring of Dell’s entire server environment. Today, Dell is using Operations Manager to monitor its entire Windows-based production data center server environment, comprising more than 9,000 servers globally.

In addition to the required scalability, Operations Manager gave Dell the granular monitoring capabilities that it needed. Support for high-availability scenarios such as agent failover and database clustering help Dell effectively monitor its Class 1 applications, which are usually configured in a failover or clustered environment to prevent a single point of failure from affecting overall service availability.

Role-specific Operations Manager management packs—such as those that are available for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005—give Dell the tools and knowledge needed to properly monitor those applications. Each management pack provides a set of monitoring rules with predefined thresholds, a built-in knowledge base with troubleshooting and resolution information, and scripts that can be used to quickly and efficiently resolve issues.

In 2005, we used Systems Management Server to deploy roughly 5.5 million software update instances worldwide, with all the work handled by just a few people. Takis Petropoulos Senior IT Systems Engineer, Dell

“By using Operations Manager management packs, we have significantly reduced the amount of time spent configuring server monitoring rules, enabling us to simply point and click to select the rules that we want applied,” says Petropoulos.

Dell also is using Operations Manager in combination with its own technology offerings to monitor server hardware. When combined with a Dell-specific management pack and Dell OpenManage Server Administrator agents on Dell PowerEdge server computers, Operations Manager provides information on potential hardware-related issues, such as drive or fan failures, memory errors, and temperature issues.

Operations Manager also integrates well with the other IT management technologies in use at Dell. Upon detecting abnormal server behavior, configurable processing rules in Operations Manager forward alerts to BMC Service Impact Manager, which consolidates the alerts and creates a trouble ticket in the BMC Remedy Action Request System. Upon a technician closing that trouble ticket, Service Impact Manager captures that event and forwards the information to Operations Manager, which closes the alert.

Benefits

With its new IT management solution, Dell is maximizing the reliability and security of its global IT environment with a minimal investment in additional infrastructure. The company can keep mission-critical systems and desktop and laptop computers up and running smoothly, helping all areas of the company “do more with less” while remaining focused on meeting customer expectations.

Global Scalability

Dell is taking advantage of the strong scalability provided by Microsoft System Center solutions to meet its IT management needs with minimal related infrastructure. The Operations Manager infrastructure used to monitor Dell production systems runs on only 24 server computers, yet it has the capacity to monitor 24,000 servers worldwide—close to twice its current workload. The company’s consolidation to a single worldwide Systems Management Server 2003 hierarchy enabled Dell to eliminate 22 server computers from that environment, reducing to approximately 80 the number of such servers that are required to support approximately 100,000 computers and 13,500 servers worldwide.

“With System Center solutions, we can support our entire global IT infrastructure with minimal additional infrastructure and IT staffing costs,” says Petropoulos. “And as Dell continues to grow, we won’t need to redesign our IT management environment.”

Mission-Critical Reliability

Dell’s use of System Center solutions is helping the company ensure continual availability of the mission-critical, Windows-based server computers that support its direct, build-to-order business model. Operations Manager aids Dell in meeting that goal by helping the company easily keep a close watch over those systems, enabling IT staff to immediately detect and address any potential problems.

“Continued availability of manufacturing systems is mandatory for a business like ours, as well as for an online presence that must be continually up to service the whole globe,” says Petropoulos. “More than half of Dell's $57 billion in annual sales come through Dell.com. Dell relies on System Center to keep its global e-commerce presence and other mission-critical systems up and running 24/7.”

Adds Taylor, “Dell is absolutely dependent on its supply chain applications. If our supply chain is interrupted, that means that systems aren’t being built and shipped to customers. Keeping supply chain systems running efficiently is critical for Dell, and Operations Manager plays a key role in our ability to meet that requirement.”

Enhanced Security

Dell is improving the security of its IT infrastructure by using System Center solutions for fast, efficient deployment of security-related software updates. With Systems Management Server, Dell can deploy updates that it deems “severity one” to 97 percent of all desktop and laptop computers within 12 hours and to a similar percentage of all Windows-based server computers within 72 hours.

It’s not enough to know what’s happening at any given time—you also need the ability to fix any problems. System Center solutions give us both of those capabilities, thereby helping us run a more secure and reliable IT environment. Takis Petropoulos Senior IT Systems Engineer, Dell

“System Center helps make our environment more secure because it provides dual capacity, both in the monitoring and in the management space,” says Petropoulos. “It’s not enough to know what’s happening at any given time—you also need the ability to fix any problems. System Center solutions give us both of those capabilities, thereby helping us run a more secure and reliable IT environment.”

Adds Dale Langley, Director of IT Operations at Dell, “Until just a couple of years ago, it was a challenge to keep the IT environment patched and compliant at any given time. With System Center solutions, we’re always at least 97 percent compliant on security updates.”

Dell also is making its environment more secure by using its new solution for software distribution to otherwise locked-down computers, thereby preventing users from installing programs that are not delivered through Systems Management Server. “We can package applications for delivery with Systems Management Server without giving users local administrator rights, thereby protecting those users from installing potentially harmful programs while still giving them access to the applications that they need,” says Taylor.

Improved End-User and IT Staff Productivity

Dell is taking advantage of System Center solutions to improve employee productivity in several ways. For example, with Systems Management Server, installed computer applications can follow users as they move to a new computer, ensuring that they always have access to the applications needed to do their jobs.

“It’s important to have software follow roaming users, specifically for productivity purposes,” says Amy Horowitz, Desktop Engineering IT Manager at Dell. “If a machine fails, a sales associate can just get up, move to another desk, and continue to take orders, which will obviously contribute to Dell’s overall success. My job is much easier because of System Center.”

Dell also is improving productivity for both end users and help-desk staff by using Systems Management Server to provide a consistent support experience regardless of whether the user is working locally or remotely—capabilities that will further improve as Dell moves to Windows Vista. “Providing help-desk personnel with the ability to reimage PCs with Windows Vista remotely will save a lot of time and money, making both the help desk and end users more productive,” says Horowitz.

The ability to deploy Windows Vista with Systems Management Server will save Dell considerable time and expense versus having technicians install the new operating system on each user’s computer. “We’ll use Systems Management Server to deploy Windows Vista to as many as 100,000 PCs in 2007,” says Langley. “We’ve already piloted and tested it, and everything is working very well. It will be very quick and very easy, and will save us a lot of money. It will be great for users too, as they’ll be able to pull down and install the upgrade at a time of their choosing and without the need for IT assistance.”

With the timesavings in system management and advanced monitoring capabilities that System Center solutions are providing for Dell, the company’s relatively small IT operations group now can focus more time and energy on creating additional value instead of simply keeping the global IT infrastructure up and running.

“Our IT folks are significantly happier using System Center,” says Petropoulos. “Compared with a few years ago, when we had to write and maintain multiple scripts for software installation, the timesavings is significant. And that timesavings allows our IT engineers to work on future tools and technology, focusing on how they’re going to design a better environment.”

Adds Taylor, “Both Systems Management Server and Operations Manager help us do more with less from an IT staffing perspective. The IT department hasn’t necessarily decreased in size, but we’ve been able to shift people from an operations role to an engineering role—that is, from focusing on keeping the lights on to working on new projects. At the same time, with System Center, we can relax knowing that our mission-critical systems—and ultimately our customers—are in good hands.”

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
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Microsoft System Center
Microsoft System Center is a family of leading IT management solutions that helps you proactively plan, deploy, manage, and optimize your IT environment.

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www.microsoft.com/systemcenter

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