When Movistar, a mobile phone provider with 15.7 million customers in Argentina, was formed by the merger of Movicom and Unifón, the company needed to consolidate two IT infrastructures into a single data center. However, Movistar could not accommodate both physical environments in its data center without exceeding its power, cooling, and space capacity. Movistar needed to reduce the size and cost of its physical IT infrastructure while providing the IT performance the company needed to grow and maintain its industry leadership. Movistar used Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V technology to manage the virtualization of 50 physical servers running its important business applications. With Hyper-V, Movistar consolidated its data center, decreased the number of physical servers it needed, reduced its energy costs, and increased its business agility.

Situation
Movistar is a mobile phone company owned by Telefónica Móviles of Grupo Telefónica, headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Movistar has 4,100 employees throughout the country and serves 15.7 million customers. A market innovator, Movistar is a leading provider of 3G products and services in Argentina, and the company offers many mobile solutions to help business customers manage information from their phones.

Movistar was formed by the merger of mobile phone providers Movicom and Unifón. Movicom managed its own in-house IT infrastructure, and Unifón relied on an environment hosted in an outsourced data center. During the process of integrating the two companies, Movistar determined that it needed to consolidate the two data centers.

By using Microsoft virtualization technologies to consolidate our data centers, we reduced energy consumption by up to 90 percent and saved almost 25 percent in data center floor space. Roberto Vázquez IT Architect, Movistar

“We could not afford to have one data center in our offices and another outsourced data center, so we chose to move everything under our operational control,” says Roberto Vázquez, IT Architect at Movistar. “Although not the only determining factor, the cost-agility ratio that we wanted also played an important role in the decision.”

Combining the two infrastructures was a challenge. Movicom already had a large number of servers in its data center, and accommodating the Unifón infrastructure required a lot of space and significantly exceeded the center’s uninterruptible power supply (UPS) capacity.

The data center cooling system was also reaching maximum capacity, which increased energy consumption even more. Operational costs were rising, while performance and availability were being threatened.

“In the past, for each project, we initially assessed our needs and then purchased a physical server,” says Vázquez. “With the merger, we had exceeded the data center capacity. There was no space to put another single server, but our needs kept growing.”

To consolidate the two IT environments, Movistar would have had to migrate some legacy applications to new hardware or updated versions of operating systems, which made the situation even more complex. To overcome compatibility challenges between applications and new servers or operating systems, the company would have to develop or deploy third-party solutions that were either impractical or not cost-effective. Movistar needed a solution that would reduce the size and cost of its physical IT infrastructure while providing the IT agility and performance the company needed to maintain and enhance its industry leadership.

Solution
Movistar wanted to consolidate 50 physical servers running its important business applications into a virtualized environment, so it began evaluating virtualization technologies offered by Microsoft and other providers. The company knew that Microsoft was developing Hyper-V virtualization technology, and though it was eager to use the new solution, it decided to use Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 to manage the initial virtualization of the application environment, and then switch to the Hyper-V hypervisor-based virtualization platform when it was released.

To implement virtualization in a complex physical environment after the consolidation of the data center, Movistar gradually shut down all its physical servers and began to turn on virtual servers based on a storage area network (SAN) storage model. As a

Our infrastructure management is now more dynamic. We can move resources from one node to another or add memory or processors very quickly. In the event of a critical failure, reproducing the environment would be much easier. Sebastian Corazza Senior Operating Systems Administrator, Telefónica Móviles of Grupo Telefónica

precaution, the company deployed more virtual server capacity then necessary to run the business applications, some third-party applications, and some developed by internal IT staff.

When Hyper-V was released, Movistar began moving virtual servers from Virtual Server 2005 to Windows Server 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V; it expects to run 70 percent of its Windows-based environment on Hyper-V virtual servers.

“Our business units demand new environments on which to run their applications permanently,” says Vázquez. “We ask them if they have any specific problem or requirement that demands the use of a physical server. If this is not the case, everything goes to virtual servers running Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.”

The company is using other functionalities in Windows Server 2008 such as VLAN trunking, which allows data traffic to flow more efficiently in a virtualized local area network. In one of the server clusters, Movistar used Windows Server 2008 R2, which offered better disk performance, and the Live Migration feature.

Movistar executed the virtualization program in collaboration with Microsoft Services through Microsoft Services Premier Support. HP provided additional technical advice and three HP Proliant BL480c blade systems. Movistar hosted approximately 20 virtual servers on each blade server.

Benefits
By using Hyper-V to deploy a virtual server environment in its IT infrastructure, Movistar accomplished the consolidation of its two data centers, decreased the number of physical servers it needed, reduced its energy costs, and increased its business agility. “This solution helped us achieve our primary goals to get rid of physical servers and save energy,” says Sebastian Corazza, Senior Operating Systems Administrator at Telefónica Móviles of Grupo Telefónica. “And now we can often achieve in only one day tasks that in a physical environment would take much longer.”

Fewer Servers, Reduced Energy Consumption
With Hyper-V virtualization technology, Movistar can consolidate 50 physical server racks into 3. By reducing the number of physical servers it had to buy, deploy, and maintain, Movistar merged its two IT infrastructures, significantly decreased its operating costs, and simplified management for its new integrated environment.

“By using Microsoft virtualization technologies to consolidate our data centers, we reduced energy consumption by up to 90 percent and saved almost 25 percent in data center floor space,” says Vázquez.

Dynamic IT Infrastructure
Movistar now has a much more agile IT infrastructure, and the company can respond to changing business and technical requirements much more quickly and easily. When an application began to be used intensively and caused a server failure, Movistar eliminated the physical server and balanced the application workloads across three virtual servers in just one day. By reducing the workload of each server, Movistar enhanced the availability of the application and increased its performance for the user.

“Our infrastructure management is now more dynamic,” says Corazza.”We can move resources from one node to another or add memory or processors very quickly. In the event of a critical failure, reproducing the environment would be much easier.”

Improved Business Responsiveness
With a virtual environment for development, Movistar can test or deploy new systems so quickly that it has practically eliminated the time it takes to provision new servers and new applications.

“We expected to improve our responsiveness to business needs, but we achieved results far beyond our expectations,” says Vázquez. “In the past, the process to satisfy a request could take months. Now, within certain limitations, it can be almost automatic.”

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 in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. 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 Movistar products and services, visit the website at:
www.movistar.com.ar