Host Europe to support around 20 per cent of business with virtual private cloud service based on Hyper-V from Microsoft

Benefits

•   Tripartite collaboration ensures project success

•   Environment delivers up to 100 more virtual machines compared to previous hardware solution 

•   Customers gain new flexible virtual private cloud service 

•   Improved security maintains customer confidence

•   Platform set to support around 20 per cent of the business

•   Simplified management allows resources to be used more effectively

•  Cloud computing •  Management •  Security•  Virtualization

“ We were impressed with the contact among Dell, Microsoft and Intel. They addressed all our concerns and helped us put a great solution together.”Severin Braun, Head of Managed Hosting Service, Host Europe

Customer profile

Company: Host Europe

Industry: Hosting Solutions

Country: Germany

Employees: 200

Website: www.hosteurope.de

Business need Host Europe wanted to create a virtual private cloud service for its customers, with tight security and low costs.

Solution Working with Dell, Microsoft and Intel, Host Europe designed a virtualized environment and created a new cloud service for customers.

Patrick Pulvermueller is Managing Director at Host Europe and has developed one of Europe’s most environmentally friendly datacentres. “We’ve developed a green datacentre, which consumes 30 per cent less energy than a conventional datacentre. Now our main challenges are systems management, data security and improving our customer offering,” he says.

Host Europe mainly hosts private servers for customers, giving them complete control over their environments, including the operating system. This empowers customers, but makes tight data security essential. Severin Braun, Head of Managed Hosting Services, Host Europe, says: “Customers can break things unintentionally, and there’s always a risk that someone might try to sabotage our environment. We wanted customers to share a single platform, but to be separated from one another without compromising each other’s access to the virtual machines.”

Braun decided to move Host Europe from its previous virtualization environment to Hyper-V™ virtualization technology from Microsoft. He says: “We looked at the Microsoft solution and it offered significantly better security for individual virtual servers. Plus, Microsoft brings out useful updates and patches for our environment.”

Working in partnership inspires confidence in project success

For more than six years, Host Europe has worked with Dell for its IT infrastructure and spoke to the Dell Consulting team about changing the environment. Braun says: “We’ve always had a great relationship with

Dell and I know that Dell and Microsoft have a strong partnership. Dell not only worked with Microsoft to develop Hyper-V, but demonstrated a lot of experience in this sort of migration.”

Host Europe ran tests internally with VMware, Hyper-V and its existing infrastructure, before confirming the decision to move to Hyper-V. Host Europe saw that a three-way project including Dell and Microsoft was the best approach, and so brought Dell and Microsoft together to design

When your business is built on managing other people’s information, data security is a top priority – this is especially true at Host Europe, the third-largest hosting provider in the market in Germany. Since 1997, Host Europe has delivered a highly available and secure environment to customers across the continent, with more than 200,000 business and residential customers relying on its services today.

“ Now customers can adjust the virtual servers to their needs within minutes and only pay for what they use. A virtual private cloud is the perfect solution for customers that need flexibility.” Severin Braun, Head of Managed Hosting Service, Host Europe

Technology at work

Services

Dell Consulting Services

Dell ProSupport Enterprise- Wide Contract – Service Delivery Manager

Hardware

Dell™ PowerEdge™ R810 servers with Intel® Xeon® processors L7555

Dell EqualLogic PS6000XV storage area networks (SANs)

Software Dell Management Console – Dell Performance and Resource

Optimisation Pack (PRO-Pack)

Microsoft® Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Hosters

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager

Windows Server® 2008 R2– Hyper-V™

and deploy the environment. Braun says: “We quickly realised that due to our long-term relationship with Dell – plus its strong ties with Microsoft – a three-way partnership with Dell doing the project management was likely to create the most successful outcome.”

