efficient_green_it_virtualization_iGATE

Efficient and Green IT – Virtualization and Thin Clients

Efficient and Green IT – Virtualization and Thin Clients

An iGATE Whitepaper

Abstract

Considering that organisations spend as much as 6% of their revenues on IT, CIOs are on the lookout

for reducing operational costs thereby freeing up resources for investment in growth initiatives. At the

same time cost savings earned through reduced energy and resource usage contributes to a cleaner

and greener organisation.

At iGATE virtualization and the deployment of thin clients has contributed to significant reduction of

energy emissions as well as reduced operating costs. Other indirect benefits include significant easing

of maintenance and support costs, quicker time to market and better server utilizations stats.

This paper provides an overview of the above technologies, iGATE’s approach and experience with the

above technologies, the best practices that were followed during deployment and finally the value and

services that iGATE brings to the table in this sphere.

Server Virtualization and thin Clients

2 Copyright © 2010. iGATE Corporation. All rights reserved

Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 3

Deployment of Thin Clients and Server Virtualization @ iGATE................................................ 7

iGATE’s Green IT Value Proposition and Best Practices .......................................................... 12

In Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 14

References............................................................................................................................. 15

Table of Figures

Figure 1 Towards a Greener IT......................................................................................................... 1

Figure 2 Virtualization an Overview................................................................................................. 1

Figure 3 Thin Clients......................................................................................................................... 1

Figure 4: Cost levers of Virtualization .............................................................................................. 8

Figure 5: Sample cost calculations................................................................................................... 8

Figure 6: Sample Feature comparison ...........................................................................................10

Figure 7: Virtualization for a healthcare major..............................................................................13



Introduction

Industries around the world spend between 1 and 6% of their revenues1 on IT and a majority of the

industries spend in excess of 3% of their revenue on IT. Given this statistic CIO’s across

organizations are under pressure to cut costs so they can improve bottom lines for the organization

as well as free resources for growth initiatives within the IT organization (Gartner estimates that

65% of IT budgets1 are targeted at keeping the ‘lights on’, leaving very little resources for growth

initiatives).

Average CIO’s spend close to 20% of their budgets on data centers (including hardware, software,

personnel etc) and using a different yard stick spend around 18-19% of their budgets on

hardware1.

This paper provides an approach to organizations for tackling the above costs. Virtualization

technologies which are going mainstream allow organizations to not only reduce hardware costs

but also allow for decreased costs associated with maintenance, energy, disaster recovery etc. This

allows for better data centres – that run fewer physical machines and require lesser resources

(energy and people) to run. Similarly thin clients allows for organizations to reduce hardware

desktop costs as well as management costs.

The above technologies are also gaining traction in

the market due the fact that they are tools to realise

green IT. iGATE has implemented the above

techniques in its effort to optimize operational costs

as well as reduce its carbon foot print.

Server Virtualization 101

Virtualization allows running of multiple operating systems concurrently on the same physical

computer by abstracting the physical hardware away from the operating systems. Each of these

operating systems runs as a self-contained computer, or virtual machine. Virtual machines are

easily portable from one hardware platform to another and this hardware on which virtual

machines are running (and the OS running on this machine) is termed the Host. The virtual

machines and their operating systems are termed as guests. A virtualization software runs on the

host OS and allows for multiple VMs or guests to be run on the host. Virtualization software is also

used to create the VMs themselves.

Server virtualization provides many direct business benefits and these are driving rapid adoption

across industries. Virtualization scenarios include software development and test, server

Figure 1 Towards a Greener IT



consolidation, re-hosting legacy environments, business continuity, and disaster planning and

recovery.

Key Benefits and Challenges

Direct benefits of virtualization include

• Reduced hardware acquisition

achieved through consolidation of

servers onto a single host

• Improved server utilization stats

• Reduced indirect costs such as real

estate, electricity and cooling costs

• Reduced personnel costs through

improved administrative

productivity.

• Reduced software licensing costs

achieved for certain software and

usage scenarios.

• Ability to manage legacy deployments more efficiently

While the benefits of virtualization are many some significant challenges need to be planned for and

tackled prior to deployment of virtualization.

