Microsoft Virtualization: Data Center to DesktopCustomer Solution Case Study

Opened up the private cloud erawith ‘T-Shared Infra’

OverviewCountry or Region: KoreaIndustry: Telecommunications

Customer ProfileHeadquartered in Seoul, South Korea, SK Telecom is a pioneer in the mobile industry, having been the first to launch and commercialize CDMA, 3G CDMA, 3.5G HSDPA among other mobile services, and is now leading the way in 4G and beyond.

Business SituationThere was a limit to shorten response time for the equipment provisioning request from line-of-business even though they reduced it from 2 months to 10 days on virtual environment.

SolutionThey implemented the self service portal to support provisioning automation by introducing System Center in 2010 to make the x86-based server virtualization environment expanded gradually from 2007 into the cloud environment.

Benefits Reduced the resource preparation time

from 2 months to 2 days Increased business agility Strengthen security of the project results Lay the foundation for spreading the

“Nowadays capacity assessment is not seriously taken when the line-of-business users prepare the product and service. Because it is possible to request resource extension, based on the customer response or usage. By virtue of this, line-of-business can make more business-oriented decision making without wasting their time to assess capacity or technical issues”

Cheon Min Heung, manager of IT infra support team, SK Telecom

SK Telecom got the private cloud service going. SK Telecom shortened the response time to the 10 days, which was taken 2 months to acquire, configure and deliver the physical equipment, through virtualization of x-86 server infrastructure since 2007. But in the rapidly changing business environment, SK Telecom’s IT department was pressed on to shorten even this time. They have to satisfy the faster and more efficient IT resource provisioning demands because if they can’t get the new product or service go to market in right time, it means they lose their business opportunity. Once SK Telecom decided that the cloud is the only answer for this, they started to establish the system to centrally control their existing virtualized infrastructure according to the life cycle including acquiring, distributing, redistributing and discarding resource. As a result of transitioning the virtual environment into the private cloud system through the Microsoft System Center, SK Telecom succeeded in shortening the resource provisioning time from 10 days to 2 days.

SituationDue to the nature of it, new product and service development has constantly carried on in communication business. Therefore the agility and efficiency of the alignment between IT and business is a key metric to evaluate company’s competitive edge just like financial service industry. A recent talking point in communication field is the cloud, and SK Telecom made a sensation with opening the private cloud era in the second half of the 2010 to show their IT competence to the world.

This news carries an important meaning in that IT infrastructure virtualization strategy, which SK Telecom has pushed ambitiously since 2007, was given weight to take the step into a higher level.

Last 2007 SK Telecom configured blade server farm for virtualization of their IT infrastructure by using XEN. Due to the characteristic of physical configuration, there was a limit in dynamic memory allocation and very few virtual machines were able to be resided. That is to say, the efficiency of raising resource usage is too slight. From that experience, SK Telecom started the structural sophistication by introducing the large server and VMWare in 2008 and operated it until 2009.

SK Telecom gained some effects in various parts moving the servers which aged and had low usage to the virtual infrastructure. The resource

usage was raised from 7% to 27.3% after integration, and system provisioning time was shortened from 2 months to 10 days.

But it was not a satisfactory effect for SK Telecom. Because the resource sharing effect from virtualization was limited to the certain points. Server virtualization was efficient mainly to the operation line on the life cycle including requesting development server, provisioning operation server, increasing capacity promptly as needed, and discarding and redistributing resources. Whenever market rapidly changed, new products and services are poured out, and generally there is a bottleneck from the server provisioning step. It means if the request for development server could not be responded well then inefficiency is unavoidable even the virtualization was well-prepared on the operation line.

And, development environment by department was different and many things must be considered from development server to operation server resource acquirement and service deployment, so there is a limitation in quick resource deployment and service opening on life cycle basis. To put it simply, some larger innovation was inevitable to shorten more the already shortened 10 days of preparation time. SK Telecom took note of ‘accessibility of resource’ as the keyword for solving this challenge.

Solution

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SK Telecom decided Self Service Portal for user is necessary to raise accessibility of virtualized environment. They tried to make the existing virtualized infrastructure to the cloud through the provisioning automation.

Regarding this, Cheon Min Heung, manager of IT infra support team, SK Telecom Information Technology Center said, “In short, a difference whether self service portal is implemented or not can be said whether we can attach the word ‘everyone’ or not. In the past, resource was requested from line-of-business as following the off-line procedure, and after that IT infra support team considered whether they have to choose the virtualization or introduce the dedicated server, then take the next steps. We considered the implementation of the self service portal for making this process possible to request the necessary resource with just a few mouse clicks on the web.”

At that time, SK Telecom’s finally choice, as the tools of implementing self service portal, were System Center Operation Manger and System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0. Cheon Min Heung, manager of IT infra support team said, “We took pains to choose whether introducing the tools from Microsoft or HP, or trying to develop it in house. When we saw it in terms of schedule and cost, introducing System Center was the most reasonable way. Additionally we

reviewed the real case of LG CNS’s private cloud implementation to make sure that it’s possible.”

