Bridgestone Australia Ltd.

Bridgestone Uses Failover Clustering to Cut Disaster-Recovery Time and Penalty Costs

Bridgestone Australia Ltd. is one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of tires in Australia. Bridgestone relies on its e-mail system for order fulfillment and other business-critical activities. In the past, if e-mail servers were to have failed, manual recovery procedures may have required as much as an entire day. Because any lost time can potentially delay order fulfillment and lead to penalties, Bridgestone evaluated and began deploying high-availability features—particularly failover clustering—in Windows Server® 2008. In the company’s tests, automatic recovery of its Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 enterprise messaging system required less than 20 minutes. With prompt fulfillment of e-mail orders, Bridgestone will avoid expensive late penalties, and the increased availability of the company’s mission-critical systems will help improve employee productivity.

Situation

Failover clustering in Windows Server 2008 supports an effective disaster-mitigation strategy that will help us avoid costly penalties for late orders.  Jamie Brooks Manager Network Systems Bridgestone Australia Ltd.

Bridgestone Australia Ltd. prides itself on a rich history spanning more than fifty years. Beginning as S.A. Rubber in 1939 with 12 employees, the company has grown to more than 1,500 workers and has become an Australian icon. In addition to its tires, Bridgestone markets a variety of products through its subsidiary company Bandag Manufacturing, including Truck Tyre Precure Tread, Airstep Carpet Underlay, and Bridgestone Golf Equipment. Bridgestone had 2006 sales of nearly 514 million Australian dollars (U.S.$404.5 million) and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bridgestone Corporation of Japan, the world’s largest tire and rubber company.

Over several years, Bridgestone has crafted an IT environment based on Microsoft® software, and the company relies on Microsoft as an ongoing technology provider to keep its IT systems up to date. For example, Bridgestone has standardized on the Windows Server® 2003 operating system, and, like many large corporations, the company depends on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for mission-critical enterprise messaging. 

Bridgestone continually strives to keep IT operations as lean and efficient as possible. A staff of only four people supports the Windows® environment for all of Australia, which includes two datacenters in Adelaide, three manufacturing sites with 80 server computers, and 850 employee workstations. Also, in 2007, Bridgestone consolidated its previously highly distributed Exchange Server environment, which significantly reduced maintenance and management costs. “We gained a large savings and improved efficiencies when we consolidated our 11 distributed servers into one centralized server,” says Jamie Brooks, Manager of Network Systems at Bridgestone. “However, having a centralized e-mail server left us vulnerable to downtime incidents, which we can’t afford due to the heavy penalty costs for late deliveries and to the significant loss of business productivity.”

The company’s existing disaster-recovery procedures were labor-intensive and required a full day to complete, but even one day without e-mail could delay order fulfillment and incur penalties. Bridgestone determined that it needed a high-availability solution to help guarantee that it could continue receiving e-mail orders from customers and sending them to suppliers if its primary e-mail server failed. The solution should also be simple to deploy and easy to integrate into the company’s Windows-based environment.

Solution

According to Brooks, one of the keys to keeping the IT architecture of Bridgestone Australia Ltd. up to date is adopting new technologies early. For this reason, Bridgestone participates in the Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program (RDP), which lets companies evaluate and deploy prerelease versions of Microsoft software. Through the RDP program, Brooks learned about the upcoming Windows Server 2008 operating system and its improved automation and Terminal Services functionality. Brooks was also particularly interested in the failover and geographical clustering capabilities of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. 

With Windows PowerShell and Windows Deployment Services, we expect to save a significant amount of IT labor by stepping up remote management.  Jamie Brooks Manager Network Systems Bridgestone Australia Ltd.

The company decided that the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise would support its high-availability strategy and contribute to an easier-to-manage environment by complementing high-availability features that are built into Exchange Server 2007. Bridgestone considered other vendors’ high-availability solutions for enterprise messaging, but the added infrastructure changes and the more difficult integration they would require made them less desirable in terms of both costs and IT management effort.

In mid-2007, Brooks worked with the HP team to set up a test environment with two HP ProLiant server computers to evaluate the new features of Windows Server 2008 and to see how well it works with the company’s Exchange Server deployment. Brooks was particularly impressed with how easy the software was to install. “Installation is a lot simpler now,” he says. “Just answer a few questions, and it pretty much takes care of itself. With Windows Server 2008, the process is very straightforward.”

For several weeks, IT managers continued testing the software, and they have been pleased with its performance. Based on these successful results, Bridgestone plans to deploy Windows Server 2008 to its production environment. The company also plans to configure its HP ProLiant servers for failover clustering as soon as Microsoft releases the official versions of the new operating system and Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1). (Exchange Server 2007 SP1 will support new benefits in Windows Server 2008—such as flexible clustering, native virtualization, advanced networking, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) security, and simplified management—that are not supported by the previous version of Exchange Server.)

Shortly thereafter, in the second quarter of 2008, Bridgestone will deploy Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 database software in a clustered configuration as well as Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Configuration Manager 2007. Bridgestone will also use Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services to provide employees and vendors with easy access to applications over the Internet and give the company stronger access controls. Later, the company will likely deploy Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V™ (previously called Windows Server virtualization) to support virtual clusters running business-critical applications with added high-availability capability.

Throughout the evaluation and deployment project, Bridgestone received IT consulting services from HP. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, HP offered Bridgestone expertise in designing and implementing Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services, failover clustering in Exchange Server 2007, and upgrading of Windows Server domain controllers.

