Key Facts

Reference: Virtualization and Systems Management at Volkswagen Saxony Zwickau

VW Saxony With hypeR-V: RunS... and RunS... and RunS

The federal state of Saxony in Germany has a car-building traditionthat goes back over 100 years. Volkswagen Sachsen GmbH, lo-cated in Zwickau, has been successfully continuing this tradition since 1990. The Zwickau plant not only produces Golf and Passat models but also manufactures chassis for the Phaeton and Bentley. Up to 1,350 vehicles are produced at Volkswagen in Saxony every day. To date, more than 3.5 million Volkswagen cars have left the Zwickau plant. And since May 2010, the ‘V’ in the company name has gained a whole new meaning, at least when it comes to IT solutions: Here the ‘V’ now stands for server virtualization. More precisely, Zwickau has introduced the Microsoft software ‘Hyper-V’. Implemented and configured by COMPAREX*, it serves as a new virtual server environment that supports dynamic resource allocation.

Virtualization with automatic conversion

Server virtualization has been revolutionizing the data center land-scape for some time now. The advantages are widely known – more efficient use of resources, lower operating costs, higher avail-ability and increased security. But still, each virtualization project also presents a fresh challenge to the company. The key challenges at Volkswagen Saxony Zwickau involved managing the virtual serv-ers, monitoring the server states throughout all sites and compre-hensively migrating the physical servers into the new virtual world. But these challenges were easily overcome at Volkswagen. The implementer COMPAREX carried out the project using Hyper-V, an environment that elegantly converts part of the Windows server systems into the virtual world. System Center Virtual Machine Man-ager 2008 R2, or SCVMM in short, lies at the core of managing the physical and virtual resources and greatly contributes to mak-ing the solution a comprehensive one.

SOlUTIOn:Implementation and configuration of a server virtual-ization environment including failover cluster and func-tions for virtual management, license monitoring and licensing

IndUSTRy: Automotive

Foto: Bertram Solcher/HMC (BS)

* formerly PC-Ware Information Technologies AG

“Going virtual is always a big leap. The reason why this leap had a soft landing and brought us ahead a great deal has a lot to do with consistently sticking to Microsoftsolutions. In the planning stage, we were already thor-oughly impressed with the Hyper-V and SCVMM know-how of the certified COMPAREX licensing specialists and consultants. The solution based on Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 fully meets our expectations in terms of reliable high avail-ability, simple management and reduced TCO.”

thomas hornungIT-Coordinator Volkswagen Sachsen GmbH, Zwickau †

Reference: Volkswagen Saxony Zwickau

www.comparex-group.com/references

This was not COMPAREX‘s first project with Volkswagen – amongothers in the course of the years, the IT provider helped build a server virtualization infrastructure and operated the help desk for the Zwickau site. So virtualizing the servers was the next logical step and thus did not take long to implement. COMPAREX con-figured the virtual Windows landscape run on the Server 2003 and Server 2008 platforms for the system environment that, for instance, supplies services for more than 2,000 office and shop floor users. The new virtual infrastructure consists of 12 Hyper-V hosts set up in two different buildings at the Volkswagen site. This was complemented by two HP MSA storage systems and a failover cluster in test operation that contains all essential virtual machines.Redundant data management in the cluster is scheduled for im-plementation to secure the virtual machines against failure and to guarantee full availability even during maintenance.

ingenious design: perfect virtualization, seamless integration

Virtualization of the Zwickau plant was a real debut for Volkswa-gen Saxony. It became clear for COMPAREX early on that Hyper-V fit this project perfectly. Microsoft developed the Hyper-V platform specifically for server virtualization and integrated it into the Win-dows Server 2008 R2 package. Its primary task is to organize the physical and virtual resources. Being a virtualization system, Hyper-V fully isolates the client systems from the host system. All ope-rations are executed on a virtual operating system, which makes processing more efficient and more secure compared with the physical host system. The hardware is accessed using virtual in-terfaces and variable resources can be added to the system at any time. This makes it possible to dynamically match the main memo-ry, processors, processor capacity or network adaptors to the needs of the host system. Also, Hyper-V supports all common processor architectures.

on target like a navigation system – Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Systems management is a key prerequisite for creating a working virtual environment. At the Zwickau Volkswagen site, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (VMM) is being used for this purpose. Its simple-to-use wizard performs the critical physical-to-virtual conversion. The high-performance VMM lever-ages the strengths of Hyper-V for Volkswagen Saxony. It is the ideal management solution in mixed or homogeneous Microsoft environments with multiple hosts – as is the case at Volkswagen. VMM provides extensive support for consolidating physical servers into a virtual infrastructure and for intelligently allocating virtual applications to physical host servers. This job can be performed

ReFeRenCe: ViRtualiZation and SySteMS ManageMent at VolKSWagen Saxony ZWiCKau

tRuSted CollaboRation FoR MoRe than 2,000 uSeRS

SOFTWARE:Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft System Center Virtual MachineManager 2008 R2

HARdWARE:HP MSA Storage, AMd dl 385 G5

OPERATInG SySTEM:Windows Server 2008 R2

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from a centralized resource management console, allowing for the central administration of the components of the virtual data center (server software, server hardware, applications and users). And as VMM seamlessly integrates into existing IT environments, existing processes remain untouched.

highly effective

The vast size of the existing IT landscape at Volkswagen Saxony presented one of the main challenges. The project scope involved servers for more than 2,000 users serving a broad range of func-tions. Volkswagen greatly benefits from the virtual environment created by COMPAREX based on Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager and the failover cluster: maximized resources, guaranteed high availability, as well as highly flexible IT manage-ment. Follow-up projects at Volkswagen Saxony are soon to com-mence: first System Center data Protection Manager 2010 and then the System Center Operations Manager monitoring tool.