• Issues of performance and availability need to be monitored closely. Though tools are

available to allow for effective management of virtual machines these issues do crop up and

need to be effectively handled

• Cost of virtualization can creep up dramatically when measures have to be taken to solve

issues of availability and performance. One must also note that virtualization software itself

is expensive and must be chosen carefully by evaluating organisational need.

• Initial deployments of virtualization will need higher allocation of headcount and training

resources

• OS virtualization calls for better storage planning and deployment.

o Traditional deployments combine storage and OS on a single machine. So while OS

virtualization rationalises the OS footprint across hardware, storage will need to

reside externally limiting efficiency gains in management and increasing little used

or inactive disks.

Figure 2 Virtualization an Overview



o Data connections between storage and the hardware hosting VMs will need beefing

up as there will be a significant increase in data volumes between the host (having

multiple VMs) and the storage.

The Thin Client 101

The thin client is the modern day equivalent of a dumb terminal – and provides users with the

ability to connect and conduct operations on a central server. It is typically a solid state device with

no frills attached(no optical drives, hard drives etc), houses a processor, flash memory for storing

the embedded operating system, local RAM, a network adapter, and standard input/output for the

display and other select peripherals. These devices connect over the network to a server where all

processing and storage takes place.

A thin client runs a simplified client operating system such as

Microsoft Windows XP Embedded (XPe), Windows CE, or Linux.

They typically include other basic software such as Internet

Explorer, Windows Media Player, MS Outlook, VNC shadowing,

and terminal emulation software that supports dozens of

emulation types

As mentioned earlier a thin client is not a standalone machine and must be connected to a server to

run applications. This is designed keeping in mind applications where users have to perform a well-

defined set of tasks on standard server-based applications.

Key Benefits and Challenges

• Cost benefits –

o Thin clients are no-frills kind of machines and thus are priced lesser leading to

Lower procurement costs as well as TCO

o Thin clients have no moving parts leading to higher reliability and robustness than a

PC and extended life.

o These smaller devices consume less energy, emit less heat, have a much smaller

footprint than a desktop, and are practically silent. All these translate to direct

savings in maintenance costs

• Security: Thin clients provide enhanced security as they are less vulnerable to data loss or

theft since data and applications typically reside on the network. Access for introduction of

new data or removal of data can easily be controlled.

• Easier management and smaller administrative overhead - These machines are less likely to

fail, are less expensive to deploy and manage. These machines are less prone to rogue

installations, and virus attacks and since all business applications reside on the server time

consuming installs and patch upgrades can be limited to the server.

Figure 3 Thin Clients



The key challenge that organisations face is to be able to identify areas where thin clients can be

used. While organisations can justify the benefits of moving to thin clients they would also need to

think ahead and ensure that users will not need to graduate to full-fledged PCs in light of changing

business circumstances or IT strategy.



Deployment of Thin Clients and Server Virtualization @ iGATE

iGATE as part of its operational improvements as well as with the aim of going green has been moving

to a virtualized environment for servers and has been adopting thin clients instead of traditional

desktops since 2009. The benefits and challenges of this moves is enumerated below.

Server Virtualization

Drivers for virtualization

1. Migration window: Around 40% of server hardware reached a 4 plus year threshold and

called for replacement. This provided for an ideal opportunity to explore consolidation and

virtualization. Hence rather than acquire all new servers it was decided to create virtual

machines for all them and place them on a reduced number of physical servers.

2. Improve time to market: Prior to virtualization new server procurement lead times were at

least a couple of weeks. Currently virtual machines of required configuration can be created

and these virtual machines can be hosted on available physical machines. This practice has

improved time to market by 75%.

3. Improve software license usage –

a. Software licenses for Virtual machines are less constrained than licenses for

physical machines thereby allowing for cost savings. E.g. Windows Server 2008 R2

Enterprise: Run up to four software instances at a time in virtual operating system

environments on a server under a single server license7.

b. iGATE invests in centers of excellence for evaluating technologies and these centers

have varying hardware requirements. Given this scenario short-term usage of

hardware is common. Rather than procure specific hardware and leave them idle

once the usefulness is met now iGATE creates virtual machines without blocking

investment and hardware.

