Sony Italia's Server Consolidation: A Cost-Saving Success
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases
Applicable Industries
- Electronics
- Semiconductors
Applicable Functions
- Maintenance
- Procurement
Use Cases
- Construction Management
- Infrastructure Inspection
Services
- System Integration
The Customer
Sony Corporation
About The Customer
Sony Corporation is a leading global electronics company, producing a wide range of advanced consumer and professional technologies across computing, audio-visual devices, semiconductors, and electronic components. The corporation operates globally, employing approximately 147,000 people. Sony Italia, headquartered in Milan, is a branch of Sony Corporation and employs approximately 250 people. The company had a significant local server infrastructure to ensure high performance and ease of maintenance for its country-specific systems. However, growth in data volumes and user numbers put significant pressure on these servers, leading to reduced performance and reliability.
The Challenge
Sony Italia, a branch of the global electronics giant Sony Corporation, was facing a significant challenge with its IT infrastructure. The company had consolidated most of its IT infrastructure into two data centers in the U.K, but Sony Italia opted to maintain its local server infrastructure for high performance and ease of maintenance. However, as data volumes and user numbers grew, the servers began to experience reduced performance and reliability. The company had 30 physical servers, but with limited budgets, replacing all of them was not feasible. Additionally, Sony Italia was concerned about the increasing heat output and electricity consumption in the data center. The company had already virtualized about half of its infrastructure, but needed a more cost-effective solution to extend these benefits.
The Solution
Sony Italia turned to SUSE for a solution. The company aimed to complete the virtualization of its infrastructure, but the cost of additional licenses was too high. SUSE provided a solution based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) with Xen virtualization included, which allowed Sony Italia to deploy a Linux distribution with built-in virtualization at no extra cost. Additionally, the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension was added to ensure a resilient, clustered solution. Sony Italia installed two new servers running SLES in a high-availability cluster, hosting more than 12 virtual Linux and Windows servers. The company used PlateSpin Migrate to simplify the migration from the old physical infrastructure to the new virtual machines, minimizing business disruption and accelerating the process. Sony Italia plans to extend its use of Xen virtualization on SLES, replacing the current technology on up to 10 physical servers.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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