Copenhagen Airports Case Study: Efficient IT Infrastructure

Airport operator reducesIT power use by aroundDKK 800,000 a year,supporting its target for • Cloud computing • Data consolidation and management cutting carbon emissions • Green efficiency • Virtualization “We made some calculations ... These showed power consumption reduced by 392,000 kilowatt hours, saving us around DKK 800,000 a year.” Christian Poulsen, IT Director, Copenhagen Airports Customer profile Company: Copenhagen Airports Industry: Transportation Benefits Country: Denmark • roup cuts IT power consumption by G Employees: 2,000 around DKK 800,000 a year Website: www.cph.dk • T department reduces carbon I emissions by around 200 tons a year Business need • usiness saves approximately 75 per B To meet green targets and aid growth, Copenhagen Airports needed cent on future server investment an IT infrastructure that was more energy efficient as well as easier to run and scale. • roup is more flexible as server G launch time is cut from one month to Solution one hour The IT team implemented a virtualized datacentre that will support the group through its continued expansion, while maximising • T team spends around 50 per cent I green efficiency. less time on management

Most large enterprises today grapple with the issue of howto cut carbon emissions without sacrificing efficiency andcompetitiveness. Infrastructure virtualization can help withthis challenge, delivering both bottom-line savings and apositive impact on the environment. Copenhagen Airports is the listed Christian Poulsen, IT Director at company that owns and operates Copenhagen Airports, says: “We asked“IT can now align itself Kastrup and Roskilde airports near our Dell account manager to suggest the Danish capital. With 1,900 a way to standardise and consolidate with the overall green employees, it runs and maintains all our disparate storage systems. He target of the group, airport buildings and service facilities. organised a live demonstration of the Minimising its carbon footprint in line Dell EqualLogic storage, which clearly and reduce carbon with Danish national targets is a key showed that virtualization would let emissions by around corporate strategy for the company. us manage our resources in a new and Copenhagen Airports aims to cut more efficient way.” 200 tons.” power consumption by 21 per cent Copenhagen Airports asked one otherChristian Poulsen, in 2012 compared with 1990, while vendor for a storage proposal, butIT Director, continuing to increase its turnover.Copenhagen Airports after Dell’s demonstration it decided The IT team was keen to support to standardise on a virtualized Dell the group’s target. However, it ran a solution. Deployment was completed power-hungry infrastructure of 330 in-house, and jointly managed by servers as well as several, mainly Poulsen and Michael Øst Larsen, proprietary, storage systems. IT staff Back Office IT Manager at spent large parts of their working Copenhagen Airports. days keeping machines running – provisioning servers and storage capacity – instead of supporting Technology at work users or driving innovation. As a Services result, the IT department was not responsive enough to the company’s Dell ProSupport needs. The infrastructure also suffered – Mission Critical option occasional downtime, which affected Copenhagen Airports’ crucial SAP Hardware business management solution and Dell™ PowerEdge™ M610 blade frustrated end users. servers with Intel® Xeon® processors E5520 series Virtualization leads way to Dell EqualLogic PS6500E/ new management approach PS6000XV/PS5000XV/PS5000X The company already owned a number iSCSI storage area networks of Dell servers and had experimented with virtualization. However, when the Software IT team heard about Dell EqualLogic VMware® vSphere™ 4 Standard storage, it saw the benefits of large- – VMware ESX server software scale virtualization built on EqualLogic – VMware vCenter™ Server storage and Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers – VMware vMotion™ running VMware® ESX server software.