4. Disaster recovery - Virtualization decreases server recovery time from days to hours as

virtual machines are backed up on a regular basis and these can be moved to different

physical infrastructure almost immediately.

5. Operational and’ Green’ Gains –virtualization helped reduce running costs as well as helped

in reducing the organisations carbon foot print (iGate’s views on green and carbon has been

articulated by the CEO and can be accessed at http://www.igate.com/ceoblog/the-first-

coat-of-green/#more-684)

6. Ensures environment Consistency: It is possible to maintain multiple environments (dev, test

etc) and have each one tuned exactly to client specifications. This enables for quick

issue/bug resolution during testing or support phases.

The Business Case



Virtualization at iGATE was evaluated using the model shown below. This model takes into account

the direct savings that accrue by going virtual.

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Figure 4: Cost levers of Virtualization

IGATE worked on virtualising close to 50 servers across locations. Comparative costs are shown below:

Description Quantity Unit Price US$

Total Price US$

Remarks

Number of Servers to be replaced

50 2500 125000

Cost to Procure, Prepare and provision servers

50 120 6000 20 Hrs per server @ USD 6 per engineer

Power Requirement 50 600 90000 @ $0.07 Per Kilowatt Hour for servers working out to $700 per year. Calculated for 3 years

Cooling Requirement 50 200 30000 33 % of the Power Requirement. Calculated for 3 years

Cost of Replacing and running servers

251000 Calculated for 3 years

Figure 5: Sample cost calculations

Cost of virtualization worked out to $150000 thereby providing a 20% direct saving.

A template for building the complete business case is attached below.



virtualization

business case.xlsx

Migration methodology

Evaluation – The process of migration starts with an evaluation phase that needs to zero-in

1. The candidate servers to be virtualized: Servers meeting the following criteria were

considered –

a. Servers above an age threshold

b. Servers with low usage stats during use.

c. Servers that are used intermittently.

d. Any new server environments that need to be created.

2. The virtualization software/platform to be used: based on the indentified servers from the

step above the virtualization software needs to be identified (each of the VMs will have

requirements that will need to be met by the virtualization software). A sample evaluation

is provided below.

Features VMWare 4.0 Citirix 5.0 MS Hyper-V 1.0

vSMP Yes (8) Yes (8) Yes (4 Windows Only)

Memory Over Commitment Yes No No

Live Virtual Machine Migration Yes Yes No (available in R2)

VM Load Management Yes (Automated Or Alert Based)

Yes (Alert based) No

Physical to Virtual Migration Tool (P2V)

Yes Yes Yes

Role Based Administration Yes No Yes

Auto VM Placement at Start up Yes No Yes

Fault Tolerance Yes No No

Thin Provisioning Yes Yes (Enterprise Edition)

No

Resource & Power Management (DRS,DPM)

Yes No No

Automated VM High Availability (HA)

Yes Yes Yes (MSCS )

Windows Guest OS Support From NT to 2008 XP, Vista, 2000, 2003 & 2008 only

XP(32bit), Vista(32 bit), 2000, 2003 & 2008 only

Linux Guest OS Support RHEL (2.1 to 5.x), SLES (8to 10.x), Ubuntu (7.x to

RHEL (3 to5.x), SLES (9 to 10.x), Debian, Cent OS & Oracle Enterprise

SLES 10



8.4) Linux

Solaris x86 Guest OS Support Yes No No

Figure 6: Sample Feature comparison

Phasing

Once servers for virtualization are selected it is important to phase the move to VMs as phasing

greatly reduces implementation risks like formation of performance bottlenecks, inadequate

personnel training.

Continuous evaluation

Post implementation a regular check point was implemented to identify more candidates for

virtualization as well as evaluate performance of the virtualized machines

Benefits

As mentioned in the business case section a clear cut cost saving and an indirect cost saving based

on a smaller carbon footprint.

Thin Client Deployment

Drivers and applicability

• In the BPO space users or agents have a well defined set of tasks (based on standard

operating procedures) thereby making thin clients appropriate

• Data security in the banking BPO space is of paramount importance and this was a key

driver for deployment

• Management is simplified allowing for centralized control and deployment and reduced

support times.

