2 page Case Study - Posted 9/8/2008

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Jackson Energy Authority

Public Utility Boosts Application Availability and Simplifies IT with Virtualization

Jackson Energy Authority (JEA) is a utility provider in Tennessee. JEA wanted to virtualize more servers and improve application availability so employees weren’t disrupted while serving customers. It deployed Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V™ technology, saving more than U.S.$35,000 in licensing and hardware costs and gaining a high-availability solution to ensure reliable business applications and good customer service.

Business Needs

Jackson Energy Authority (JEA) is a progressive public utility in Jackson, Tennessee. It was one of the first utilities in the United States to install a citywide fiber-to-the-home network that delivers high-speed Internet, high-definition TV, cable TV, and telephone services. JEA believes that using the best technology available is a vital tool in providing customers with reliable, cost-effective utility services.

The same attitude holds true for JEA’s internal IT systems, which support its 425 employees so they can provide excellent customer service. Employees access their business applications through a remote access solution. However, employees experienced some productivity loss due to downtime on this remote access solution, so JEA evaluated Windows Server® 2008 Terminal Services. “The new Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 now delivers Web access and other functionality that it didn’t have previously,” says Michael Johnston, Vice President of IT at JEA.

JEA deployed Windows Server 2008 Enterprise on half of its servers in its 50-server data center. Then the IT department evaluated Hyper-V™, the Windows Server 2008 hypervisor-based virtualization technology, as a replacement for its VMware ESX virtualization solution that comprised 25 virtual machines. “Again, we were motivated by standardizing on Microsoft technologies and saving money,” says Johnston. “We want the savings of server consolidation, but VMware is too expensive to expand on the 15 virtual machines we had.”

Through host and guest clustering, Hyper-V also offered a cost-effective, high-availability virtualized environment for Terminal Services. Says Johnston: “Everyone depends on our business applications to run reliably so we can provide great customer service. Using Hyper-V to create a business continuity and disaster recovery solution was appealing.” 

Solution

When Jackson Energy Authority heard about the Microsoft Virtualization Rapid Deployment Program (RDP), staff in the 20-member IT department staff jumped at the opportunity to participate. The JEA team worked with technology partner ATA Technologies, a Microsoft® Certified Partner, to determine a business plan for the RDP. They focused on deploying Terminal Services in a Hyper-V environment so that they could retire the existing solution and improve business application availability.

When we finish publishing all our applications to Terminal Services in our Hyper-V environment, we’ll be migrating all our virtual machines off the VMware solution. Michael Johnston Vice President of Information Technology, Jackson Energy Authority

“When we finish publishing all our applications to Terminal Services in our Hyper-V environment, we’ll be migrating all our virtual machines off the VMware solution,” says Johnston. “We have just purchased a server for that purpose as well as to start virtualizing mission-critical applications, such as the Command and Control servers that support 15,000 users in our telecom department.”

 ATA Technology and the IT team from JEA also evaluated the beta release of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to better understand the potential savings of having one, simple-to-use tool to manage its virtualized environment.

Benefits

JEA used Hyper-V to solve a business quandary—how to move forward with an affordable server consolidation and presentation virtualization solution, simplify its IT environment, and improve the availability of its business applications to ensure quality customer service—all at the same time. Windows Server 2008 and its integrated hypervisor solution provided a cost-effective answer.

“Hyper-V augments the enhanced Terminal Services and failover capabilities in Windows Server 2008 we needed to migrate off VMware, delivering exceptional value to our high-availability solution,” says Johnston. 

• Gaining an affordable virtualization solution. JEA took advantage of its existing Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement to migrate to Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and deploy Hyper-V at no extra cost. At the same time, JEA will save U.S.$5,000 on VMware licenses and $10,000 on licenses for its remote access solution.
  
  
• Simplifying the IT environment. JEA benefits from removing VMware and its remote access solution to standardize on Microsoft technologies. It’s saving $9,000 annually on maintenance costs and support fees for those two solutions. “After we migrate off the current VMware servers, we’ll be saving $20,000 in hardware costs due to server consolidation from four physical machines to two,” says Ridenhour. “With one central console, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 gives us a complete view of our virtualized environment. This product, along with our implementation of the System Center 2008 suite of products will help avoid hiring an additional full-time equivalent, or $150,000 a year.” Developers can take advantage of its template library to quickly deploy virtual machines as needed. “Physical-to-physical and virtual-to-virtual conversions will save us approximately five hours per application, per month, adding up to 200 hours in total.”
  
  
• Increasing Application Availability. “The Terminal Services Session Broker and clustering features of Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V deployed will eliminate any problems with application availability,” reports Johnston. “Now we can be sure that all our employees can reliably access the software they need to provide excellent customer service.”