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“With HP and Sudden Service’s help, we were able to retire the old
servers about six weeks after we took delivery of the new hardware. The
implementation was on time and on budget.”
–William Cheng, Manager Information Technology, Canucks Sports & Entertainment
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Periodic hardware refreshes are a corporate necessity.
They also provide opportunities for companies
to re-think their technology strategies. Are there
opportunities to better leverage technology, optimize
return on its technology investment, or support the
company’s business needs? If so, an upgrade initiative
can enable companies to lay a foundation to enhance
the value of its data systems.
For the Vancouver Canucks, a recent hardware refresh
proved the right time for a transformational change to
its data management infrastructure.
The timing of the refresh was driven by external
circumstances. The 2004-2005 National Hockey
League work stoppage eliminated the team’s primary
revenue streams for a full fiscal year and all nonemergency
IT expenditures were temporarily placed
on the backburner. When the work stoppage was resolved, the Canucks organization was able to fund
its technology infrastructure budget more generously
once again. By then, many of its servers were out of
warranty and maintenance costs were going up, but
the IT organization also had other considerations to
weigh besides upgrading servers. “We needed to do
both long- and short-term planning,” notes William
Cheng, Manager Information Technology, Canucks
Sports & Entertainment. “This was an opportunity to
lay a foundation for the future and we wanted to do
it right.”
So Cheng turned to HP and a local HP Reseller,
Sudden Service, to help plan and develop a new
technology infrastructure.
Short-term and long-term needs
The Canucks organization is a long-time HP customer,
from its desktops (HP Compaq Deskpro systems, for
the most part) and printers to the data center systems.
The business processes supported by the
organization’s enterprise systems include many
common to all corporations, such as e-mail and
financial applications. These applications run under
Windows Server 2003 and today include Microsoft®
Exchange, SharePoint, and CRM (Customer
Relationship Management).
The organization also requires a number of processes
specific to the entertainment industry. During hockey
games, for instance, tickets are scanned at the
stadium entrance via handheld bar code readers; the
data is sent to the Canucks’ servers and validated
against a manifest provided by the ticket vendor,
ensuring only valid ticket holders are admitted
to events. Stadium security and access control is
managed using a security software application that
also enables the Canucks to manage and store digital
video records captured by the stadium’s security
cameras.
When the Canucks budgeted a server refresh, it took
over a year to sort out the details, Cheng says. The
challenge was to design an Adaptive Infrastructure
based on an architecture that is able to address both
near- and long-term technology objectives. Immediate
requirements included reducing maintenance costs
and accommodating the organization’s evolving
business needs. Cheng expects the Canucks’ data
storage needs to about triple within the next year, for
instance.
As for long-range plans, the biggest issue was
preparing for the XXI Olympic Winter Games in
2010, which are being held in Vancouver. “We are
a host venue,” Cheng explains. “From a technology
perspective, our systems have to be scalable and flexible enough to handle the additional fans and
other requirements, such as meeting the security
standards set by the Organizing Committee.”
Leveraging virtualization
After Cheng engaged HP and the reseller, the team
explored two potential paths forward. “We had over
30 servers,” says Cheng. “So one choice was to do a
traditional refresh and replace each box with a new
one.”
Another option was virtualization. Although it looked
good on paper, it was a relatively new approach
for the organization, so Cheng turned to his vendors
to help raise his comfort level. HP put Cheng in
touch with HP engineers who were familiar with
virtualization to help answer his questions. Cheng also
visited a local television station which had done some
virtualization.
“In the end, we decided virtualization was a better
way to scale,” Cheng says. “It allows us to treat
storage, CPUs, and memory as commodities that we
can allocate flexibly whenever needed.”
The team selected an architecture built around a
HP StorageWorks 4000 Enterprise Virtual Array
(EVA4000) based storage area network (SAN) to
provide data storage for four HP ProLiant DL385 G2
servers running Windows under VMware. Cheng
considered configuring the SAN as an iSCSI device,
but ultimately chose a Fibre Channel Switch. “When
we took a good look at our bandwidth needs, we
realized that we had to go with a fibre SAN,” he
says. Another key consideration was consistent
components. “We wanted all the same types of drives
and memory to make it simpler to swap components
between servers when necessary.”
