Banverket ICT

Swedish IT Agency on Track with Virtualization Solution That Boosts Customer Service

Banverket ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is the IT and communications services provider for Banverket, the Swedish rail authority. It also provides ICT services to national and international customers. Banverket ICT wanted to improve the agility of its data center and the delivery of virtual applications so that it could attract new customers and better serve existing ones. Since it deployed an integrated Microsoft® server, desktop, and application virtualization solution and began using Microsoft System Center products to manage its virtualized IT environment, Banverket ICT is on its way to achieving a more responsive data center. It is also providing better customer service by hosting non cluster aware applications as virtual machines in a virtualized clustered environment.

Situation

Banverket, Swedish Rail Authority, is responsible for the entire railway system in Sweden, including conventional railways, underground railways, and light rail systems. It oversees development across the railway sector and assists the Swedish government with railway issues. Banverket is also responsible for the operation and management of state track installations, the coordination of local, regional, and interregional railway services, and for research and development in the rail sector.

Banverket ICT (Information and  Communication Technology), with 240 employees, supplies the 6,500 employees at Banverket with complete information and communication technology services, including office, transport, and network and management services. Banverket ICT owns and maintains the railway’s nationwide communications network, comprising 13,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable, 20,000 kilometers of metal cable, and 1,200 sites for radio equipment. It provides access to this network to other corporate customers, including national and international companies.

“We have been overseeing technology innovations for the Swedish rail system since 1856 when people used Morse code to communicate over distances,” says Jan Fahlén, Chief Executive Officer, Banverket ICT. “Today, we are working with fiber optic cables and sophisticated computing systems. Our ICT services are as important as the iron on the tracks and our goal is to keep the Swedish rail system running efficiently and productively.”

We see Hyper-V and the System Center products as an enabler for the future at Banverket ICT. As a cost-effective, efficient way to run an agile data center, they are going to be key to our growth. Pontus Blomkvist, Service Design Manager, Banverket ICT

Internally, Banverket ICT strives to maintain an efficient and productive data center, which houses 400 servers running the Windows Server® operating system and 80 servers running various versions of the Linux and UNIX operating systems. The data center also is home to a terminal server farm with 8 servers running Terminal Services. Some of Banverket ICT’s external customers, including contractors that provide rail maintenance services, connect to Terminal Services to access the applications they need to do their work or to use network resources.

However, Banverket ICT experienced some challenges managing the applications hosted on its terminal server farm and this affected customer service. For example, it took a long time to deliver a new application once it had been requested by a customer. Each new application required lengthy testing to eliminate potential conflicts with different hardware configurations and with other applications running on each terminal server. Next, staff had to manually install new applications on each server. Even application upgrades required a server reboot, incurring downtime that could affect end users.

“We wanted to provide more responsive, scalable service to our customers, with higher availability,” says Pontus Blomkvist, Service Design Manager at Banverket ICT. “Looking ahead, we could see how flexibility in our IT services would help us respond to a changing market. Right now, the Swedish rail service is being divided into state-owned companies that will operate in a deregulated market in competition with privatized companies. We need our data center to be adaptable so that we can quickly win business and attract new customers by providing new services, such as better access to applications for mobile users.”

Banverket ICT was using Microsoft® Operations Manager 2005 to monitor and manage its servers and the applications running on them. For Banverket ICT, Microsoft management technologies were a key way of controlling costs and streamlining infrastructure management. However, ICT staff had always felt that these technologies, working in conjunction with virtualization technologies, would yield improved efficiency, flexibility, and agility. By using software to create a virtual machine, (VM) virtualized computing environments deliver the flexibility Banverket ICT staff could use to quickly add resources to suit business and customer demands, while improving business continuity and disaster recovery plans.

“We had several goals for virtualization,” says Fahlén. “We wanted to increase the redundancy of our services for customers, create and deliver more flexible solutions, achieve a more cost-effective use of our infrastructure, and develop a greener IT solution for ourselves and our customers.”

“We had been watching with interest the evolution of the Microsoft strategy to build interoperability between infrastructure management and virtualization technologies from the data center to the desktop,” adds Blomkvist. “We knew we wanted to build an integrated virtualization platform that would encompass server consolidation, Terminal Services, and application virtualization that we could manage with a single set of tools. We looked at VMware but decided against it because we wanted to benefit from the end-to-end integration that Microsoft virtualization and management technologies will provide us.” 

Solution

Before building its integrated virtualization solution, Banverket ICT decided to wait for the release of Hyper-V™, the hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a feature in the Windows Server 2008 operating system. It deployed Hyper-V in December 2007, as part of the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program. Staff set up a test environment with three Hyper-V physical hosts and began to work with the new technology, eventually deploying Hyper-V in a clustered configuration in the production environment. Today in the production environment, there is a two-node cluster, a three-node cluster, and a five-node cluster, as well as three stand-alone Hyper-V hosts. Together, these servers host approximately 50 virtual machines (VMs). These VMs are running a combination of Microsoft applications, line-of-business applications, and infrastructure services, such as the Active Directory® service that is part of the Windows Server® 2008 operating system and the Domain Name System Server service.

In April 2007, Banverket ICT migrated from Operations Manager 2005 to Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. Then, in April 2008, it deployed the beta version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 in the test lab.

