PetroChina Company Limited

PetroChina Virtualizes for Efficiency, Expects 40 Percent Reduction in Server Hardware

PetroChina wanted to maximize the operational efficiency of its IT system. To do this, the company upgraded to Windows Server® 2008 R2 to take advantage of the enhanced Hyper-V™ technology and features such as Cluster Shared Volumes. As a result, the company expects to reduce server hardware by more than 40 percent, increase performance and availability, and reduce IT management time.

Business Needs

With oil and gas assets and interests in 27 countries, annual revenue of more than U.S.$181 billion, and nearly 1 million employees, PetroChina is one of the largest oil companies in the world. As a leading global oil and gas producer and distributor, the company is committed to operating at peak efficiency and requires a dynamic IT environment.

Windows Server 2008 R2 gives us the capability to make configurations and migrate servers between hosts without disruption to service, so we have higher availability to ensure business continuity.  Defu Feng Project Manager PetroChina

In early 2009, PetroChina was running the Windows Server® 2003 and Windows Server 2008 operating systems on more than 1,200 server computers. The company also had 50 virtual machines running on Hyper-V™ virtualization technology in Windows Server 2008. Hyper-V helped the company improve its hardware usage, but required that a disk or logical unit number (LUN) be configured and managed for each virtual machine, which was time-consuming for the company’s IT staff. Additionally, PetroChina had to take services offline to implement configuration changes and to move virtual servers between physical hosts, which disrupted workflow across the company. 

The organization wanted to make the system more efficient as part of its overall business goal to be a strongly competitive international energy company.

Solution

In July 2009, PetroChina decided to upgrade to the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system. Windows Server 2008 R2 introduces an improved version of Hyper-V that supports up to 64 logical processors on a host computer and includes the new Live Migration feature. PetroChina was especially interested in using Live Migration with the new Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) feature in failover clustering. “We felt that these features would help us improve the operational efficiency of our system, especially in storage configuration and availability,” says Defu Feng, Project Manager at PetroChina.

With Live Migration, moves between host servers can happen in milliseconds. CSV provides a single, consistent storage space that allows hosts in a cluster to concurrently access virtual machine files on a single shared LUN. This eliminates the previous restriction of one virtual machine per LUN and coordinates the use of storage with much greater efficiency and higher performance. With CSV and Live Migration, PetroChina can move virtual machines without affecting other virtual machines sharing the same LUN.

The company engaged Microsoft® Services consultants to help implement the solution. Together, they configured four to six virtual machines on each of eight physical servers (Lenovo servers with Intel processors), which are being used in a small pilot within the PetroChina general office management system. The company is centrally managing both the physical and virtual machines with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

PetroChina plans to deploy Windows Server 2008 R2 on more than 20 physical servers by the end of 2009.

Benefits

By upgrading to Windows Server 2008 R2, PetroChina expects to improve server utilization, reduce server hardware by more than 40 percent, increase performance and availability, and reduce IT management time. Benefits include:

• Improved server utilization. Because Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 can now access up to 64 logical processors on a host computer, it means greater virtual machine consolidation ratios per physical host. With the enhanced Hyper-V technology, PetroChina was able to achieve a 4:1 consolidation ratio and improve server utilization for the initial pilot. With the future deployment, the company expects to reduce the number of physical servers by more than 40 percent. 
• Increased performance. With Windows Server 2008 R2, PetroChina can support larger workloads on individual computers and achieve “wire speed” storage performance. Windows Server 2008 R2 scales up to address as many as 256 logical processors on a single server, and the enhanced Hyper-V technology is able to use up to 64 logical processors—four times more CPU support than before.
• Increased availability. By using Windows Server 2008 R2, PetroChina can increase availability. The operating system provides for the addition and removal of storage in virtualized infrastructures without interruption. Additionally, Cluster Shared Volumes makes live migration of virtual servers almost instantaneous because there is no disk ownership to transfer. “Windows Server 2008 R2 gives us the capability to make configurations and migrate servers between hosts without disruption to service, so we have higher availability to ensure business continuity,” says Feng. “We can improve uptime by several hours a year.”
• Reduced IT management time. With Windows Server 2008 R2, PetroChina can reduce the administrative effort for common day-to-day operational tasks. For instance, Cluster Shared Volumes makes the configuration of clustered virtual machines much faster and simpler than before. Additionally, it reduces the number of LUNs required for virtual machines. “Instead of having one LUN for each virtual machine, we will be able to use one LUN for eight virtual machines with Cluster Shared Volumes, which reduces IT management time,” Feng says. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 also helps improve efficiency by simplifying the creation and management of virtual servers.

Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2008 R2 is the latest version of the Windows Server operating system from Microsoft. With Windows Server 2008 R2, you can create solutions that are easier to plan, deploy, and manage than with previous versions of Windows Server. Building on the features, security, reliability, and performance provided by Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 extends connectivity and control to local and remote resources. This means that your organization can benefit from reduced costs and increased efficiencies gained through enhanced management and control over resources across the enterprise.

For more information, go to:
www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2008R2

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published October 2009