Microsoft Right-Sizes its Private Cloud, Saves $3 Million and 9,000 Tons of Carbon Emissions

Case Study

In the Server and Tools Business division at Microsoft in China, the decentralized server infrastructure, which was used by 10 product teams, had grown to more than 800 physical servers—most of which were under-utilized—in just two years. The Server and Tools Business team decided to move to a private cloud infrastructure built on the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system with Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center products. By the end of 2010, the team had more than 1,500 physical servers, 413 of which were hosts running 5,417 virtual machines. With its private cloud infrastructure, the team increased its server utilization by 80 percent, reduced the time that engineers spent on maintenance tasks by 70 percent, and saved U.S.$3,150,000. The team also created a green IT environment and saved 9,000 tons of carbon emissions and 14.85 million kilowatt hours of energy in one year.

Solution Overview

Organization Size: 400 employees

Organization Profile
Established in 2005, the Server and Tools Business division at Microsoft in China is dedicated to global and local development and innovation of core platform products and technologies.

Business Situation
The team faced inefficiencies with a decentralized server environment that supported 10 teams and more than 800 under-utilized physical servers.

Solution
The Research and Development Engineering Laboratory implemented a private cloud infrastructure built on Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center products.

Benefits
- Increased server usage by 80 percent
- Simplified infrastructure maintenance
- Reduced hardware costs—U.S.$3,150,000
- Created a sustainable IT environment

Hardware
- Dell server hardware
- HP server hardware

Software and Services
- Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1
- Windows Powershell Software Development Kit
- Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007
- Windows Storage Server
- Windows Storage Server 2008 R2
- Microsoft Hyper-V

Vertical Industries
Software Engineering

Country/Region
China

Business Need
- Cloud & Server Platform
- Cost Containment

IT Issue
- Cloud Services
- Virtualization
- Private Cloud

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