Continental Airlines

Leading Airline Moves to Virtual Environment, Sets Stage for Growth While Cutting Costs

In 2007, Continental Airlines was quickly running out of capacity in its Houston, Texas data center. During that same year, Continental had less than eight weeks to redeploy over 100 front-end Web servers to meet the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards for financial data protection. The company’s IT department transitioned to a virtual infrastructure using Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007. With this solution, Continental consolidated servers and deployed and migrated to a new virtual environment. Not only did Continental meet its PCI deadline, it also created the foundation for a unified, centrally-managed virtual data center that will handle future growth, provisions servers in two hours instead of four weeks, enhances the IT department’s ability to adhere to build standards, and saves more than U.S.$2 million.

 

Situation

In 2007, Continental Airlines was challenged with two high-profile data center projects. The first, in February, was to consolidate its Houston data center to enable future growth. The second, in the summer of 2007, was to redeploy servers in order to meet an upcoming deadline for Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards.

Not only didn’t we have to do a 1:1 replacement of our physical servers, we are using the new Virtual Server–based virtual machines to deliver better utilization and help us achieve greater return on investment. Ron Anderson-Lehman CIO, Continental Airlines

According to Continental Airlines CIO Ron Anderson-Lehman, the data center “had a lot of equipment that wasn’t geared to growth. It would have been wasteful to continue building out our systems this way.” Power consumption was a top priority. Continental had reached a point where it couldn’t introduce more circuits from its power provider, and the situation was quickly becoming critical.

“We understood that if we consolidated servers we would reduce energy consumption,” says Jason Foster, Systems Architect Sr. Manager of Technology at Continental. Continental decided to refresh its legacy servers with more efficient blade servers, and then to maximize use of those resources with virtualization technologies.

Later that year, in the summer of 2007, Continental Airlines faced a time-critical business challenge. It had only eight weeks to redeploy 100 front-end Web servers in order to meet required PCI security standards for protecting financial data. PCI is a set of comprehensive requirements for enhancing payment account data security. It was developed to help facilitate the adoption of consistent data security measures on a global basis. The deadline for compliance was fixed; after that date Continental would incur fines from its credit card vendors.

To meet the PCI requirements, Continental’s IT department needed to redesign the network from firewall and perimeter (also known as DMZ, demilitarized zone, and screened subnet) perspectives, and also ensure that the resulting infrastructure would provide the business and the technology flexibility that Continental Airlines requires. “We had a looming deadline and needed to make this happen in a straight-forward, smart way,” says Ron Anderson-Lehman, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Continental Airlines. Continental needed a robust, intuitive system for managing the redeployment—and ongoing management—of this virtual infrastructure.

Solution

Foster’s team handled the technical review of server virtualization solutions for Continental’s consolidation project. His group explored solutions from Microsoft, VMware, Virtuoso, and XenSource. In the end, it came down to Microsoft and VMware. “We evaluated Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 and VMware ESX based on product supportability and maturity, cost, and future planned innovations. We already had a strong business relationship with Microsoft for other products, but felt that if ESX offered significant advantages, we would go with VMware for server virtualization. After a thorough evaluation, there was nothing ESX offered that proved compelling enough. We decided to standardize on Virtual Server,” Foster explains.

Foster also notes that a primary driver behind Continental’s selection of Virtual Server was the simplified migration path to Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V™, the new hypervisor-based virtualization technology. “We got under the hood and felt that the ‘microkernalized’ hypervisor was the superior architecture. It offers the best efficiencies and performance.”

With Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, administrators have complete scripted management of portable, connected virtual machines, and easy automation of deployment and ongoing changes and configuration. And with the Hyper-V technology available in the upcoming release of the Windows Server 2008 operating system, Continental could use Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 to start virtualization deployments today to gain familiarity with virtualization and system management. Then, using the common virtual hard disk (VHD) file format, Continental would be able to easily migrate from Virtual Server to the Hyper-V technology in Windows Server 2008. 

After making its decision to go with Virtual Server, Continental powered off its 140 legacy servers. It replaced them with 50 HP-c7000 Proliant (BL460) blade servers running 140 Virtual Server–based virtual machine child partitions and 50 parent partitions.

