Maxol: Oil Firm Grows Business While Trimming Servers by 80 Percent

Oil Firm Grows Business While Trimming Servers by 80 Percent
Overview "We will be able to reduce our total server holdings by Country or Region: Ireland 80 percent using Hyper-V." Industry: Retail-Wholesale and distribution Stephen McCormack, Group IT Manager, Maxol Customer Profile Maxol is an oil distribution company with Maxol markets a comprehensive range of oil and petroleum service stations and distributors across products to all sectors of the Irish market. Always trying to trim Ireland. Headquartered in Dublin, Maxol employs 128 people and has annual costs, Maxol wanted to curb the rate of server growth and the costs turnover of U.S.$1.2 billion. associated with server proliferation. It also wanted to boost Business Situation utilization of its servers, some of which ran at a limited capacity. Maxol wanted to reduce its server and Maxol used the Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise operating system electrical costs and improve server utilization. The IT staff of four people also featuring Hyper-VT virtualization technology to consolidate 22 wanted to reduce the time spent on routine servers to 6 servers, an 80 percent reduction. Maxol estimates that server management. it will save approximately U.S.$94,000 in hardware and $47,000 in Solution electrical costs over three years. Server utilization has jumped to Maxol uses the Windows Server® 2008 ®operating system with Hyper-VT technology 30 percent, and server management is easier using Microsoft and Microsoft® System Center Virtual System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. The IT staff can Machine Manager 2008 to consolidate servers and simplify management. create virtual machines in a fraction of the time needed to deploy physical servers. Benefits „ More growth with lower costs „ Servers reduced by 80 percent „ Server capacity increased to 30 percent „ Easier IT management


"We wanted to migrate Situation However, many of the company's 30 or so Maxol is Ireland's oldest and foremost servers were not being used at full potential, our entire server estate independent oil company and one of the including the server that hosted the to a virtual environment largest and oldest family-owned concerns in Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 e-mail the country. The Maxol brand is one of the messaging and collaboration software. "Our and needed a most familiar and recognized in Ireland most-taxed server hosted Exchange Server virtualization solution thanks to a network of 237 distinctive blue- 2003 and ran at about 30 percent that would take us and-yellow service stations and 45 home- utilization," says Nicholas Merton, IT Support heating oil distributors with blue-and-yellow at the Maxol. "Our other servers ran at 10 there." vehicles. Maxol is proud that it has a service percent utilization or less. Most of our Nicholas Merton, IT Support, Maxol station and distributor in every county in computing horsepower sat idle, yet we had to Ireland. Dublin-based Maxol has 128 keep adding servers and were in danger of employees and annual revenues of U.S.$1.2 maxing out our data center facility." billion. Because it does not recover or refine oil, Maxol's existing servers were reaching the Maxol's business model and profits are end of their warranty, and the company based on distribution efficiencies and cost wanted a new solution that would meet its control. "We're always looking for efficiencies increasing data storage needs while helping it to cut costs and reduce our operational reduce its data center footprint, electrical overhead while providing excellent IT consumption, and emissions. Maxol also services," McCormack says. needed a stronger business continuity plan. Stephen McCormack, Group IT Manager at Solution Maxol, says, "With over 170 employees at 10 Maxol realized that it needed to halt server sites across Ireland, we were looking for a proliferation and improve server utilization by solution that could help us simplify our embracing virtualization. Maxol first complex IT infrastructure and let us experimented with virtualization in 2007 by communicate between all our sites and store implementing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 increasing amounts of data while taking R2 Service Pack 1 in a cluster configuration. account of limited physical capacity. We were On this three-node cluster, the IT staff also looking for a team that coul... [download for more]