4-page Case Study - Posted 5/8/2007

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Grontmij

Engineering Firm Boosts Performance and Scalability with 64-bit Operating System

Grontmij, based near Amsterdam, the Netherlands, provides design and engineering services related to water, the environment, and civic systems. The company employed approximately 4,000 people until August 2006, when it added about 3,000 employees through a merger. The increase in head count created service interruptions, an increase in server issues, and slower application response times—especially for e-mail. After conducting performance tests, Grontmij decided to gradually deploy Windows Server® 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition. The company found the initial deployment to be trouble-free, despite industry rumors about application compatibility issues and a lack of native drivers. System performance and employee productivity have both increased. In addition, Grontmij has improved scalability and lowered the total cost of ownership in the data center by 50 percent.

Situation

Founded by a farmer in 1915, Grontmij has grown into the fifth largest environmental and engineering consultancy in Europe. The company, headquartered in De Bilt, Utrecht near Amsterdam, the Netherlands, earned €750 million (more than U.S.$1 billion) in 2006. With 180 locations spread across eight countries, Grontmij provides design and engineering services related to water, the environment, transportation, and other civic systems. Participating in more than 20,000 projects yearly, the company recently designed the eight-mile Sophia railway tunnel linking Switzerland to Germany. In another high-profile project, Grontmij worked with other companies to improve the water quality of the Sea of Marmara in Turkey.

I think a lot of people don’t see the benefits of going to a 64-bit operating system.... We found out that 14 gigabytes of virtual memory makes a big difference in terms of performance.  Erik Ten Winkel Chief Technology Officer Grontmij

• Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, for e-mail communication.
• Internet Information Services (IIS) version 6.0 and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006 Enterprise Edition, now part of the Microsoft Forefront™ line of business security products, which support internal and external Web sites.
• Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition database software, which serves as the company’s database.
• Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 and Terminal Services, which help administrators manage the geographically dispersed network.
• The Windows® XP operating system, which runs on the majority of the approximately 6,000 workstations in the company. Each workstation has access to a combination of tools including Microsoft Office System programs, geographic information systems, and three-dimensional (3-D) modeling applications.

Grontmij Merges with Carl Bro

In July 2006, Grontmij had approximately 4,000 employees in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Poland. However, in August 2006, Grontmij acquired Carl Bro, a consulting and engineering firm with more than 3,000 employees in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, and Sweden. Nearly doubling an existing work force creates numerous IT challenges that take time to resolve. However, almost immediately after the merger, Grontmij added all of the former Carl Bro employees to Active Directory and created e-mail accounts for them in Exchange Server 2003. IT personnel also deployed Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006 Enterprise Edition, to allow communication between the existing Active Directory and the Oracle enterprise resource planning system that contained the human resources data.

By October 2006, it became clear that the IT infrastructure needed a performance boost. Every day there were employees who were unable to access certain applications or services—including the Internet and e-mail. IT personnel pinpointed the culprit: an overloaded Domain Name System (DNS). The four 32-bit servers that supported the central domain controllers simply could not manage the requests that 7,000 employees were generating—especially between Exchange Server and Active Directory.

Solution

Evaluating its options, Grontmij realized that the company should migrate all of its 32-bit servers and software to 64-bit technologies. New 64-bit hardware would certainly provide more power. In addition, a 64-bit operating system like Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition would provide significantly greater performance potential and scalability. “We made the decision to move to a 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003 fairly quickly,” says Erik Ten Winkel, Chief Technology Officer, Grontmij.

“We had already conducted some tests on 64-bit servers, to measure the performance of applications and services,” adds Bart Van Wijk, Manager of Operations, Grontmij. “We quickly discovered that memory allocation was much better on 64-bit machines running Windows Server 2003 R2 x64, compared to 32-bit versions. When we saw the test results, there wasn’t a lot to discuss. Our decision became clear.”