In July 2007, when Continental’s PCI project was initiated, it had already transitioned into a virtual environment with Virtual Server. At the time, VMRCplus, which allows for local and remote management of Virtual Server and supports simultaneous management of Virtual Server hosts, was being released. Continental engineers and architects evaluated its capabilities but realized that although Virtual Server itself provided tremendous benefits, they needed a more robust management system. They heard about Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and decided to evaluate it.
 

After a thorough evaluation, there was nothing ESX offered that proved compelling enough. We decided to standardize on Virtual Server. Jason Foster Systems Architect Sr. Manager, Technology, Continental Airlines

Continental tested System Center Virtual Machine Manager in its Large Device Lab in Houston. Continental determined that by using the solution, the company would be able to achieve a “one-stop, single-point approach to managing hundreds of Virtual Server–based virtual machines and all the hosts, while also easily performing physical-to-virtual migrations,” says Foster. “We used Virtual Machine Manager to manage, deploy, and migrate to the virtual machines in a highly escalated timeframe.”

Continental joined the Microsoft Technology Adopters Program and worked closely with Microsoft to implement the system within the confines of their tight deadline. The company deployed approximately 140 Virtual Server–based virtual machines and 50 hosts, all managed by three instances of System Center Virtual Machine Manager: one for development, one for staging and deployment, and one for production to align with their IT teams. Moving forward, Continental will use System Center Virtual Machine Manager for all server deployments and management throughout the company.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager is a comprehensive management solution for the virtualized data center that centralizes management of virtual machines, accelerates provisioning, and can improve under-utilization scenarios common in today’s servers. It is an integral part of the Microsoft strategy for data center-to-desktop virtualization strategy, which includes solutions for all layers in the IT infrastructure and, equally important, enables administrators to easily manage all virtual—and physical—assets from a single platform. Continental uses System Center Virtual Machine Manager to drive business agility by allowing them to dynamically provision, rapidly change, and streamline management of their infrastructure’s machine layer.

In addition to deploying System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Continental is also implementing other Microsoft System Center solutions, including System Center Data Protection Manager, System Center Operations Manager, and System Center Configuration Manager. Continental believes that, by using these products together, its IT team can simplify management of its entire infrastructure, including physical and virtual assets.

Benefits

By using Virtual Server and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Continental consolidated its data center and freed up more power for future growth, met its PCI project deadline, and created the foundation for a unified, centrally-managed and easy-to-support virtual data center. “The PCI project gave us a glimpse of what we can achieve with Microsoft virtualization technologies. We transitioned critical systems in a very short timeframe with minimal disruption to our operations,” Anderson-Lehman notes.

Consolidated Servers, Set Stage for Growth

By reducing its data center servers from 140 to just 50 and increasing utilization of each server, Continental reduces energy consumption. “Using Microsoft virtualization technologies, we freed up our power source. Now we can deploy new technologies in the data center as needed to meet our business demands without worrying about hitting the wall,” Foster says.

“Microsoft virtualization technologies will help us get out in front of server capacity, so we can quickly get people the resources they need to run their businesses,” Anderson-Lehman notes. “We can also make the most of our servers from a fiscal responsibility viewpoint. Not only didn’t we have to do a 1:1 replacement of our physical servers, we are using the new Virtual Server–based virtual machines to deliver better utilization and help us achieve greater return on investment.”

Saved U.S.$2 Million in Server Costs

Continental has traditionally spent U.S.$6 million to $8 million annually on server deployments, primarily for refreshes. It typically replaced about 250 legacy servers. Now it will move those servers into the virtual environment. Using Virtual Server and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, it expects to consolidate to about 80 servers, creating a 3:1 savings. Continental will minimize its number of servers by maximizing utilization. Continental can use the System Center Virtual Machine Manager rating system to identify which servers have capacity for additional workload, factoring in both historical performance data and ongoing requirements. Whereas Continental might have achieved only 5 percent utilization with physical servers, it can reach over 50 percent utilization with System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Virtual Server. In fact, as Continental gains experience with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, “we’ll feel comfortable topping utilization at 70 to 75 percent,” Foster notes.

Speeded Provisioning, Cut Conversion Time

In the past, it often took four weeks for Continental to provision a new server. This included a couple of days to build the server and more than three weeks lead time for purchasing, acquisition, and installation. Using Virtual Server and Automated Deployment Services (ADS), it could cut that to about eight hours for 20GB of data per server conversion. However, with the System Center Virtual Machine Manager physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion capabilities, Continental can provision new virtual machines or convert physical servers in just two hours.

