Microsoft Virtualization: Data Center to DesktopCustomer Solution Case Study

Successfully enables napa cabbage pre-selling event based on virtualization infrastructure

OverviewCountry or Region: KoreaIndustry: Retail

Customer ProfileNongHyup is a leader of distribution and banking industry in Korea which seeks people’s happiness with continuous change and innovation by providing safe agri-food and various banking services.

Business SituationAs napa cabbage cost soared to unprecedented price, it put big burden on household economy. Therefore it was urgent that measures to solve the problem be established.

SolutionNongHyup created infrastructure to handle more than 100,000 of simultaneous connection within just 8 days with Hyper-V and System Center.

Benefits Contributes to stabilize napa cabbage

price Solves urgent business requirement in

just 6 days Acts as positive signal in IT

infrastructure optimization

“Customers wanted IT to immediately support business related

idea when it comes. We realized that virtualization, further, cloud

environment is the best way to make it possible to take prompt

action.”Yoo Byung Cheon, team manager of NH Information Technology Division

As the sudden rise in napa cabbage price emerged as the main issue relating household

economy in the second half of 2010, it was urgent that measures to solve the problem be

established. NongHyup, which is a leading contributor in agri-food and exerted itself to

farmers’ welfare promotion and local community development, set to take action. On 6 Oct,

2010, it announced “Napa cabbage price stability measurement”. The starting time for pre-

selling event was arranged to 12 Oct and it meant that NongHyup had to create IT

infrastructure needed to hold the event within just 8 days including pre-review. Practically,

it was impossible to obtain new server resource, deploy database and implement web

services. NongHyup Information System, which takes charge of NH shopping mall and

NongHyup, which takes charge of IT infrastructure made such a drastic decision. The

answer was virtualization environment and the result was great success. Server, database,

web service configuration and tuning were completely finished within less than 6 days.

Even when pre-selling event of 3,000,000 heads was closed in just 7 minutes on the starting

point, 12 Oct of 2010 peaking at 117,000 of simultaneous connection, the system showed

best stability using less than 20% of CPU. Even though it was short term event, NongHyup

had chance to verify how IT could support business agility with this project.

SituationIn autumn of 2010, the sudden rise of napa cabbage price emerged as an issue. Napa cabbage is the main ingredient of the country’s staple side dish kimchi. When the price of napa cabbage rocketed, citizens tended to compare kimchi with gold. The measurement to prevent unprecedented sharp rise was released through the press on 6 Oct 2010. NongHyup announced “Napa cabbage price stability measurement”. While a head of napa cabbage was sold for over 10,000 won on the market, pre-selling event for 3,000,000 heads with 2,000 won, showed the best interest. On the other hand, NH Information Technology Division had big burden to prepare IT infrastructure and services to hold the event. The decision was made urgently and we had to finish all preparation for the event within just 8 days.

NH Information Technology Division requested the preparation for “NongHyup napa cabbage pre-selling event” site on 4 Oct. Then, it planned to pre-sell for 10 days with 300,000 heads per day from 12 Oct. Yoo Byung Cheon, team manager of NH Information Technology Division said, “It was difficult to make decision because the service request urgently occurred targeting random people and internal preparation was not enough. To handle the situation that reaches the peak time within such a short period, we concluded to need horizontal expansion that could deploy server when request occurs rather than vertical expansion that could pile server physically.”

On 5 Oct, we called an emergency meeting and discussed whether to re-configure existing NH shopping operation

infrastructure or search for new approach. There was a prerequisite that should not affect NH shopping homepage. The only way not to damage shopping service was to expand system with separate server resource and the key was to obtain resources within just few days.

NH Information Technology Division had planned to input development server or idle resource or immediately hire them from system developers just in case of urgent matter. However, this time there were many variations to approach in physical point since it was not easy to have enough time to predict exact traffic and number of visitors to prepare capacity and performance as well as work with managers by each part for system configuration. Under thorough review, NH Information Technology Division reached a final decision on 6 Oct to take horizontal expansion that prepare and deploy servers in provisioning view rather than preparing resources physically.

SolutionThe reason NH Information Technology Division chose horizontal expansion was that it had Hyper-V based virtualization infrastructure built and operated from 2008 in addition to the understanding to upcoming business process. NH Information Technology Division is one of the best representative sites building on Windows Server infrastructure in Korea. In addition, it is well configured and evolved to every sides of private cloud such as provisioning automation beyond resource standardization and virtualization.

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Yoo mentioned, “In order not to affect shopping mall, we considered that logical approach should be necessary to expand right amount of servers at the point of request. After reviewing internal resources, we found that the ideal environment was virtualization based Windows Server infrastructure. It was easy to expand under any situation even out of predicative value and also easy to withdraw resources after using them. Moreover, we had sufficient capacities for it and Microsoft was ready to take immediate action on any request. This pre-selling event was urgent issue for us. Microsoft took prompt action such as sending the person in charge right after request, even though he was away for business trip abroad and dispatching professional engineers in server and database.”