The solution included: Cloud computing helps secure • wenty Dell PowerEdge M610 blade T further energy savings servers, optimised for virtualization, With VMware vSphere, Copenhagen “Thanks to our running VMware vSphere™ 4 Airports has transformed its Standard software. infrastructure into a simplified cloud simplified Dell cloud• virtualized storage area network A environment that helps the IT team infrastructure, we save manage resources more efficiently. (SAN) of 10 EqualLogic arrays, VMware vCenter™ Server, part of around 50 per cent on including PS6500E/PS6000XV/ PS5000XV/PS5000X for the main VMware vSphere, gives them the tools management time. to maximise green efficiency. Says datacentre. Øst Larsen: “We use VMware vMotion It’s a new approach to• wo additional Dell EqualLogic T as part of VMware vCenter Server to running IT.” PS6500E arrays for a secondary site, determine automatically how many Michael Øst Larsen, for snapshots and disaster recovery. hosts we need at any one time and put Back Office IT Manager, the rest into stand-by mode. Out of our Copenhagen AirportsIT team cuts power consumption 20 Dell PowerEdge blades, sometimesby around DKK 800,000 a year as few as six need to run. This helps usSo far, the IT team has virtualized eliminate unnecessary power use andaround 50 per cent of its 330 servers, cut energy consumption even further.”running them on the 20 Dell blade Group saves approximately 75 per downtime and disruption for endhosts. It aims to virtualize a total of cent on future server investment users. This is particularly noticeable85 per cent, but already the affect on for the important SAP solution. “Ourpower consumption is dramatic. “We By consolidating on fewer virtualized SAP availability is much higher thanmade some calculations when we’d hosts, the IT department has cut future in the past. This means that ourmigrated 40 per cent of our servers server investment considerably. “We end users work without disruptionto the virtualized Dell PowerEdge worked out that just to maintain our and have more confidence in theM610 hosts. These showed power previous infrastructure, we would have SAP environment, which enhancesconsumption reduced by 392,000 had to invest in new servers worth productivity and overall businesskilowatt hours, saving us around DKK DKK 4 million (£450,000) in the next performance,” says Øst Larsen.800,000 a year. IT can now align itself five years. As a result of switching to awith the overall green target of the virtualized Dell infrastructure, we havegroup, and reduce carbon emissions reduced that cost by around 75 perby around 200 tons. As we continue cent,” says Øst Larsen.virtualization, we expect energy savingsto be even greater,” says Poulsen. End users are more productive as downtime is minimisedDell PowerEdge M610 blade servers are IT staff use VMware vMotion™ to movedesigned to deliver higher performance workloads dynamically betweenfor less power and come with Intel® servers when they need to completeXeon® processors E5520 series, which maintenance during working hours.proactively switch the servers into the Thanks to this – and because VMwarelowest possible power state during automatically maximises availability –periods of reduced demand. the IT team minimises

IT team implements storage IT team spends around 50 per less solution in less than half a day on management and more time on The IT team felt the benefit of storage user supportsimplification from day one. Says Øst The IT team has more time for user “Dell EqualLogic storageLarsen: “Dell EqualLogic storage is support, because infrastructure is amazingly simpleamazingly simple to use. We plugged management is simplified. The teamin the arrays, configured them, uses the tools embedded in EqualLogic to use. We plugged inconnected them and had our storage to manage its entire storage solution the arrays, configuredarea network up and running in less with ease from a single console.than half a day.” Likewise, VMware lets it manage them, connected them EqualLogic came with licences servers in a fraction of the time it took and had our storage before. Øst Larsen says: “Thanks to included, which let the team use our simplified Dell cloud infrastructure, area network up and features such as Auto Snapshot Manager at no extra cost. Also, the we save around 50 per cent on running in less than half management time. It’s a new approach storage system is connected via the IP to running IT. We tell the system what a day.” network, which helps keep costs low. we want and it automatically allocates Michael Øst Larsen,“The iSCSI connectivity, all-inclusive resources in the most efficient way, Back Office IT Manager, price and simple management make Copenhagen Airports while we keep a clear overview of Dell EqualLogic much more cost- capacity.” efficient than the proprietary storage we used before. Because it provisions Dell ProSupport helps minimise capacity as virtual pools, we can risk of business disruption allocate resources as they’re needed. Copenhagen Airports has already And thanks to its modular architecture, increased IT availability through it’s simple to scale. In this way, we’re virtualization. But, for added peace confident that we can meet storage of mind, the IT team chose to protect demand for years to come,” says Øst the datacentre with Dell ProSupport Larsen. Mission Critical option, whichGroup is more flexible as server includes four-hour on-site service.launch time is cut from a month “We feel certain that our virtualizedto an hour infrastructure won’t let us down, but Dell ProSupport Mission CriticalServer capacity, is also easy to scale, option gives us extra assurance thatbecause as the IT team uses VMware our business won’t be affected byvCenter Server to provision new downtime,” says Øst Larsen.servers rapidly from standardisedtemplates. “In the past, it could take usup to a month to order and configurea machine. Now, whenever a member For more information go to:of staff needs a server for a new dell.com/casestudies/emea andapplication, it’s ready in less than an dell.co.uk/casestudieshour. This means that the companycan get going on projects faster, whichcontributes to overall growth,” saysØst Larsen.The Efficient Enterprise runs on Dell: efficiententerprise.comAvailability and terms of Dell Services vary by region. For more information, visit: dell.com/servicedescriptions© December 2010, Dell Inc. Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc. Intel and Intel Xeon are registered trademarks ofIntel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. This case study is for informationalpurposes only. dell makes no warranties, express or implied, in this case study.Reference number: 10008429.

Copenhagen Airports Case Study: Efficient IT Infrastructure

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