For storage hardware, Cheng wanted the HP
StorageWorks EVA4000 and also decided to have
an HP StorageWorks MSL2024 Tape Library for
centralized data backup. “We decided to perform
backups from the fibre side of the SAN instead of the
network side, to optimize traffic flow.”
Replacing 18 servers with three
The Canucks approved Cheng’s plan, and the team
began the implementation. HP assisted with the setup
of the SAN; Sudden Service configured the VMware
environment. The support of the two vendors was
critical, Cheng notes, because his internal staff was
simultaneously familiarizing itself with portions of
the new infrastructure, such as the Exchange and
SharePoint pieces. “Our team of four is responsible
for supporting the entire environment, including our
desktops. We couldn’t have taken on the migration
as well. But with HP and Sudden Service’s help, we
were able to retire the old servers about six weeks
after we took delivery of the new hardware. The
implementation was on time and on budget.”
With the new architecture in place, the Canucks
organization began realizing its benefits almost
immediately.
Virtualization allowed Cheng to replace 18 of the
Canucks’ older servers with a cluster of three ProLiant
DL385 systems (the fourth serves as a back-up). Power
requirements were cut by at least 25 percent, Cheng
says. “Before, the AC in our server room could barely
keep up. Now I’ve noticed the room remains quite
cold.” The Canucks have committed to becoming
carbon neutral, he adds, so reducing his server
footprint is important from a corporate values as well
as cost reduction standpoint.
Maintenance costs are also lower. “We’d be paying
about 20 percent more per year on maintenance if we
had kept our old architecture,” Cheng estimates.
Perhaps more important than the savings, however,
are the business benefits of the new architecture.
First, the virtualized environment lets Cheng’s team
accommodate user requests more quickly. “When
we allocated physical servers to applications on a
1:1 basis, it took weeks to respond to business users’
requests because we had to acquire new hardware to
do so. Now we can prep a server in a couple of hours
if needed.”
Better support for business needs
Virtualization also means Cheng’s team can support
changing business needs flexibly and cost-effectively.
When the organization decided to implement
Microsoft CRM, for example, it was able to take on
the new application with its existing hardware instead
of first adding a new server.
Another example is the stadium’s security
requirements. Security cameras can be adjusted,
if desired, to record more detail, which translates
into better, clearer records of fan behavior or
security-related events. In the past, Cheng explains,
accommodating such requests potentially triggered a
data management issue, because the more detail that
is captured, the more bandwidth and storage capacity
is needed to handle the data.
Today, however, these issues are simpler to resolve:
the virtualized configuration allows Cheng to allocate
more of his infrastructure capacity to the video camera
application when necessary. Should he have to bump
up his total capacity, he can simply add more drives
to the EVA—a change that is easier and less costly
than adding more physical servers.
Other business needs related to the Canucks’
broadcast capabilities. The organization is moving
from an analog to the HD (High Definition) television
standard. As they do, the Canucks can change the
allocation of server and data storage capacity to
enable the switch.
Virtualization also allows Cheng to make
configuration changes without impacting users. After
the new architecture was up and running, for instance,
Cheng discovered that his mail server was undersized.
His team was able to apportion more space to it
without incurring any downtime. This wouldn’t have
been possible if he’d needed to move the Exchange
environment to a new physical server.
The architecture will also support the Canucks Sports
& Entertainment needs during the upcoming Winter
Olympic Games.
“We could have kept to our old way of provisioning
our data management systems,” Cheng says. “Instead
we opted for a transformational approach. It was
the right decision. We are more adaptable, more
scalable, and we can be more responsive from a
services perspective.”
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For more information on how working with HP can benefit you, contact your local HP sales representative, or
visit us through the Internet at our world wide web address: http://www.hp.com
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