Other Finalists - Green IT Projects : Sasken Communications Technologies : Server-Storage Consolidation

Sasken has multiple data centers with huge server farms

scattered across multiple locations in Bangalore. Managing such a complex

infrastructure was a challenge. As their clientelle comprised of top

communications companies of the world, they demanded separate platforms for

their development work. Due to this, they had to provision for new servers for

every new customer they acquired. Beyond a certain point, scaling up this IT

infrastructure became unfeasible. There was a dire need to simplify this

infrastructure. Sasken therefore decided to do consolidation and virtualization

of their server and storage infrastructure.

They implemented VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 on 27 Sun

blade servers, with a VMware ESX 3.5 hypervisor. The SAN was virtualized using

Sun's StorageTek boxes. Within this, 13.3 TB of FC disk space was thin

provisioned for using Hitachi dynamic provisioning software. Multi-tiered

storage architecture has been built to provide tier based storage to databases

and other services. VMware Consolidated Backup is used to backup each and every

virtual server.

Sasken also implemented NetVault's VTL system for near-line

backup and Sun's modular tape library system for backups. The VTL reduced time

for doing daily backups. Moreover, the data transfers during backup happen

completely over SAN. They don't use the network, thereby speeding up the

process. The main challenge in doing this exercise was convincing customers

about the confidentiality, Integrity and availability of their data.

Post the deployment, Sasken has been able to reduce their

physical servers by 4.6 times. Their power consumption has been reduced from

1239 KW to just 464 KW per day. Time for provisioning new servers has reduced

from 6 weeks to 2-4 days. Server/Service uptime has reached a new mark of 99.8%.

Overall full backup window has reduced from 48 to 22 hours. Cost of tapes has

reduced from 24 Lakhs to 5 Lakhs per year. Thin provisioning of storage helped

in increasing its utilization. The company no longer has to block physical space

in their data center so much in advance. Provisioning happens whenever a client

signs on with them. Their servers' CPU Utilization has increased from 10% to 45%

and memory utilization increased from from 40% to 65%

In the future, Sasken plans to replicate this solution to

their other data centers.