4-page Case Study - Posted 9/22/2008
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Credit Card Company Cuts 250 Servers with Virtual Datacenter and Improves Performance
Leumi Card is one of Israel’s leading consumer and corporate credit card providers. Established in Tel Aviv in 2000, it also offers issuing and clearing services, loans, flexible payment, and credit solutions. Leumi Card has more than 1.6 million credit cardholders, more than 40,000 business clients, and reputation for product and technology innovation. In 2006, it deployed Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 on a moderate scale. Happy with the reduction in energy consumption and running costs, Leumi Card evaluated Hyper-V™ and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Virtual Machine Manager 2008 in January 2008. The cost savings and further boost in performance persuaded the company to move its entire virtual and another half of its non-virtual server environment over to the new technology by the end of 2008.
Situation
Part of the 106-year-old Bank Leumi group of companies, Leumi Card has issued around 1.6 million credit cards under the Visa, MasterCard, and American Express brands and provides clearing services for more than 40,000 businesses. The company, which employs more than 1,000 people, is committed to providing customers with a range of innovative and smart payment products and solutions suited to their needs, including faster, cheaper, and more convenient credit payment solutions and special offers.
Administering and maintaining its information and communications technology (ICT) systems—servers in particular—had become increasingly expensive, time-consuming, and complex. The ICT infrastructure at Leumi Card comprised a variety of computer systems, including IBM mainframes, around 500 Intel-based Hewlett Packard servers, approximately 1,100 client computer terminals, and more than 100 laptops. Ninety percent of the company’s computers are based on the Windows® operating system. In addition to requiring almost constant maintenance, the 500 servers needed a large amount of premium floor space, power, and air conditioning.
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We plan to move our entire current virtualization environment to Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, and reduce our physical server numbers by 50 percent. |
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Edi Koifman
Systems Administrator, Leumi Card |
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The last decade has seen Leumi Card enjoy a period of rapid business growth. It needed a flexible, dynamic IT environment to cope with its expansion. The company sought a cost-effective way to meet its goal of "Green computerization" by reducing energy consumption and delivering the cost savings to its customers. In order to meet its goals, Leumi Card turned to virtualization in 2006 to optimize the performance of its growing number of physical servers.
With the assistance of its trusted Microsoft® Certified Business Partner, YSide, Leumi Card deployed Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 on 20 physical servers and converted them to 200 virtual machines.
This comprehensive solution for Leumi Card’s data center centrally manages the virtual machines, accelerates provisioning of new servers, and makes better use of the remaining physical servers.
Having sampled virtualization with its rollout of Virtual Server 2005 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007, Leumi Card wanted more. The company planned to virtualize most of its server environment, convert more non-virtual servers, and upgrade its previously virtualized servers. When the Microsoft Virtualization Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) for Hyper-V™ and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 was announced, Leumi Card was one of the first to sign on.
Solution
In collaboration with YSide, Leumi Card’s IT department began the centralized testing process in January 2008 for the Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V technology and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 on five physical servers.
In February, it began migrating Virtual Server 2005, Operations Manager 2005, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 to Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and System Center Operations Manager 2007. The company used the Windows Server 2008 operating system for Hyper-V and terminal services, and the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.1 to help plan and track the process of migrating to Hyper-V. With the assistance of the MAP Toolkit, the implementation process took just few weeks.
Leumi Card and YSide successfully turned each physical server into 10 virtual ones—double the initial performance expectation. The company has an aggressive consolidation target of 50 percent, with only 250 of its current 500 physical servers remaining by year’s end.
“By upgrading and migrating to Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Leumi Card can expect to free up space in the datacenter; reduce running, maintenance, and energy costs; and get much more performance out of new technology,” says Itzik Ben-Hamo, ICT Infrastructure Consultant, YSide.
The virtual machines can be quickly self-provisioned, which means the IT department is able to make adjustments to the virtual server environment from a Web-based interface, saving hours and even days in getting virtual machines up and running. Also, users can provision their own virtual machines using preset controls on the Web-based interface.