We looked at VMware but decided against it because we wanted to benefit from the end-to-end integration that Microsoft virtualization and management technologies will provide us. Pontus Blomkvist, Service Design Manager, Banverket ICT

Banverket ICT also deployed Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V). App-V, in conjunction with other Microsoft technologies such as Terminal Services, enables universal access to any application on any desktop computer or terminal server at any time. Using a streaming protocol, App-V enables the rapid delivery of applications to portable computers, desktop computers, and terminal servers. At the time of writing, Banverket ICT has deployed Microsoft App-V for Terminal Services on four of its terminal servers. The remaining four terminal servers are each running a single application. Using App-V for Terminal Services, Banverket ICT can take advantage of application virtualization and on-demand delivery to better manage its terminal server farm. In addition, IT staff is currently deploying Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 for Desktops to the 6,000 desktop computers at Banverket. When they have finished, they will be able to manage and deploy applications directly to desktop computers from a single console.

To increase the redundancy of its services and get more value out of its hardware, Banverket ICT deployed Hyper-V in a clustered configuration that enables efficient failover and server consolidation by supporting 32-bit and 64-bit VMs, running simultaneously.

Banverket ICT also wanted to create and deliver more-flexible solutions to customers. Using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 for efficient physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversions means that IT staff can quickly set up and tear down servers and VMs to fulfill changing customer demands. Finally, Banverket ICT wanted to run a more environmentally friendly data center and pass its “green” IT benefits to customers. Using Hyper-V to run more VMs on a single server significantly reduces electrical and cooling costs.

“The System Center products can be used for both virtual and physical environments, and they work on servers and the desktop," says Blomkvist, “For example, we are deploying the MSI Utility for Microsoft App-V on all our client computers so that we can use the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 console to perform change and configuration management on virtualized applications as well as on those applications actually installed on the desktop. For examples like this, we think the Microsoft System Center products, integrated with virtualization technologies, give us the best platform for the future.”

Benefits

Banverket ICT has made great progress on its journey to a complete Microsoft integrated virtualization solution, with virtualization and infrastructure management technologies deployed at the data center and, by December 2008, on 100 percent of the desktops at Banverket. Banverket ICT expects to use Hyper-V, App-V, and Microsoft System Center products to provide better, more-responsive IT services for customers, to derive more value from its IT infrastructure, and to expand into new markets. “We see Hyper-V and the System Center products as an enabler for the future at Banverket ICT,” says Blomkvist. “As a cost-effective, efficient way to run an agile data center, they are going to be key to our growth.”

Improving Customer Service

“We are building our Microsoft virtualization solution as a foundation for providing flexible customer service in the future,” adds Fahlén. “Eventually, we’ll be able to replace physical servers, desktops, and laptops with VMs that can be managed through an integrated suite of tools to deploy them quickly, anywhere. There’s no way to beat that scenario in our business and we expect it will bring us a competitive advantage.”

For example, in the future, if a Banverket ICT customer wants to run two different non-compatible applications on the same computer, it could be easily accomplished with Microsoft App-V 4.5 for Desktops. Or if the occasion arose that Banverket wanted mobile users to be able to access an application while working on the railroad, Banverket ICT staff could use Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 for Desktops to set the number of days that the user’s application will work before the user must reconnect to the network.

And once Banverket ICT staff finishes packaging the 600 applications it manages, and finishes deploying Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 for Desktops to all 6,000 personal computers at Banverket, customer service will be more responsive. “Using App-V for Terminal Services, we are already shortening the application delivery cycle from weeks, in some cases, to just half a day, depending on the application,” says Blomkvist. “So if a customer wants a new application in a hurry, we will have a streamlined process in place to get the job done more efficiently. Instead of manually deploying the same application to each physical server, we can instantly deploy applications to our terminal servers without installs, uninstalls, regression testing, or any downtime.”

Ensuring high availability for customers is another service improvement. “Our customers need applications up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” says Stefan Spång, IT Architect at Banverket ICT. “On a single physical server we couldn’t deliver high availability; now, with Hyper-V in a clustered configuration, we have a cost-effective means of increasing server and application availability by enabling failover of VMs among the hosts. We can use System Center Operations Manager 2007 to identify a problem before it becomes a crisis and use Quick Migration to move the VM in question to another host.”

Generating More Value from IT

While Banverket ICT’s first priority was to improve its ability to be flexible and to meet customer needs, the group also expects to derive more value from its IT investments. “Cutting costs wasn’t our number one goal, but it’s gratifying that virtualization helps us use our infrastructure to its full potential,” says Blomkvist. “With App-V for Terminal Services, we have been able to reduce the number of terminal servers because we can run any application on any server at any time, without worrying about conflicts. With Hyper-V, we are now running 50 VMs in production, with a utilization rate of 80 percent for some of the servers as opposed to 15 percent before we deployed Hyper-V.

Expanding into New Markets

Once Banverket ICT finishes building its Microsoft virtualization solution, it will have an infrastructure optimized for growth. When the Management Pack for Hyper-V is ready for System Center Operations Manager 2007 and when System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is released, Banverket ICT plans to virtualize all its servers. With more VMs on more Hyper-V clusters, Banverket ICT can quickly move loads to accommodate new customers, or rapidly add new VMs as customers begin to consume services.

“Since we are growing our business, we have to show that we use leading-edge technologies to provide extra value for our customers,” says Fahlén. “That’s why we chose a Microsoft virtualization solution.”

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 efficiencies, 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

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 Banverket ICT products and services, call 46 (0) 243 44 50 00 or visit the Web site at:
www.banverket.se/en.aspx