IMC Communications introduces VMware Virtual Infrastructure to reduce costs, facilitate swift disaster recovery and increase IT flexibility for ANZ Stadium.
ANZ Stadium is one of the world’s largest and most modern sports and entertainment venues. Hosting more than 50 sporting events, concerts and corporate events annually, it is crucial for the Stadium to have the most reliable and efficient system in place to meet the needs of one million patrons each year.
THE CHALLENGE
When ANZ Stadium purchased the venue’s catering company, Sodexho, the management team immediately embarked on a plan to improve its functionality, efficiency and reliability.
Along with the network infrastructure, the POS hardware that had been installed in 1999 for the Sydney Olympic Games was due for a technology refresh.
Although the impact on overall sales and revenue was still minimal, any downtime was taking a toll on support staff and drew hospitality staff attention away from their service-oriented focus. In addition, ANZ Stadium required improved reporting and online control with the ability to generate reports during events.
IMC needed to provide end-to-end management without depriving ANZ Stadium of the control or flexibility they require to run their systems.
THE SOLUTION
In a million-dollar upgrade, IMC Communications introduced ANZ Stadium to VMware virtual infrastructure technology and an ‘infrastructure as a service’ model.
“IMC worked on the design, imaging and rollout to provide a fully consolidated, centrally managed solution,” said Charlie Thomlinson, IMC Account Manager.
In one of the largest state-of-the-art POS deployments of its kind in Australia, the first stage of the project involved replacing ANZ Stadium catering division’s 380 point of sale (POS) registers with latest version touch screen POS terminals and by virtualising the POS back-end server application.
The second stage entailed the migration of the Microsoft exchange, file/print, SQL database and web servers from a physical to a virtual infrastructure – all hosted at IMC’s Homebush Technology Centre.
The project coordination was streamlined through the ease and rapid deployment of virtual machines. IMC made sure the deployment of new servers took place in minutes – not days.
“Aside from the physical hardware cost, ANZ Stadium also had to house and maintain its physical servers. VMware virtualisation reduces the associated space and administration costs, as well as facilitating more efficient disaster recovery,” said David Fletcher, Manager, Information Technology and Administration, ANZ Stadium.
IMC created this virtualised environment using VMware’s Vi3 solution, the industry’s leading virtualisation technology, which is designed to help organisations simplify IT operations through the consolidation of physical server infrastructure to foster a dynamic and automated data centre.
“A VMware virtual infrastructure environment makes it possible for organisations to dramatically increase the reliability, performance and robustness of their IT environment and significantly reduce the number of physical servers needed, which contributes to a significant reduction in carbon emissions, by lowering energy,” said Paul Harapin, Vice President, VMware Australia and New Zealand. “Improving application availability has quickly become a leading reason for thousands of businesses to adopt VMware virtualisation throughout their IT infrastructure.”
ANZ Stadium is also taking advantage of IMC’s ServActive product as part of the hosting package. ServActive provides proactive server monitoring to mitigate possible outages and downtime. 24 x 7 monitoring of system resources can be programmed to trigger email, SMS and paging alerts when a server health threshold is breached.
“ServActive provides real -time fault detection and resolution before a possible disaster. If a problem occurs, IMC will manage the fault from start to finish,” says Andrew Gifford, Director of Technology Services, IMC Communications. “IMC has extensive contacts with the relevant hardware and software manufacturers and the expertise to fix problems with a high level of first pass resolution.”
ServActive provides greater visibility of ANZ Stadium’s server infrastructure environment through real time web-based statistics that IMC uses to monitor server usage trends. This data is collated and presented to ANZ Stadium in a monthly management report to assist with Business Continuity and Capacity Planning.
Andrew Gifford, Director of Technology services, IMC, said that virtualisation solutions have matured greatly in the past few years. The decision will ensure ANZ Stadium receives the maximum benefits possible from its IT resources, making backup and recovery easier and more cost-effective.
“The real innovation is the change in management thinking around the use of physical infrastructure,” said Gifford. “Rather than servers being a necessary burden, riddled with inefficiencies from a resource and financial viewpoint, virtualisation unlocks the available power of the expensive hardware, truly enhancing business agility and competitiveness.”
BENEFITS
1. Lower hardware costs – lower hardware overheads also translate into reduced management and maintenance costs.
2. Easier disaster recovery and back-ups – VMware virtualisation renders a server down to a single file which can be copied or synchronised, to another location making disaster recovery much easier.
3. Greater agility and a more flexible infrastructure – Virtualisation allows the IT department to quickly build isolated “lab” environments using copies of their real servers in order to pilot complex procedures or prove concepts. Resetting or updating the Lab is a simple as overwriting the server files with a current copy.
4. Ability to deal with unexpected demand – With VMware virtual infrastructure, all resources are shared amongst business applications, enabling ANZ Stadium to fine-tune each server as required and allow for unexpected spikes in demand.
