2 page Case Study - Posted 9/8/2008

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Bouygues Construction

Construction Firm Uses Virtualization to Reduce Costs and Improve Availability

Paris-based Bouygues Construction experienced high costs and complex administration due to server proliferation. The firm decided to implement the Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise operating system with Hyper-V™ virtualization technology and Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. With virtualization, the firm expects to reduce server holdings, improve disaster recovery, and increase uptime for business applications.

Business Needs

Bouygues Construction, a world leader in civil engineering, electrical contracting, and maintenance, employs 51,100 people and operates in more than 80 countries. In 2006, the firm launched a virtualization initiative using Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1. The firm aimed to reduce the number of servers at its Paris data center and to improve disaster recovery processes. Amaury Pitrou, Projects, Architecture, Desktops, and Mobility Deputy Director at Bouygues Construction, says, “We had a very good experience with Virtual Server 2005. It showed us the potential of virtualization.”

However, Bouygues Construction needed a solution that would help it achieve better utilization of its servers. “We ran many applications on different servers, which used noncompatible underlying technologies. We had reached the limits of consolidation in this environment,” says Pitrou. Many servers were running at only about 30 percent utilization.
Finally, Bouygues Construction wanted a solution that supported highly available virtual machines, a key component of its new disaster recovery plan. “We were working under a mandate from the CEO to implement a coherent disaster recovery plan.” For the past eight years, the firm migrated servers from branch offices to its main data center. “This means we are serving many critical applications from Paris and after evaluating a safety policy, senior management put a big emphasis on creating a redundant data center. We simply cannot tolerate an outage that could result in service interruptions.”

Solution

In 2008, Bouygues Construction began to evaluate other virtualization products. “VMware, with its experience in the virtualization market, was an obvious candidate,” says Pitrou. “But strategically, we wanted to stay consistent with the rest of our infrastructure.” Because 99 percent of its servers run Microsoft-based operating systems, the firm explored the potential of the Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise operating system with Hyper-V™ virtualization technology. Bouygues Construction had to ensure that Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V would meet its requirements for a comprehensive virtualization and disaster recovery environment.

With expert help from Microsoft, the firm engaged in a proof of concept to test Hyper-V for:

• Ease of integration with the existing IT environment, in particular, the firm’s BMC-based configuration management products and McAfee antivirus software.
• Ability to easily perform physical-to-virtual (P2V) machine migrations.
• Failover testing to improve the firm’s disaster recovery.

The IT team performed many P2V migrations, and it simulated a downed server node and a broken network adapter to test failover capabilities. To maintain availability of applications, the team used the Quick Migration feature of Hyper-V, which supports rapid migration of a running virtual machine from one physical host system to another. “We were hugely surprised by how easy it was to integrate Hyper-V into our environment, and how easy it was to perform migrations,” says Pitrou.

We were hugely surprised by how easy it was to install and integrate Hyper-V into our environment, and also how easy it was to perform migrations. Amaury Pitrou Projects, Architecture, Desktops, and Mobility Deputy Director, Bouygues Construction

The firm also plans to implement Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to manage its virtual machines. Pitrou says, “Our former solution lacked comprehensive virtual machine management. We look forward to the capabilities of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.”

Benefits

With its new solution, Bouygues Construction expects to reduce costs with a streamlined infrastructure and simplified administration. It also expects to improve availability of its business applications. Strong support from Microsoft and Dell contributed to a rapid proof of concept that set the stage for a smooth integration of Hyper-V into the firm’s existing infrastructure.

Ease of Integration

Pitrou says, “The proof of concept took less than three weeks and was very compressed. We had no experience with Windows Server
2008 or the X86-64 bits infrastructure. Nonetheless, we were able to absorb all of these new technologies quickly. I attribute this to the simplicity with which Hyper-V integrates into a company’s existing infrastructure.”

Cost Reductions

In the first phase of the project, Bouygues Construction will consolidate 150 servers to 6, a 96 percent reduction. “We expect major cost savings from Hyper-V because it allows us to replace all of our servers with fewer higher capacity servers,” says Pitrou. “We’ll also reduce power consumption and spend fewer hours on server administration.”

Increased Availability of Services

With virtualization, Bouygues Construction will maintain business continuity in the event of a disaster or scheduled maintenance to its IT systems. “With Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, we are creating a redundant data center in Normandy to ensure business continuity. The construction industry has changed, and employees are very dependent upon electronic systems. We can no longer tolerate services interruptions,” says Pitrou.

Strong Support

The strength of the relationships between Bouygues Construction and both Microsoft and Dell has been central to the project’s success. “We were really impressed by Microsoft,” he says. “One of the main reasons we chose Hyper-V was that Microsoft was closely involved in this project. They helped us through the proof of concept. And, historically, we’ve had great success working with Dell. The Dell technicians understood our needs and provided the best hardware solutions.”