• Costs can be controlled as the devices are cheaper to procure as well as run.

Business Case

A business case similar to the one shown above was built taking into account

1. The setup/ acquisition costs accounting for the reduced procurement costs.

2. The operational costs accounting for reduced electricity consumption, maintenance costs

and backup power costs.

A similar template as shown above was used to build the business case.

Benefits

iGATE implemented 100 thin clients for a banking customer and realised



• In excess of a Million rupees in power costs over 5 years

• Reduced Carbon footprint by 162 tons over same period.

• Reduced other maintenance costs (Admin, cooling and backup power costs) by ~60%



iGATE’s Green IT Value Proposition and Best Practices

While organisations across the world rush to embrace and implement virtualization it is wise to

ensure that they learn from the best practices in the industry as well as from the experience of

other organisations that have implemented virtualization.

Best Practices

1. Carry out a complete cost benefit analysis taking into account all costs. The template

provided above gives an exhaustive listing of cost heads

2. Virtualization software comes at a price – Hence it is imperative to evaluate the needs (in

terms of implementation features) and pick a platform that meets (not necessarily exceeds)

the requirements. Vendors also provide matrices for evaluating best fit servers for

virtualisation. E.g. VMware provides guidance for server consolidation in a technical design

guide8 .

3. Use a phased approach – especially since all hardware doesn’t become obsolete at once it is

prudent to phase the move to virtualization and maximise hardware life. Phasing also helps

in building up internal human resource capability while avoiding obvious challenges of

performance bottlenecks

4. Look for ‘Migration windows’- Hardware lease expirations or servers going over a age

threshold are great candidates for virtualization and such ‘windows’ must be utilized for

consolidation and virtualization

5. Develop a continuous evaluation practice to identify servers for virtualization. This is also a

great opportunity to evaluate VM performance and rebalance based on application

requirements.

Services offered

1. Consulting, road mapping and capacity planning for servers

2. Migration of servers to a virtual environment and on going maintenance of deployment

3. Tool expertise includes VMware and Citrix Xen.



Figure 7: Virtualization for a healthcare major

Remote management of virtualized servers for a healthcare Client

About the Client

Our client is an international healthcare company with customers in over 190 countries

Scale of Operations

Total number of VMware hosts managed: 50

Total number of Virtual machines we support: 1167

VMware versions we support from offshore locations:

• VMware ESX Server 3.0.2, VSphere 4.0.0

• VMware VCentre 4.0.0

• Vsphere client

Scope of Operations

• Commissioning new VMware host and virtual machine in VMware datacenter

• Physical to virtual , virtual to virtual environment migration

• Configuration of virtual network , VLAN in VMware virtual switches

• Resource utilization check-up for both VMware server and guest OS

• Performance analysis and virtual resource management

• Migrating virtual machine across different host server

• VMware template creation, cloning of virtual machine

• VMware patch management using VMware update manager

• VMware cluster preparation, High availability configuration

• Setting up distributed resource scheduler rules

• Virtual machine backup management through VMware consolidated backup



In Conclusion

As illustrated in the business cases and calculations above virtualization and thin clients provide

significant operational (cost and resource) benefits while also reducing the amount of carbon emissions

into the atmosphere.

As virtualization technologies evolve business users will find advanced features that overcome the

challenges seen today, thereby increasing the motivation to adopt them. Similarly with Green IT

catching up users will start to explore more applications for thin clients.



References

1. Gartner : IT Key Metrics Data 2010

2. http://blogs.gartner.com/thomas_bittman/2009/08/11/virtualization-unlocks-cloud-

computing/#comments

3. http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/3/9/439a0b7d-7b02-48ab-a1ad-fa58724f9e86/VS05R2SP1_Microsoft-AMD%20Virtualization%20Whitepaper_Final.doc

4. http://www.computerworld.com/pdfs/Virtualization%20Guides_Overview.pdf

5. http://www.infomgmtsol.com/ims/thinclient_faq1_IMS.pdf

6. http://www.hp.com/sbso/solutions/pc_expertise/article/thinclients_consider.html

7. http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/virtualization.aspx

8. VMware ESX Server: Advanced Technical Design Guide

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