4-page Case Study - Posted 4/12/2007

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City of McHenry, Illinois

Growing City Streamlines IT, Boosts Productivity with New Server Solution

As it goes through rapid population growth, the City of McHenry, Illinois, faces challenges in successfully managing city computer and network operations while providing residents with all the services they expect. The city’s IT department, in particular, had  significant problems with an aging server infrastructure that created reliability and scalability issues, and needed new software  to manage police department activities. As a solution, the city deployed Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 on an NEC Express5800 fault tolerant series of servers. The solution has not only reduced the hardware used by the city by allowing multiple  applications to exist on “virtual machines,” but has also provided a cost-effective, high-availability solution that can be  efficiently managed, which helps employees and the IT department be more productive.

Situation

Over the long term, Virtual Server helps us spend less money on hardware as well as less time maintaining different devices.  Tim Harris Information Technology Specialist City of McHenry

Like their colleagues in other cities facing rapid growth, McHenry city officials have to help maintain a quality of life that attracts newcomers while keeping the city’s operations functioning smoothly as the population increases.

Information technology is one area where the city has had to consider new solutions to address McHenry’s long-term needs without straining its budget.

Tim Harris, the city’s Information Technology Specialist, says that beginning in 2006, a series of events forced the city to look  at technology alternatives for handling its line of business applications, including software used to manage administration,  public works, parks, and finance, as well as the police dispatch and records systems.

One significant issue, Harris says, arose when the manufacturer of the police systems used for computer-aided dispatch and record management began experiencing problems providing service and system upgrades. This situation threatened the long-term viability of the software—thus putting the city’s public safety system at risk.

“It forced us to look for a new solution to handle our police dispatch and records systems,” he says. “Around the same time, we realized that the city’s server hardware was getting old. Some of the machines were more than five years old, and we were experiencing problems with server reliability.”

Additionally, the city’s IT architecture created other problems for the IT department and for the city’s 145 employees. The stability and the availability of applications were of particular concern, Harris says. “For example, if one of the applications crashed, it could take us 15 to 20 minutes or more to reboot the entire system. This meant lost productivity for our non-police employees. More importantly, with no application support, such a failure in police dispatch and records was extremely risky.”

Harris says McHenry needed an IT overhaul that would allow the city to consolidate its server hardware and related costs, run new software for handling police activities, and allow the IT architecture to be more efficient and cost-effective.

Solution

After discussions with a team from NEC, a Microsoft Certified Partner, the City of McHenry decided to consolidate its server hardware and to deploy Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2, which it uses to run its Windows Server® 2003 R2 and Windows Server® 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition operating system software. The city also acquired new police dispatch and record management software from Cushing Technologies, which runs alongside the city’s existing administrative software.

For its hardware, the city replaced five older servers with a single NEC Express5800/320Ma fault tolerant series of servers, which operates fully redundant subsystems. The NEC system is equipped with dual-core Intel Xeon processors. The city is also using the NEC S1500 storage array equipped with RAID-6 protection and more than half a terabyte of disk space, which is expandable to 1.5 terabytes.

Working with NEC and a team from Microsoft, the city used Virtual Server 2005 to establish four virtual machines on the S1500 storage array, enabling a virtualized computer environment that allows the city to run its applications more efficiently than in the past. Virtual Server 2005, which includes networking, storage and management features in one package, includes a simple, seven-step installation process that expedited installation of the virtual machines. The installation of Virtual Server 2005 and the four virtual machines, which was done in September 2006, took less than four hours.

Benefits

By using Virtual Server 2005 on the NEC fault tolerant system, the city’s IT architecture is more efficient and cost-effective, and it provides greater reliability and availability for city applications. Virtual Server 2005 is helping dramatically reduce the amount of downtime for applications so that city employees—and the IT staff—can be more productive. The solution has enabled the city to replace the five old servers with the single NEC Express5800 FT server and the storage array, which handle all of McHenry’s current needs and any foreseeable future demands. The solution also lays the groundwork for new scenarios, such as using Windows Terminal Services—a feature of Windows Server 2003—for tasks where a fully equipped PC is not needed.

Enhanced IT Performance Boosts Productivity

With Virtual Server 2005 as the core of the new solution, the city’s employees benefit from greater access to their applications when they need to do their jobs.

“When we have an application that gets hung up on a specific virtual machine and we have to do a reboot, we’re now able to accomplish that in 45 seconds or less,” Harris says. “That is compared with the 15 or 20 minutes it used to take in the past. For us, that is huge, especially when we’re dealing with anything related to the police department. We want their systems to be up and operational as fast as possible.”

But reducing the impact of crashes has delivered benefits to other employees as well, Harris says.

“One day, we had a problem with the parks and recreation department software,” he says. “I had to shut it down to make some configuration changes, which took about five minutes. In the past this might have taken half an hour or more. Because this application was self-contained on its own virtual machine, our parks employees were back to work fast.”

He also says one of the city’s older applications, which is used by the finance department, periodically stops working. “We put that application on its own virtual machine, so now, when it gets hung up, the problem is isolated and the server malfunction affects only six or seven people instead of every city employee.”

Consolidated Infrastructure Saves Money

The great thing about the new architecture using Virtual Server and the NEC hardware is that we can spend a lot less time working on the servers and spend more time giving our end users a lot more care and attention.  Tim Harris Information Technology Specialist City of McHenry

“The best part is that the Microsoft Virtual Server software that we installed was free and has already saved us thousands of  dollars in hardware costs and ten of thousands of dollars in future hardware and maintenance expenditures,” Harris says. “Plus, being able to put multiple applications on a server using Virtual Server means that we don’t have as many servers to manage. Over the long term, Virtual Server helps us spend less money on hardware and less time maintaining physical devices.”

He adds that because the NEC hardware solution uses a fully redundant, lockstep fault tolerant design, the concern of running multiple virtual machine applications on a single server has been eliminated. The active lockstep processing delivers sustained system integrity to the operating systems and applications by ensuring continuous processing—even in the event of a hardware failure. “I know it works because I pulled the plug on the active server side.” Not only can the server and storage be serviced without affecting the Virtual Machine environment, but transient hardware issues are also minimized.

The new IT products have provided very high levels of uptime, which means there will be minimal disruptions to administrative employees and the city’s police department. Prior to deploying Virtual Server 2005, the IT department would spend at least one Saturday or Sunday a month applying patches and normal updates. Weekend work was necessary to minimize impact to users. Now with virtual machines and the simple 45 second reboot, the IT department can do most patch maintenance either just before everyone arrives or shortly after the day is done.

Technology Creates a Path for Other Solutions

Harris says that the use of Virtual Server 2005 and the resulting consolidation of IT resources means that the IT department can  spend less time on maintenance issues and more time working on new solutions that will help city employees be more productive.

“We have not put any numbers on it, but I know that we are able to spend more time every week on evaluating new solutions to old problems,” Harris says. “For example, we’re thinking about deploying Windows Terminal Services for employees who don’t need fully  equipped PCs to do their jobs, and possibly deploying more technology in our police cars that will help officers communicate  better. “The great thing about the new architecture using Virtual Server and the NEC hardware is that we can spend a lot less time worrying about our servers and spend more time giving our end users a lot more care and attention,” he says. “That makes them very happy.”

For More Information

For 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 who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. 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 NEC Corporation of America products and services, call 1 (866) 632-3226 or visit the Web site at:
www.necam.com

For more information about City of McHenry, Illinois products and services, call (815) 363-2108 or visit the Web site at:
www.ci.mchenry.il.us

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx

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

Document published April 2007