Published on 04 Jun 2009
"By migrating to z10 and conducting associated streamlining work, we were able to reduce our monthly operational costs for the mainframe environment by 30 percent. In this way, urgently needed capital became available for other necessary investments." - Willi Lohmann, CEO of gkd-el
Customer:
gkd-el
Industry:
Computer Services, Government
Deployment country:
Germany
Solution:
Total Cost of Ownership, Virtualization
Overview
gkd-el manages the entire IT infrastructure for the Gelsenkirchen municipality in Germany. It also provides some managed application services for the city of Herne and for several other non-commercial customers.
Business need:
As business volumes grew, it was becoming more difficult for gkd-el to maintain good response times on its hosted SAP systems. The company wanted to ensure that it could continue to meet its Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with customers while reducing its operational costs. The ability to provision new SAP application servers rapidly was another priority, and gkd-el also needed to comply with strict security standards around data and client confidentiality.
Solution:
gkd-el replaced its existing IBM mainframe (zSeries® 990) with an IBM System z10™ Enterprise Class server running IBM z/OS® and IBM z/VM®, enabling it to host hundreds of Linux® virtual servers. The new z10™ has one standard processor, one IBM System z® Integrated Information Processor engine, and three IBM System z Integrated Facility for Linux engines. A new IBM System Storage DS® 8100 provides 38.4TB of disk capacity, backed up to an IBM TotalStorage® 3494 Tape Library.
Benefits:
Increased throughput by 270 percent; reduced total cost of ownership for mainframe by 30 percent; enabled creation of new virtual application servers within seconds
Case Study
Gelsenkirchen is a city in northwestern Germany with almost 300,000 inhabitants. With 84 employees, gkd-el manages the entire IT infrastructure for the Gelsenkirchen city government. It also provides some managed application services for the city of Herne and for several other non-commercial customers.
The gkd-el Service Level Agreements (SLAs) guarantee sub-second response times for customers’ business-critical SAP applications. With increasing workloads, there was a risk of failing to meet this guarantee during peak load times. gkd-el wanted to ensure that it could continue to meet its commitments to customers while, at the same time, reducing its operational costs.
To achieve this goal, gkd-el replaced its existing IBM mainframe (a zSeries® model 990) with an IBM System z10 Enterprise Class (z10 EC™) server. This z10™ has one standard processor, one IBM System z Integrated Information Processor engine and three IBM System z Integrated Facility for Linux engines. gkd-el has configured the z10 with three logical partitions (LPARs): two LPARs running z/OS® host the production and test environments for the IBM DB2® databases that support the SAP systems and one z/VM LPAR supports dozens of virtualized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server instances running the SAP application servers.
“Despite the ever-increasing workload and the addition of new SAP functionality in response to customer requests, we continue to require just eight employees to run the entire 2,000-user SAP landscape on IBM System z,” says Willi Lohmann, CEO of gkd-el. “Continuous availability is an important issue for us: we need to be available 24x7 because one of our clients is the local police force. IBM System z enables us to achieve these high-availability objectives while simultaneously reducing our operational costs.”
Faster and more cost-effective
Since migrating to the z10, gkd-el has seen average dialog response times fall from 570 to just 190 milliseconds. Throughput for the SAP systems has increased by 270 percent, and yet the total cost of ownership for the new IBM mainframe is 30 percent lower. Equally, the use of z/VM to host Linux virtual servers enables gkd-el to respond more rapidly and cost-effectively to requests for new SAP application servers or test environments.
“By migrating to z10 and conducting associated streamlining work, we were able to reduce our monthly operational costs for the mainframe environment by 30 percent. In this way, urgently needed capital became available for other necessary investments,” comments Willi Lohmann.
The number of servers running on Linux on IBM System z at gkd-el continues to grow. At present, all SAP application servers, the central print server for the mass printing facilities, and a geo-information server have been implemented as virtualized servers. The ongoing process of server consolidation to Linux on System z is replacing more and more physical servers, reducing administration effort, and hardware and software licensing costs.
“The transition to the z10 was smooth and without any problems thanks to excellent support from IBM. The advantages of IBM System z—such as stability, advanced virtualization technologies, high security, and easy management—give us confidence that we are prepared for any future challenge,” say Karl Grosse Vogelsang, CTO of gkd-el.
IBM System z has provided an IT infrastructure that is able to scale with the growth of gkd-el’s business and without a corresponding increase in IT complexity. Greater complexity tends to add administrative IT costs; the simplification enabled by the IBM System z solution helps gkd-el to maintain downward pressure on its operational costs.
Components
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Hardware:
IFL, Storage: DS8100, System z, System z10, System z: System z10 Enterprise Class (z10 EC), zIIP
Operating system:
Linux, z/OS and OS/390, z/VM and VM/ESA
Legal Information
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2009 IBM Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America May 2009 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com , DB2, System Storage DS, System z, System z10, z10, z10 EC, zSeries, z/OS and z/VM are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. Other product, company or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. IBM and SAP AG are separate companies and each is responsible for its own products. Neither IBM nor SAP AG makes any warranties, express or implied, concerning the other’s products. References in this publication to IBM products, programs or services do not imply that IBM intends to make these available in all countries in which IBM operates. Any reference to an IBM product, program or service is not intended to imply that only IBM’s product, program or service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program or service may be used instead. Offerings are subject to change, extension or withdrawal without notice. All client examples cited represent how some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Performance data for IBM and non-IBM products and services contained in this document was derived under specific operating and environmental conditions. The actual results obtained by any party implementing such products or services will depend on a large number of factors specific to such party’s operating environment and may vary significantly. IBM makes no representation that these results can be expected or obtained in any implementation of any such products or services. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS-IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.
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