Originating Author: David Vellante
After each Wikibon Peer Incite Research Meeting we write about GRS (getting rid of stuff). One of the most useful presentations at NetApp's 2008 Analyst Event was from Michael Crader, the Head of Windows Consolidation at BT who talked about how virtualizing Windows servers and using NetApp infrastructure helped him get rid of 'tons' of stuff. Literally, the project allowed BT to remove seventy-five (75) tons of server and storage gear. This equipment was hauled away on huge trucks and disposed of in an eco-friendly manner.
Before the project, utilization of storage and servers was often in the teens, and BT was at capacity for power and cooling. Backup took 96 hours, time to deploy new servers and storage was measured in weeks and customers were not happy. The project involved using VMWare to cut operational costs by increasing server and storage utilization, reducing power and cooling expenses and overall improving information access.
BT's objectives for the project were to consolidate 3100+ existing Wintel servers and achieve a consolidation ratio of 15:1 while moving to an on-demand model. BT saved $2.5M / year in energy costs, cut hardware required by 50%, increased storage utilization to 70%, reduced server maintenance costs by 90% and a project that started in April of 2006 paid back by Christmas.
Here's the before and after:
- 3100 servers down to 134
- 700 racks at 8 sites down to 40 at 5 sites
- 2.1 megawatts of power consumed down to 0.24 megawatts
- 9300 network ports down to 840
- Backup from 96 hours to a full daily in 30 minutes
- 20% storage utilization to 70%
- 6 weeks to deploy new servers down to 1 working day
With 9PB of NetApp storage and 27PB overall, BT is quite large, and not all customers will see such results. And while this case is as much (if not more) a story about VMWare, and probably several suppliers have similar stories, the fact remains that a representative from BT took the time to fly to New York and tell a bunch of analysts how great NetApp is. That is not common in the analyst event business. Usually you get talking headshots or quotation marks in slideware. The cold hard truth is that NetApp provided the storage infrastructure and considerable VMWare expertise to make this project a reality and this very credible guy from BT stood up and said so. He answered all of our questions about the project without any meddling or handling whatsoever from NetApp-- this was unique.
Action Item: Customers with poor utilization, slow deployment of resources, and out of control energy costs should synchronize storage and server virtualization projects, radically re-architect their data centers and lower energy bills by getting rid of gear. Users should be aware that processes will have to change dramatically, including and especially backup, and tools (e.g. performance tuning) are still immature. As such, users will need help and NetApp is demonstrating prowess in server virtualization projects in general and VMWare in particular and should be considered a best-of-breed supplier in VMWare.
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