The requisite for the project success was close collaboration. We should ensure to obtain server resources as well as complete preparation of web service and database on them. Jin Sun Jong, deputy department head of NH Information Technology Division, explained “As the person in charge for the project, I had confidence in human resources. Microsoft premier service engineers were strong helper for us. The initial request was the preparation in IaaS level. However, we had to cover PaaS and SaaS preparation in practice. Without close collaboration with Microsoft premier service engineers, it would have not been easy to satisfy customers’ requirement through connectivity with IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.”

On 7 and 8 Oct, the day after virtualization environment was decided to the foundation for “NongHyup kimchi napa

cabbage pre-selling event”, Microsoft premier service engineers set to web development and tuning, web server configuration examination, database optimization and load test. The result of load test, which was done after completing development and configuration, achieved more than expected. The load test was done considering 100,000 of simultaneous connection and the result showed all connection were handled under less than 20% of CPU usage. In real pre-selling event held in the morning on 12, it showed almost the same result. Then, 117,000 of simultaneous connection occurred and CPU usage did not go over 20%. The pre-selling connection for 10 days afterwards was seamlessly handled without any failure.

Benefits

Contributes to stabilize napa cabbage price

“NongHyup Kimchi season Napa cabbage pre-selling event” contributed to stabilize napa cabbage price for kimchi season as expected. On 12 Oct, the first day for pre-selling, “NongHyup napa cabbage pre-selling event” was ranked No.1 on the Internet hit list of major portal sites, attracting people’s attention. The pre-selling event for the first day was closed within just 7 minutes, receiving fervent response from people.

NH’s commitment to stabilize napa cabbage price acted as the catalyst to involving other contributors in that matter. Other contributors such as Lotte Mart and E-Mart joined to pre-sell napa cabbage for kimchi season at lower price than current

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market price. As with NH’s pre-selling event and contributors’ engagement, napa cabbage price was stabilized to around 3,800 won at the end of Oct, 2010.

Solves urgent business requirement in just 6 days

To achieve the challenge that make pre-selling event go on smoothly, just 6 days except 2 days for pre review were allowed. NH’s Information Technology Division could directly experience the value of standardized and virtualized infrastructure to meet urgent business requirement.

Yoo emphasized, “Customers wanted IT to immediately support business related idea when it comes. In the past, we faced delay problem to go through many other procedures such as requiring, planning, making RFP and contracting solution or equipment providers. It made us difficult to promptly response. If we had to follow the same procedures, it would have taken several weeks to prepare equipments and collaborate with related departments. We realized that virtualization, further, cloud environment is the best way to make it possible to take prompt action.”

He added, “As pre-selling event went go smoothly, customer will expect the same level of responsiveness. Therefore, it is our mission to prepare environment to accept customers’ requirement and we expect that investment in virtualization started from 2008 and future strategies will be great help to improve IT efficiency.”

Acts as positive signal in IT infrastructure optimization

NH’ Information Technology Division is internally considering next generation integrated Integrated IT center establishment and movement. As a part of this plan, it is driving to gradually optimize infrastructure. Virtualization of Windows Server environment started from 2008 could be understood in the same context. As the project achieved complete success, we expect that it will affect Unix server virtualization plan quite a bit.

Jong-Ha Lee, section chief of NH Information Technology Division said, “Virtualization is at an early stage over infrastructure. As a manager, the most concern of applying early stage technology was that it would experience ping pong. When problems relating to operating system, virtualization solution or application layer occur, there are possibilities to avoid responsibility between the persons in charge in finding out where the problem start.”

Moreover, he concluded, “Considering this, Hyper-V has big advantage. Personally, the solution from the developer which provides operating system for virtualization will be the best choice. Like management tool, System Center has better advantage than other tool in the point that monitors application as well as operating system. Additionally, Microsoft has experienced to reliably operate world sized data center. Such experience planted a strong trust for virtualization and cloud related technology development in our mind.”

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Microsoft VirtualizationMicrosoft virtualization is an end-to-end strategy that can profoundly affect nearly every aspect of the IT infrastructure management lifecycle. It can drive greater efficiencies, flexibility, and cost effectiveness throughout your organization. From accelerating application deployments; to ensuring systems, applications, and data are always available; to taking the hassle out of rebuilding and shutting down servers and desktops for testing and development; to reducing risk, slashing costs, and improving the agility of your entire environment—virtualization has the power to transform your infrastructure, from the data center to the desktop.

For more information about Microsoft virtualization solutions, go to: www.microsoft.com/virtualization

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about products and services, call or visit the website at:

For more information about NongHyu products and services, call 82-2-2080-5114 or visit the website at: www.nonghyup.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published April 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft System Center Operations

Manager 2007

− Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007

− Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition