Microsoft System Center 2012Customer Solution Case Study

Hosting Provider Reduces Costs 40 Percent, Provisions Servers Faster with Cloud Services

OverviewCountry or Region: United KingdomIndustry: Hosting

Customer ProfileNetBenefit is a managed hosting company that has been providing flexible hosting services in the United Kingdom since 1995.

Business SituationWhen NetBenefit introduced its virtualized cloud offerings, business began to flourish, so it wanted to provision virtual machines even faster and get greater use from its data center resources.

SolutionNetBenefit upgraded to Microsoft System Center 2012 to gain new efficiencies in cloud environment creation and management and to make its operations staff more efficient.

Benefits Data center costs reduced by 40

percent Lower costs for customers Higher availability Customer needs met five times faster Faster business growth Improved quality of life for IT staff

“NetBenefit wants to be a niche provider of premium virtualization and cloud services, and with System Center 2012, we have the tools we need to reach our goal.”

Michael Green, Senior Product Manager, Managed Hosting, NetBenefit

NetBenefit is a managed hosting provider in the United Kingdom that continuously refreshes its technology to stay competitive. It recently upgraded to Microsoft System Center 2012 so that it could meet demand for its public and private cloud offerings and continue to reduce costs. Because it embraced cloud computing, NetBenefit has been able to trim data center costs—including power consumption—by 40 percent and pass those savings on to customers. It can also meet customer needs faster. When one digital agency turned to NetBenefit for last-minute help in bolstering its web servers to withstand thousands of website visitors during a popular marketing campaign, NetBenefit provisioned the servers within one day. With demand for cloud servers soaring, NetBenefit can now grow its business faster.

SituationEstablished in 1995, NetBenefit is one of the most experienced managed hosting companies in the United Kingdom. It specializes in providing tailored managed hosting solutions that deliver security, resilience, and online performance for business-critical websites, applications, and online advertising campaigns. NetBenefit is headquartered in London and is part of Group NBT LTD.

In 2008, NetBenefit deployed the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system with the Hyper-V virtualization technology and began to virtualize its physical servers to reduce costs and expand its offerings. By using Hyper-V, NetBenefit was able to add an entry-level virtual offering to its managed hosting services. The company used Microsoft System Center data center solutions, particularly Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, to efficiently manage both physical servers and virtual machines.

In 2009, NetBenefit used the same suite of Microsoft software to create its first cloud computing offerings, offering both public and private cloud environments. Its public cloud offerings allow customers to run virtual private servers on physical servers that are shared with other customers. For customers that need further isolation, NetBenefit provides a private cloud environment that runs on dedicated hardware.

The virtual server and cloud offerings were a success with customers, so much so that the NetBenefit IT staff had a difficult time keeping up with demand. NetBenefit targets digital design agencies that need

temporary web servers to support their customers’ marketing campaigns. Because these campaigns are usually top secret, the agencies often come to NetBenefit only days or hours before the campaign launch. “Sales for our cloud offerings were increasing, and our operations team needed to manage a bigger customer load and provision virtual machines faster,” says Michael Green, Senior Product Manager for Managed Hosting at NetBenefit. “A huge amount of our resources was spent doing mundane setup work.”

Additionally, NetBenefit had no way to make its management environment highly available. “When System Center became the backbone of our cloud environment, it was necessary to cluster our instances of the Virtual Machine Manager component, which we couldn’t do,” adds Richard Rustean, Windows Engineering Team Leader for Managed Hosting at NetBenefit.

SolutionIn January 2011, NetBenefit joined the Technology Adoption Program for Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, an upgrade designed specifically for creating and managing private cloud environments. It also supports clustering of Virtual Machine Manager instances.

“Upgrading to System Center 2012 was another sign of our commitment to Microsoft as our chief cloud computing partner,” Green says. “We have both commercial and technical reasons for partnering with Microsoft for our cloud endeavors. On the business side, Microsoft licensing is far simpler than VMware licensing. If we had a VMware platform, we

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“Upgrading to System Center 2012 was another sign of our commitment to Microsoft as our chief cloud computing partner.”Michael Green, Senior Product Manager,

Managed Hosting, NetBenefit

would have to charge customers a fee for every virtual machine. With Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter, the host operating system license covers the licensing for every virtual machine on the server.”

Rustean adds, “From a technical perspective, our engineering team is more familiar with a Microsoft environment, and we feel that as a package, the Microsoft cloud offering is more complete and user-friendly than VMware’s.”

Mixed Public, Private Cloud EnvironmentNetBenefit has several eight-node Dell PowerEdge clusters for its public cloud environment. These clusters share firewalls and two Hitachi Data Systems storage area networks (SANs) and are configured as failover clusters. Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter is the host operating system for all physical servers. Guest operating systems running on virtual machines include Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, and the CentOS, Red Hat, and Ubuntu distributions of the Linux operating system.

For customers who want a private cloud environment, NetBenefit configures a dedicated two- to eight-node cluster. Across its public and private cloud Hyper-V-based infrastructures, NetBenefit has over 800 virtual machines running. Customer workloads are primarily web and database servers, and NetBenefit is beginning to offer more powerful virtual machines that can host larger database servers, Microsoft Exchange Server messaging environments, and other demanding workloads.

High-Growth Management InfrastructureBy upgrading to System Center 2012, NetBenefit is better able to manage more—and more powerful—cloud workloads. “We position ourselves as a premier supplier of high-end virtualized platforms, and System Center 2012 is critical to our strategy,” Rustean says. “With it, we can manage more high-capacity workloads.”

For example, NetBenefit can more effectively move virtual machines around to maximize performance by using Dynamic Optimization in the Virtual Machine Manager component. This feature migrates virtual machines within a cluster according to user-defined settings and also turns off unused hosts in a cluster. This can contribute to significant power savings. As an example, if NetBenefit has an eight-node cluster that is only half-full, System Center sees this and migrates those virtual machines to another cluster.

NetBenefit currently uses Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 and is in the process of evaluating Microsoft System Center 2012 Operations Manager, which offers expanded monitoring capabilities in a cloud environment. It is also evaluating Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator, which the IT staff can use to further streamline virtual machine provisioning.

“It’s really great having a single management console for managing all of our cloud platforms—public and private, blades and chassis servers, Windows and Linux—through a single ‘pane of glass,’” Rustean says. “As we expand our cloud

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“We position ourselves as a premier supplier of high-end virtualized platforms, and System Center 2012 is critical to our strategy.”

Richard Rustean, Windows Engineering Team Leader, Managed Hosting,

NetBenefit

business, management efficiency will become even more important.”

Infrastructure for Rapid Response As an example, in May 2011, a design agency approached NetBenefit about providing web server support for a major campaign around the launch of Lady Gaga’s new album, Born This Way, in France. Just two days before the release of the album, the agency realized that its usual hosting providers did not have the capacity to support the high levels of traffic expected.

By using its cloud infrastructure, NetBenefit was able to provision the needed web servers with only 48 hours’ notice. Within the first five minutes of its launch, the website was visited by 25,000 Lady Gaga fans—but it held firm. NetBenefit used System Center to monitor the web traffic in real time and used Hyper-V to rapidly deploy additional virtual web servers to meet demand.

BenefitsBy upgrading to System Center 2012 and expanding its cloud infrastructure, NetBenefit will be able to keep operational costs down, provide more competitive offerings and higher availability, and meet customer needs more quickly. It can also grow its business faster while providing a better work environment for its IT staff.

Data Center Costs Reduced by 40 PercentBy moving past server virtualization to cloud computing, NetBenefit has achieved significant data center cost savings. “We would have run out of data center space by now without cloud computing,” Green says.

“If we didn’t have virtualization, over 800 physical servers would consume half a data center. We’re still growing our data center space but at a much slower rate.”

Rustean adds, “Our most expensive cost is power, and System Center 2012 lets us shut down hosts that aren’t doing anything. In the first six months of having a cloud environment, we reduced our power consumption by 40 percent.”

Lower Costs for Customers NetBenefit can pass these savings on to its customers, which is helpful in today’s economic climate. “Cloud computing makes us more competitive,” Green says. “The ability to provide high-availability services and shared SANs and firewalls is something that small businesses would previously never have been able to afford in a physical environment.”Customers can also more easily pay for cloud computing services as they’re needed. Rather than trying to project their needs and invest a large sum in servers up front, businesses can simply pay a monthly fee for virtual resources consumed that month.

Higher Availability of Cloud EnvironmentWith the clustering support in System Center 2012, NetBenefit can cluster its management console instances to ensure nonstop availability of its cloud infrastructure. This is critically important as NetBenefit expands its cloud business.

Customer Needs Met Five Times FasterBy upgrading to System Center 2012, the NetBenefit operations staff has dramatically decreased the time it takes to provision

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“We would have run out of data center space by now without cloud computing … We’re still growing our data center space but at a much slower rate.”Michael Green, Senior Product Manager,

Managed Hosting, NetBenefit

virtual machines and clusters and deliver server resources to customers. Whereas provisioning a virtual machine previously took two to three hours, provisioning a virtual machine by using System Center 2012 takes 20 to 30 minutes.

“We can create new clusters in minutes, and this was a huge administrative burden with the previous version of System Center,” Rustean says. “The less time our administrators spend doing routine tasks, the more time they have to dedicate to customers. With System Center 2012, we’ll be able to perform very fast installs of virtual machines and clusters and scale very quickly.”

In the example of the Lady Gaga website, NetBenefit was able to respond in one day. “Previously, we could not have met last-minute requirements like this, but now we can,” Green says. “If a customer calls us at 4:00 P.M. with a need for web support, we can have servers up and running that same day.” Colin Bell, Managing Director at NetBenefit, adds, “Our aim is to remove the technical pressures for creative agencies that manage the design and delivery of websites and online campaigns. For an artist of the stature of Lady Gaga, the site could not crash. Agencies face unique hosting issues and typically need more capacity flexibility and managed support than other users. Microsoft cloud solutions give NetBenefit the ability to respond.”

Faster Business GrowthNetBenefit continues to see demand for its virtual and cloud products, with clusters filling up ahead of schedule and incoming orders exceeding sales forecasts. Now the

operations staff can keep up. “NetBenefit wants to be a niche provider of premium virtualization and cloud services, and with System Center 2012, we have the tools we need to reach our goal,” says Green. “Having the right management tools allows us to grow the business faster.”

Improved Quality of Life for IT StaffHaving the right tools also helps the NetBenefit staff accomplish more with less work and stress. “We want our staff members to enjoy their work,” Green says. “If you’re doing mundane work that can be easily automated, you’re not having fun. By upgrading to System Center 2012, we take the mundane work out of their day and give them more time to do fun stuff, such as investigating new projects and learning new skills. An engineer who loves his job is a happier employee and a better person to work with. Happy employees lift the whole atmosphere of the workplace.”

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“Agencies face unique hosting issues and typically need more capacity flexibility and managed support than other users. Microsoft cloud solutions give NetBenefit the ability to respond.”Colin Bell, Managing Director, NetBenefit

Microsoft System Center 2012

Microsoft System Center 2012 helps your organization achieve IT as a service by enabling productive infrastructure, predictable applications, and cloud computing on your terms. With System Center 2012, use a self-service model to deliver flexible and cost-effective private cloud infrastructure to your business units while capitalizing on existing data center investments. Applications run your business, so System Center 2012 is designed to offer deep application insight combined with a service-centric approach to help you deliver predictable application services. Finally, by using System Center 2012, you can deliver and consume private and public cloud computing on your terms, with common management experiences across both.

For more information about Microsoft System Center 2012, go to:http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/2012.aspx

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For More InformationFor 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 NetBenefit products and services, call (44) (0) 800 328 7477 or visit the website at: www.netbenefit.com

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

Document published March 2012

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter− Microsoft System Center 2012− Microsoft System Center 2012

Operations Manager− Microsoft System Center 2012

Orchestrator− Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual

Machine Manager

Technologies− Hyper-V

Hardware Dell PowerEdge M610 blade servers and

Dell PowerEdge R910 chassis servers with dual quad-core processors and 96 gigabytes of RAM

Hitachi Data Systems storage