Tested hardware delivers up to 100 virtual servers per host system 

Host Europe, Dell and Microsoft put together an environment consisting of Dell™ PowerEdge™ R810 servers with Intel® Xeon® processors L7555, connected to Dell EqualLogic PS6000XV storage area networks (SANs). Hyper-V provides server virtualization and the environment is managed with Microsoft Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Hosters. Braun says: “The PowerEdge R810 servers allow us to operate a high density of virtual machines. With them, we can run about 100 virtual machines per physical server. We tested the Intel Xeon processors and the performance was excellent.”

Foundation for 10,000 virtual servers

The virtualized servers form the basis for Host Europe’s new virtual private cloud model. With PowerEdge servers connected to EqualLogic SANs, Host Europe expects to launch approximately 5,000 virtual servers within a few months, and around 10,000 within 12 months, as demand for this type of model grows. Braun says: “We’ve had a great experience with Dell EqualLogic storage. The more EqualLogic units we add to the system, the higher the performance – it’s the opposite with most other products.”

Strong project management keeps the deployment on track

As the deployment progressed, the value of Dell’s expertise was proved to Braun. The team received on-the-job training and also had access to experts from Intel. “Dell consultants are experienced in a variety of technologies and the Dell Project Manager helped us to keep on schedule. We were impressed with the contact among Dell, Microsoft and Intel. They addressed all our concerns and helped us put a great solution together,” says Braun.

Host Europe’s customers can concentrate on what they do best

With the new environment in place, customers can order their own virtual machines, scale resources as needed and benefit from up-to-the-minute billing. Host Europe has direct access to Microsoft System Center Operations Manager through Dell Performance and Resource Optimisation Pack (PRO-Pack), part of the Dell Management Console. This gives administrators an overview of the hardware, operating system and applications hosted by Host Europe. Braun says: “We have customers that want to move away from a rigid service to a more flexible architecture. This environment will give customers administrator rights for their virtual servers, without the cost or hassle of an in-house system.”

Braun explains: “In the past, it was difficult for customers to cover load peaks. Now customers can adjust the virtual servers to their needs within minutes and only pay for what they use. A virtual private cloud is the perfect solution for customers that need flexibility.”

“ I think that over the next year or two, we’ll provide around 20 per cent of services through this model. It’s better value for customers due to Microsoft’s competitive licensing model for Hyper-V.” Severin Braun, Head of Managed Hosting Service, Host Europe

Host Europe plans to move around 20 per cent of business  to the Hyper-V environment

Even though this environment is a relatively new addition to Host Europe, it’s proving popular and growing quickly. And it’s a trend that Braun anticipates will grow further. “I think that over the next year or two, we’ll provide around 20 per cent of services through this model. It’s better value for customers due to Microsoft’s competitive licensing model for Hyper-V,” he says.

Environment could allow more effective use of resources

Another reason that Host Europe has been so impressed with this environment is its simplicity. A single system administrator can look after around 200 physical servers, which can run approximately 66,000 virtual machines using Microsoft System Center and the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Hosters. This creates a central hub, where Braun and his team can control every aspect of the virtual private cloud service. “This is a simpler way of running our environment. We’re looking at cutting our physical server footprint in the future, possibly freeing up one or two server administrators for other areas of the business,” says Braun.

Issues solved in less than two hours with ProSupport Enterprise-Wide Contract

With customers’ livelihoods at stake, Host Europe takes no chances. To help ensure maximum uptime, the environment is protected with Dell ProSupport Enterprise-Wide Contract. This means that in the event of a major problem Dell provides a four-hour on-site response. For day-to-day issues, the Host Europe team is trained in Dell Online Self Dispatch, and can diagnose problems and order replacement parts without calling out Dell. Braun says: “Ensuring maximum uptime for our customers is our top priority. We have a four-hour response with Dell ProSupport Enterprise-Wide Contract, and a Service Delivery Manager who monitors our environment. This gives us a feeling of security.”

Read more about Host Europe going green

Read more about the Host Europe enterprise wide story

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