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Australian Bureau of Statistics Charts National Trail to Cloud Infrastructure

Agency Deploys VMware Technology to Deliver Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

Private Cloud Provides Capacity to Create New Services Supporting Emerging Statistical Methodologies

Data streaming in from new electronic sources. Rising demand for web-based services. Ever-evolving ways to collect, crunch and circulate numbers. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) understands that the demands of the future cannot be met with technology of the past. Over the past several years, the organization has used VMware software to transform a sprawling IT infrastructure into a cloud-ready environment so advanced that today ABS is hailed internationally as a best-practice model for how to build Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).

“Virtualization enables us to provide flexible, available, agile and dynamic capability while staying within existing budget constraints, says Tony Marion, Director Infrastructure at ABS. “VMware technology has completely changed the way we use computing resources.”

As Australia’s official statistical agency, ABS is charged with fostering informed decision-making in the nation’s public and private sectors. The organization’s website provides free, professionally processed data on Australia’s economy, industry, environment, energy, people and regions. Users of the information include government agencies, corporations and private citizens.

ABS today operates in a cloud-enabling environment recognized as a benchmark in the recent “Review of the Australian Government’s Use of Information and Communications Technology,” by Sir Peter Gershon. The distinction reflects the agency’s progressive development of its virtualized infrastructure starting in 2004.

Server Sprawl Leaves No Resources for Future Demand

The agency began virtualizing in order to stem a tide of datacenter growth problems. Increasing compute demand from internal clients had given rise to a physical infrastructure of some 360 servers running several operating systems. A limited capacity Storage Area Network (SAN) required constant tuning, while the UNIX processing platform at the time lacked agility. Administering and maintaining this environment consumed more and more capital and labor, leaving no resources to prepare for future business demand. Developers and business units also had to wait up to two months for access to out-of-date testing hardware that did not reflect the actual production environment.

“The infrastructure was complex and lacked interoperability,” Marion recalls. “Innovation was difficult to manage and the costs were unsustainable.”

ChallengeMeet changing business demands with flexible, available, agile and dynamic IT infrastructure within existing budget constraints.

SolutionDeploy VMware vSphere virtual platform to deliver Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) in private/public cloud.

• Bloated physical infrastructure replaced by efficient, automated services

• Physical servers down from 360 to 70, including 65 ESX hosts supporting 1500 virtual machines

• Storage capacity increased 700 percent

• Virtualized Gateway obviates need for 300 additional physical servers, paves way to expanded Web services

• 200 desktops virtualized in pilot project.

Results• Australian Government hails ABS as

best-practice leader

• Cloud capacity can be increased dynamically to accommodate new projects with no outage

• Test environments available in one day vs. two months

• New Gateway enables innovative Web applications

• Virtual desktops support workforce mobility, work-life balance

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Australian Bureau of Statistics

G O V E R N M E N T

“By building and managing our own private cloud, ABS has pooled hardware, storage, network and virtualization resources to provide the flexible, dynamic and on-demand technology resources that enable us as a modern statistical organization to keep pace with varying demand and new initiatives.”

– Tony Marion, Director Infrastructure, Australian Bureau of Statistics

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G O V E R N M E N T

ABS’s first virtualization goals were to simplify and automate the datacenter, reduce TCO and enable self-service. Marion knew that for virtualization to work at ABS, it had to be embraced by the agency’s 400 IT professionals and over 2500 business staff. Performance improvements won them over, along with the migration safeguard of being able to return quickly to the previous environment if needed. In the agency’s small regional offices, server partitioning allowed users to run incompatible applications on separate virtual machines using a single host. Eliminating the need for server warranty uplifts delivered a 10 percent annual saving per physical server, or $140,000 in total maintenance costs. Most persuasively, ABS was able to provide test environments within 24 hours of request, down from two months.

“Instead of having to line up and wait until we could free up hardware, clients found they could get an application into a full testing environment within a day, significantly reducing time from project concept to delivery,” Marion says. “That was probably what got them on our side the quickest.”

Business Agility in the Private Cloud

The ABS virtual infrastructure centers on VMware vSphere, complemented by a new, virtualized storage network from HP and new high performance x86 Servers. Features built into the VMware vSphere platform ensure availability and uptime while enabling non-disruptive system upgrades. VMware vMotion moves live virtual machines from one physical server to another with no impact to end users. VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) helps scale applications dynamically to meet changing load. VMware High Availability (HA) and VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) protect applications from downtime. The agency’s virtualized resources include Oracle, SAS, IBM Lotus Notes and other mission-critical applications.

With this infrastructure in place, ABS IT staff responds quickly to agency needs. ABS business managers often have new projects come up and need to quickly deploy an environment. Failures can mean costly delays and embarrassing slippages. By being able to more rapidly deploy virtual servers, protected by VMware HA, load balanced by VMware DRS and other features, ABS IT is able to support more projects, get them up and running faster and dramatically reduce impacts of hardware failure.