Continental is finding that converting physical servers into virtual machines is easy with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, which provides a task-based wizard to guide the administrator through the process. Using the Volume Shadow Copy Service and Background Intelligent Transfer Service technologies Windows Server, Continental administrators can create virtual machines without having to interrupt the source physical server. Because the P2V process is completely scriptable, IT staff can quickly and easily do large-scale P2V conversions through the Windows PowerShell™ command line interface.

Accelerated Non-Administrator Provisioning

Continental is using the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal and will soon be implementing its quota capabilities. This is used to simplify and speed provisioning for application and business unit owners who want a high level of administration for their servers. In the past, administrators had to leave their desktop computers and go to the data center to access their servers directly using Remote Desktop Protocol. Not only was this inefficient, it also compromised security. Now, the Continental IT department will allot a certain number of quota points to each department and to each Virtual Server–based virtual machine template. If users in Human Resources want to deploy new virtual machines, they can use their available points, and, through the Self-Service Portal, securely self-provision the virtual machine without having to burden (or wait for) IT engineers to do it for them. The authorized users simply right-click and log on to the Self-Service Portal from their desktop computers. Instead of potentially taking days to acquisition a server, it will take only one to two hours. “It’s all about speeding time to market,” says Foster. “All I have to do is capacity planning on pre-deployed physical servers, and users can provision their own virtual machines.”  Anderson-Lehman adds, “When the developers saw what they could do with these Microsoft technologies they were a bit stunned. They couldn’t believe they would be able to provision [the servers] themselves. It’s very compelling.”

Simplified Virtual Environment Management

Using Microsoft virtualization technologies, we freed up our power source. Now we can deploy new technologies in the data center as needed to meet our business demands without worrying about hitting the wall. Jason Foster Systems Architect Sr. Manager, Technology, Continental Airlines

Continental has found that the centralized, single-point administration in System Center Virtual Machine Manager results in efficient, cost-effective management. “By using System Center Virtual Machine Manager, we obtain tremendous benefits in terms of time and ease of management. I only need one tool to operate and manage my entire virtual data center,” Foster explains. Equally important is the interoperability between System Center Virtual Machine Manager and other key Microsoft technologies. For instance, Continental is planning to use System Center Virtual Machine Manager to configure advanced reporting for detailed performance and cost center statistics. By integrating System Center Virtual Machine Manager with System Center Operations Manager 2007, IT will be able to bring alerting and monitoring to Virtual Machine Manager, using a single interface to view everything. Continental is also evaluating the integration of System Center Data Protection Manager with Virtual Machine Manager to more quickly and effectively back up and restore servers. The company also is implementing System Center Configuration Manager as a replacement for Microsoft Systems Management Server.

Improved Standards Implementation Continental IT writes and adheres to standards for operating system build versions. Because the System Center Virtual Machine Manager library stores, sorts, and catalogs all the base images for its virtual data center, IT can use those documents, which are stored as templates in the library, to create standard deployments. “The library helps us achieve consistency, dramatically reducing—and hopefully eliminating—one-off builds. And that brings lower cost, because I can manage everything more efficiently,” Foster notes. For example, Continental also uses the library for break-fix issues if a production server crashes. It simply does a system state restore to the new server and copies the data.

Eased Implementation

Foster notes that it was simple to set up System Center Virtual Machine Manager. “It was easy to install and configure. For instance, with the Install Wizard you know right out of the gate how Virtual Machine Manager is going to work, which ports it will be using for which functionality. That’s very different from typical installs, which often require going into the registry to make changes.”

Microsoft Virtualization
Microsoft virtualization is an end-to-end strategy that can profoundly affect nearly every aspect of the IT infrastructure management life cycle. It can drive greater efficiency, flexibility, and cost effectiveness throughout your organization. From accelerating application deployments; to ensuring systems, applications, and data are always available; to taking the hassle out of rebuilding and shutting down 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

For more information about Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, go to:
www.microsoft.com/scvmm 

 

For More Information

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For more information about Continental Airlines products and services, call (800) 932-2732 or visit the Web site at:
www.continentalairlines.com