We didn’t have any issues involving drivers, or applications that couldn’t run on Windows Server x64….. I can’t find any reason not to migrate to Windows Server x64.  Bart Van Wijk Manager of Operations Grontmij

Upgrading the Data Center

Grontmij decided to roll out Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition in the data center in Amsterdam. IT personnel installed seven new HP ProLiant DL385 server computers running the operating system. Each server computer has two processors, with 8 to 14 gigabytes (GB) of random access memory (RAM).

Previously, four servers running Windows 2000 Server Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition had supported the central domain controllers. IT personnel migrated the domain controllers—running Active Directory, DNS, and Windows Internet Name Service—to two of the new servers running Windows Server 2003 R2 x64. One server acts as the master server, and the other is used primarily as a backup. In addition, IT personnel configured Active Directory as a database, which resides entirely in memory.

Grontmij set up the DNS configuration to maintain high levels of availability in the event of a hardware failure or disaster. If the master server should fail, the secondary server will temporarily take over the master role, allowing for the setup of another server. Because the other servers in the data center are all the same model, IT personnel can simply plug in another server that typically manages a less critical role. This will quickly reestablish a two-server configuration, and will provide uninterrupted service to employees.

The five other new servers in the data center support other functions, including the corporate database that is running the x64 SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition.

“Transferring all of the servers to Windows Server x64 was a very smooth process,” says Van Wijk. “We checked Microsoft TechNet when we had questions about transferring some of the servers. There we found some scripts and a very clear explanation of the steps we needed to take.”

Migrating the Rest of the Enterprise

IT personnel replaced the remaining 32-bit server computers in the network with HP servers with x64 processors. In addition, for those machines that were running Windows 2000 Server and earlier 16-bit and 32-bit applications, IT personnel installed Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition along with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. They then set up virtual environments that run Windows 2000 Server.

Grontmij plans to use Systems Management Server 2003 to upgrade an additional 125 servers to Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 by the end of the year. “We are managing several other projects as a result of the merger,” Ten Winkel explains, “so our migration to Windows Server x64 will take several months. We can roll out the new operating system gradually, deploying it first on servers that are running more memory-intensive applications.”

Over the next twelve months, Grontmij also plans to deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and participate in the early adoption program for Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.

Benefits

Grontmij found the initial deployment of Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition to be easy, and anticipates that the deployment will go smoothly across the enterprise. As a result of deploying the 64-bit operating system in the data center, the company has improved system performance and accelerated employee productivity. The company has also improved scalability and lowered—by approximately 50 percent—the total cost of ownership for the servers in the data center.

Established a Smooth Migration Path

Grontmij has found the deployment of Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 to be painless, and the compatibility between the Microsoft operating systems permits a gradual migration.

“It was very nice to see that we didn’t have any issues involving drivers, or applications that couldn’t run on Windows Server x64,” says Van Wijk. “Even our old 16-bit applications, with virtualization, can run on it. I can’t find any reason not to migrate to Windows Server x64. The whole process has taken a lot less effort than we expected.”

“I don’t anticipate any big problems getting native editions of our other applications,” Ten Winkel adds. “Most of the software we run is from large vendors like Microsoft, so it already has native editions for Windows Server x64. The other applications we run are memory-intensive 3-D and geographic modeling tools. These are the types of applications that really benefit from the increased memory that is available with a 64-bit operating system. If they do not already have native editions, they will soon. Even if they do not, we can still run them on Windows Server x64.”

Since we have migrated to Windows Server x64, we’ve been able to reduce the time spent managing servers by 50 percent.  Erik Ten Winkel Chief Technology Officer Grontmij

Improved System Performance

Grontmij has enjoyed greater system performance in the data center and throughout the enterprise since the migration. “I think a lot of people don’t see the benefits of going to a 64-bit operating system,” says Ten Winkel. “They think that the 4 gigabytes of virtual memory will be enough for most applications and services. But we found out that 14 gigabytes of virtual memory makes a big difference in terms of performance, and we can even add far more memory.”