Virtualization allows ABS to move away from its former, costly platforms to provide a fully redundant, load balanced environment. The agency predominately now runs on Microsoft® Windows and SUSE Linux. “Tier 1” designated applications always run on the virtualized cluster of the newest, most powerful servers. “Tier 2” applications are hosted on next-best servers, and so on. Tier 1 applications receive stepped performance increases every six months; in the old environment, performance increases were financially possible only every four years. Now, use of standard templates automates and streamlines management, freeing IT specialists to concentrate on more value-added projects. The Server, Operating Systems and Storage group has maintained service levels though staffing has reduced from 30 employees to ten through rotation and natural attrition.

Moving beyond application virtualization to building a cloud infrastructure, ABS is charting a path toward standardized service offerings, customer self-service, pooling of various departmental infrastructures and other advanced capabilities.

Moving Toward Cloud Computing

ABS had already laid the foundation for a cloud infrastructure. Two challenges remained for the ABS Server, Operating Systems and Storage group to turn itself into an efficient internal provider of cloud computing services: 1) to rethink the internal business model – how the business pays for IT services, and 2) how to expose these services to internal and even external constituencies for self service.

VMware vSphere™ 4 - VMware ESX® 4

- VMware vMotion®

- VMware High Availability

- VMware Fault Tolerance

- VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler

VMware View™ 4

Primary application• VMware vSphere 4

Primary hardware• HP EVA 8400 Storage Area Network

(SANs); HP ProLiant DL 580 Servers and HP BL490c Blade Servers

Guest operating systems: Microsoft® Windows 2008; Microsoft® Windows 7, SUSE Linux 11

Primary software• Oracle

• SAS

• IBM Lotus Notes

• Custom mission-critical statistical applications

VMWARE AT WORK

DEPLOYMENT ENVIRONMENT

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G O V E R N M E N T

The solution to the first challenge was to switch to resource allocation business model. Rather than ABS clients purchasing a server or software in a full cost recovery model, they buy resources on a utility computing basis, independent of the resource source. Allocations can be increased or decreased as required, almost instantly.

“We stopped talking in the old way about servers and started talking about allocation of resources to their work; for the same price as what you’re paying today, you can have unlimited access,” Marion explains. “Clients don’t even worry about the IT side anymore. It’s done for them. They’re confident it’s there and they can concentrate on their business, the statistics job, rather than having to worry about whether they have enough IT resources.”

Extending Resources Through a Future-Oriented Gateway

The answer to the second challenge on the road to cloud computing and IT as a service was to build a Gateway that enables third parties to extract and manipulate information from ABS publications; allow new collection methods such as e-forms; and provide system-to-system services among research organizations. Building a traditional gateway would have required more than 300 additional physical servers, and incurred prohibitive capital, maintenance and administrative costs. By virtualizing the environment, ABS can implement a complete testing and development schedule for an application before it is released into production. In addition, eliminating the need for compatibility testing—thanks to the isolation of individual virtual machines—speeds project delivery some 30 percent.

All this paves the way to new Web-based services. CData Online, for example, is an e-government award winning tool that enables third parties to create their own tables, graphs and maps from census data. Most importantly, the offering automatically implements confidentiality tools on the fly to protect data.

“The new gateway environment is simpler, more manageable and more predictable, with efficiencies that could not have been achieved with physical infrastructure,” Marion says.

Desktop Virtualization Provides Secure Mobility

Also gathering steam at ABS is desktop virtualization. The agency has run a pilot program virtualizing 200 desktops for a while now; further desktop virtualization is slated for 2011. The goals are to enhance mobility for at-home workers and for out-posted employees working in other agencies or abroad.

Traditionally, desktop support has been a high-cost area, with hours lost to maintenance or the business consequences of PC failure. Implementing Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) will provide an on-demand resource using VMware technology’s flexibility, redundancy and high performance features in a common platform managing both servers and desktops from the cloud. VMware View enables desktop management from a single point of control, even in remote, branch offices or third-party offices. The ability to instantly provision desktops to local and remote users from the centrally managed, secure cloud might enable ABS to reduce its number of datacenters from eight to two. The agency plans to use VMware vStorage Thin Provisioning to store applications on file servers and stream them into virtual desktops, simplifying management and enabling multiple users to share a single application package. End users will enjoy a superior desktop experience over any network without lag time.

“We want to enable ABS employees to work from anywhere—from home, from an airport lounge or from another organization,” Marion says. “The virtual desktop allows us to control desktop security and perform upgrades with no outages.”

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G O V E R N M E N T

ABS also is looking into use of Virtual Appliances, pre-built software solutions of one or more virtual machines packaged, updated, maintained and managed as a unit. Unlike a traditional hardware appliance, these software appliances allow easy sharing of pre-integrated solution stacks for deployment and management in other sites.

Ready for Census Spikes and Global Collaboration

ABS conducts a nationwide census every five years. Traditionally and for 2011, that work has been outsourced. In 2016, however, ABS looks forward to handling the huge spike in demand from its virtualized cloud. “Virtualization gives us tremendous capacity to perhaps postpone our daily work for a short time and devote the whole cloud to collecting the census,” Marion says. Further, virtualization opens the door to greater collaboration with other statistical organizations and users of data.