Benefits

The new high-availability solution based on Windows Server 2008 provides rapid failover and helps Bridgestone Australia Ltd. minimize downtime if a server fails. As a result, e-mail–based orders are less likely to be delayed, which reduces costly penalties for being late. Automation is expected to improve staff productivity by saving about two labor hours daily. And with the new solution in place, Bridgestone is ready to build on Windows Server 2008 with additional software that will further improve its IT environment.

Reduced System Downtime and Related Costs

With failover clustering in Windows Server 2008, Bridgestone is replacing a manual, labor-intensive disaster-recovery process with one that is rapid and automatic, resulting in fewer delayed orders and penalty charges. “If our e-mail server went down for one day, which was possible with our previous recovery process, several orders could be delayed. The result would be an enormous cost and a large negative impact to our business and customer relations,” Brooks explains. “Now, based on our production testing, downtime for end users after a failure event is expected to average only about 5 minutes and almost never to exceed 10 minutes. Failover clustering in Windows Server 2008 supports an effective disaster-mitigation strategy that will help us avoid costly penalties for late orders.”

The fact that failover is automated will literally help Brooks sleep better at night. With the previous system, he had to be on call, all the time, day and night, to restore the system in the event of failure. “For me personally, the biggest benefit is being able to get some sleep occasionally,” he says. “The automated failover capability in Windows Server 2008 is particularly important because we don’t want the availability of business-critical systems to depend on any one person.”

I estimate that through automation supported by Windows Server 2008, we can free up two extra hours of staff time daily, which is a significant number given our small staff.  Jamie Brooks Manager Network Systems Bridgestone Australia Ltd.

Increased Productivity Through Automation and Integration

Brooks is looking forward to increasing his small staff’s ability to deal with the prodigious job of supporting all Bridgestone offices and employees throughout Australia from one location. Brooks believes automation and remote-management features will help him accomplish this, and he cites Windows PowerShell™ command line interface and scripting language and Windows Deployment Services (the successor to Remote Installation Services) as examples. “With Windows PowerShell and Windows Deployment Services, we expect to save a significant amount of IT labor by stepping up remote management, which will give our staff more hours to increase its effective service level to the company.”

Brooks also notes that tight integration between Windows Server and the Microsoft System Center line of infrastructure software will further help with remote management and maintenance. For example, System Center Operations Manager 2007 offers advanced monitoring and reporting functionality for all networked servers and the ability to resolve many alerts automatically, which will free up additional staff time. System Center Configuration Manager 2007 provides automated change, configuration, and patch management, including deploying updates from both Microsoft and non-Microsoft vendors. And, according to Brooks, new role support features in Windows Server 2008 will improve the IT level of quality due to a greater confidence that a server is ready to have a particular application installed on it.

“Windows Server 2008 allows us to increase our staff productivity by automating a lot of things like server recovery,” Brooks says. “Additionally, we’ll be able to use Operations Manager and Configuration Manager 2007 to automate deploying and configuring servers. I estimate that, through automation supported by Windows Server 2008, we can free up two extra hours of staff time daily, which is a significant number given our small staff.”

Improved Reliability Using Trusted Solution Providers

The Exchange Server 2007 cluster running on Windows Server 2008 will support two nodes, with HP ProLiant servers providing the processing power. The result is an extremely reliable computing environment that’s easy for Bridgestone to manage. Brooks attributes this reliability in part to the expertise of Microsoft as a software provider and HP as a system integrator and consultant.

“We need solutions that run out-of-the-box,” emphasizes Brooks. “Working with Microsoft and HP has always given us an increased confidence level that our business-critical solutions will be ready to run on our HP servers.”

Implemented a Solid Platform for Future IT Improvements

What does the near future hold for Bridgestone? Brooks has his list ready to go. “Moving forward, we will use the new deployment features in Windows Server 2008 and Configuration Manager 2007, with the goal of automating all of our Exchange Server deployments by the middle of next year,” he says.

Next, the company plans on using Terminal Services Gateway to allow authorized remote users to connect to resources on an internal corporate or private network from any Internet-connected device. Currently, Bridgestone uses several external partners to troubleshoot and support Bridgestone applications. Having employees and partners log on over the Internet, instead of using dial-up or a virtual private network, will improve performance and afford greater control of the environment by Bridgestone IT administrators. Brooks also notes that the improvements to Terminal Services will help his staff better integrate remote and local applications on client computers.

He concludes: “We have a lot to look forward to in the coming year. We’re very happy with Windows Server 2008 and the benefits it’s bringing to our IT environment.”

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 HP products and services, call (650) 857-1501 or visit the Web site at:
www.hp.com

For more information about Bridgestone Australia Ltd. products and services, call (618) 8206 0200 (Australia) or visit the Web site at:
www.bridgestone.com.au

Windows Server 2008

Windows Server 2008, with built-in Web and virtualization technologies, enables you to increase the reliability and flexibility of your server infrastructure. New virtualization tools, Web resources, and security enhancements help you save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and optimized datacenter. Powerful new tools like IIS 7.0, Server Manager, and Windows PowerShell, allow you to have more control over your servers and streamline Web, configuration, and management tasks. Advanced security and reliability enhancements like Network Access Protection and the Read-Only Domain Controller option for Active Directory Domain Services harden the operating system and help protect your server environment to ensure you have a solid foundation on which to build your business.

For more information, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

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

Document published January 2008