Benefits
Leumi Card is so delighted with the results of its virtualization deployment that it has decided its future servers will be totally virtual. Once the company completes its participation in the Virtualization RDP and finishes the migration of all old virtual systems to the new one, the company will begin converting more physical servers to the new virtual environment.
“Our expectation was that the new technology would give our internal users a better infrastructure to work under—and this has happened,” says Edi Koifman, Systems Administrator, Leumi Card. “We quickly saw that the performance was much better from the new Hyper-V–based virtual machines, and I have been getting great feedback from the IT employees. The migration from the old virtualization technology to the new one has also gone well.”
Time Savings
With System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Leumi Card’s ICT staff can view and manage all physical and virtual servers from one console, and all operations—from creating new virtual machines to shutting them down—can be done with a few mouse clicks. Physical servers can be converted to virtual servers in minutes, rather than several hours, using the convert physical to virtual wizard feature in the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.
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We quickly saw that the performance was much better from the new Hyper-V–based virtual servers, and I have been getting great feedback from the IT employees. |
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Edi Koifman
Systems Administrator, Leumi Card |
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Self-provisioning saves the IT department several days in getting servers up and running, which frees the staff to concentrate on more strategic IT planning. “The new technology enables us to virtualize a larger number of physical servers faster and more reliably than the previous technology,” says Koifman.
Performance Boosts
Because the setup time for virtual servers is five times faster than for physical ones, ICT resources are administered and used more efficiently and effectively. Consequently, these resources are also utilized where they are most needed—in development and innovation.
“Under the new technology, we cut 50 percent of our total servers—from 500 to 250,” says Koifman. “Under the old technology, we were able to reduce our physical server numbers by only 25.”
Cost and Resource Savings
Leumi Card expects to further accommodate corporate growth without needing additional physical servers—and the associated high operational and maintenance costs. The company will recoup two to three server racks for every 50 physical servers it migrates to the virtual infrastructure.
These cost and resource savings mean the company will be able to direct its time and money to where it is most needed—the provision of the best-quality and most innovative products and services for its existing and new customers.
“The overwhelming reason Leumi Card chose Microsoft for the first and second stages of its virtualization program is ROI,” Ben-Hamo reveals. “Its products are less expensive than its competitors but it doesn’t sacrifice on performance. The cost for customers to upgrade or convert to Microsoft virtualization products is also much less."
“For Leumi Card, upgrading to the new Microsoft virtualization platform is all about creating a better infrastructure for its users and getting the most out of its physical server infrastructure, thus, further reducing energy, space and costs," says Koifman. "We plan to move the current virtualization environment to Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager and reduce the number physical server numbers by 50 percent.”
Totally Virtual Future
Not surprisingly, given the results it has achieved, Leumi Card is delighted with its foray into server virtualization to date and is totally committed to a virtualization future with Microsoft.
“It is a natural progression for us,” says Koifman. “We began our virtualization journey to find a solution to reduce our physical server numbers with Microsoft a few years ago—after we looked at and rejected other solutions from other vendors—and we are going to continue this journey with Microsoft.”
Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
Together, Hyper-V technology, a key feature of the Windows Server 2008 operating system, and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 provide a reliable virtualization technology and comprehensive management solution that make it easier for customers to virtualize their IT infrastructure and reduce costs. With integrated administration, customers can use a single console to centralize management of a heterogeneous virtual machine infrastructure; increase physical server utilization; rapidly provision new virtual machines; and provide dynamic performance and resource optimization of hardware, operating systems, and applications. Both of these technologies easily plug into existing infrastructures, so companies can continue to use their current patching, provisioning, management, and support tools and processes. This combined virtualization technology and management solution also provides great value, because customers can make the most of their IT professionals' skill set, the breadth of solutions from Microsoft partners, and comprehensive support from Microsoft.
For more information, go to:
www.microsoft.com/Hyper-V
www.microsoft.com/scvmm
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 YSide products and services, call (972) (9) 960 9900 or visit the Web site at:
www.yside.com
For more information about Leumi Card products and services, call (972) (3) 514 8111 or visit the Web site at:
www.leumi.com