Ten Winkel explains, “Before we deployed Windows x64 in our data center, our servers were struggling because they were too busy writing Active Directory to disk and reading it from disk into memory again. Now, we can keep Active Directory in memory, regardless of how much it grows.”

Van Wijk explains how this helps application performance. “For us, Exchange Server is one of our biggest and busiest applications. Before we migrated to Windows Server x64, there were a lot of unanswered calls between Exchange Server and Active Directory. Since we have deployed the new domain controllers, there are no more unanswered calls sitting in the queue. Communication between Active Directory and Exchange Server is real-time. This means our servers are really quiet now even though we support 3,000 more mailboxes than we did several months ago.”

Accelerated Employee Productivity

The improved system performance translates into faster system logon and response times. This means employees can spend more time working, rather than receiving frustrating error messages indicating that the server is busy or that a service is unavailable. “It used to take me at least one minute to log on to my system,” says Ten Winkel. “Now it takes me about 15 or 20 seconds.” He adds, “Our employees no longer have to wait to access services like e-mail or even the Internet, because Active Directory can now manage all requests immediately.”

The productivity of data center personnel has also increased. “Since we have migrated to Windows Server x64, we’ve been able to reduce the time spent managing servers by 50 percent,” says Ten Winkel. “Not only do we have to spend less time troubleshooting issues with the servers in the data center, we have also seen fewer problems with all of the servers in our enterprise.”

The data center is also better prepared to handle hardware failures or disasters—helping to ensure continuous access to services. “Even though we have never experienced any hardware failures or had to resort to our disaster recovery plans, we now have greater peace of mind,” says Ten Winkel. “Our domain controller servers have been available 100 percent of the time since we migrated to Windows Server x64.”

Improved Scalability

The 64-bit versions of Windows Server are the most scalable operating environments that Microsoft offers today. While the 32-bit versions of Windows Server offer only 4 GB of virtual memory, Windows Server x64 provides up to 16 terabytes. In addition, Windows Server x64 can support up to 2 terabytes of RAM, depending on the edition. In contrast, the 32-bit versions of Windows Server can only support up to 64 GB. Finally, Windows Server x64 can support up to 64 CPUs; the 32-bit versions of Windows Server can support a maximum of only 32 CPUs.

“Scalable is one of the best words to describe our environment,” says Van Wijk. “With Windows Server x64, we have the ability to run our domain controller natively on the system, and use Virtual Server to run three or four other server applications on the same machine. The computing power is there. Instead of buying a new server and licenses, all you have to do is add memory.”

Cut Ownership Costs in Data Center by 50 Percent

Grontmij has reduced the total cost of ownership in the data center by 50 percent. One reason for this reduction is that IT personnel were able to consolidate the central domain controllers from four servers on to two. “Even if we had upgraded the domain controllers from Windows 2000 Server to the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2003, we would have needed three or four domain controllers. By deploying Windows Server 2003 R2 x64, we only need two domain controllers to do the job.”

In addition, data center personnel are no longer spending their days troubleshooting system issues stemming from overloaded DNS servers. “We used to get a very insecure feeling when services started to drop and the employees began to complain,” Van Wijk says. “At the time, we knew it was a problem that we couldn’t fix with our existing system. All this has changed since we deployed Windows Server x64. Our domain controllers no longer give us any trouble. We know they are going to be quiet for months or even years, regardless of the growth we experience in the future.”

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 Grontmij products and services, call +31 30 220 79 11 or visit the Web site at:
www.grontmij.com

Windows Server 2003

The Windows Server 2003 family helps organizations do more with less. Now you can run your IT infrastructure more efficiently, build better applications faster, and deliver the best infrastructure for enhancing user productivity. And you can do all this faster, more securely, and at a lower cost.

For more information about Windows Server 2003, visit:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003

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

Document published April 2007