With introducing the System Center, SK Telecom newly configured their virtual server. First, virtual server pool was divided into operation and development part. Each server was allocated by the role as VMWare server to the operation, Hyper-V server to the Windows related development and KVM server to the Linux related development. Though the number of servers was just 11 of total including development and operation server, each was large server and large-scale virtual infrastructure bearing almost 170 of workloads was configured. By adding the self service portal implemented by System Center to these virtual infrastructure, SK Telecom rounded out the framework of private cloud named T-Shared Infra.

Softnet participated in this task as a partner of Microsoft Korea started to implement the SK Telecom’s private cloud based on their extensive experiences. SK Telecom’s implementation goals through System Center can be briefly summarized as three elements. The first was Auto Provisioning. Notable point in here was the connection with electronic approval process. SK Telecom made it possible that the line-of-business users access to the corporate support system to request CPU, memory, operating system and database and then they are provided directly to

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them by the online approval from the manager.

The second was integrated monitoring and fault management. In the existing virtual environment, the logical integration was done but it was just another server assembly in the view of total infrastructure level. In other words, it was just another managing point to monitor the system or manage the fault. Now it was changed that the performance ensuring and fault related management can be done in a single channel through the connection of enterprise-wide system management tool and System Center. The third was the life cycle management. In the past, line-of-business had to have budget to spend on the server and raise purchase requisitions, and it was managed as the asset of the line-of-business after delivered. For line-of-business, they had a burden of managing it, but now it was changed to operate System Center connected to asset management systems across the organization.

Benefits

Reduced the resource preparation time from 2 months to 2 days

Now as of January 2011, development server request can be done by just two clicks in SK Telecom. No more budgeting, approving, calling or sending email to IT personnel for requesting equipment purchase or operating system installation is

needed. They just click the ‘T-Shared Infra request’ button and select configuration and specification they want including operating system, web server and database, and then press the ‘submit’ button, then it’s finished. The service request immediately is reviewed and approved by the IT personnel through the approval process of groupware, and the resource can be delivered in 2 business days.

Increased business agility

SK Telecom put a high valuation on the responsiveness for potential demands unexpected as well as the quick resource acquirement in early stage of development and operation. Cheon Min Heung, manager of IT infra support team said, “When transaction or traffic is unpredictable, it is difficult to assess the equipment capacity and this can cause trouble from the budgeting step. We don’t need to worry about that any more in T-Shared Infra. Nowadays capacity assessment is not seriously taken when the line-of-business users prepare the product and service. Because it is possible to request resource extension, based on the customer response or usage. By virtue of this, line-of-business can make more business-oriented decision making without wasting their time to assess capacity or technical issues. IT division’s statue also has an atmosphere of getting rise up. Because they can play the role of business leading division preparing flexible resource and responding in

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advance not just a division supporting the equipment purchase and setting for line-of-business.”

This IT division’s statue is expected to be more improved with the efficient utilization of System Center. Because the data transfer to the line-of-business for budgeting and fulfillment will get easier. Cheon Min Heung, manager of IT infra support team said, “We expects precise Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return of Investment (ROI) analysis as something extra through self service portal deployed this time. The usage metering and billing feature will be added by using System Center. Considering it is private portal, it’s not for charging really, but analyzing the value and efficiency of T-Shared Infra.”

Strengthen security of the project results

Cheon Min Heung, manager of IT infra support team said, “New service and product are frequently developed by working with business partner. In most cases, the outside developers come in to work in the development server in SK Telecom but sometimes they worked in separately development server deployed in their own company. In the latter case, project results are stored outside of SK Telecom and security problem can occur. We don’t need to worry about this problem now. All the results are stored in the T-Shared Infra in the SK Telecom.”

Lay the foundation for spreading the private cloud

SK Telecom plans to expand gradually the virtual server, the foundation of private cloud implemented through the System Center. This extension plan will be done by two primary respects. The first is cost-cut. Cheon Min Heung, manager of IT infra support team said, “In case of Hyper-V and KVM, we have been using it as the development server environment, but considering the cost cut in the medium to long term, these solutions and open source solutions can be applied to the operation server environment. And in case of commercial virtualization solution, as it is expensive for introduction and maintenance, we plan to extend the solution for cost-savings with expanding virtualization infrastructure in the medium to long term.”

The second is standardization. Cheon Min Heung, manager of IT infra support team said, “If Platform as a Service (PaaS) standardized platform can be provided, we can reduce the resource provisioning time from 2 days to 1 day. Now for Windows, the standardization has already been finished and we set the JDK on operating system for Java. In case of Java, we have a plan to raise the standardization level to the PaaS from 2011.”

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Microsoft VirtualizationMicrosoft virtualization is an end-to-end strategy that can profoundly affect nearly every aspect of the IT infrastructure management lifecycle. It can drive greater efficiencies, flexibility, and cost effectiveness throughout your organization. From accelerating application deployments; to ensuring systems, applications, and data are always available; to taking the hassle out of rebuilding and shutting down servers and desktops for testing and development; to reducing risk, slashing costs, and improving the agility of your entire environment—virtualization has the power to transform your infrastructure, from the data center to the desktop.

For more information about Microsoft virtualization solutions, go to: www.microsoft.com/virtualization

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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 SK Telecom’s products and services, visit the Web site at: www.sktelecom.com

Partner InformationFor more information about Softnet’s products and services, visit the Web site at: www.softnet.co.kr

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

Document published March 2011

Software and Services Products

− Microsoft Windows Server 2008− Microsoft System Center Operation

Manger

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal