Ibm SYSTEM Z User Manual

IBM Case Study

“ From every

perspective, running applications under Linux on System z makes sense for our organization. Performance, reliability, disaster recovery, server provisioning and cost efficiency have all seen dramatic improvements—helping BCBSM deliver better service and better value to its members across the state.”

— Ted Mansk, Director of

Infrastructure Engineering and Databases at BCBSM

BCBS Minnesota achieves a signiﬁcant TCO reduction with virtualized Linux on IBM System z

Overview

■

Challenge

The Microsoft Windows and

Intel processor-based server

landscape at Blue Cross and

Blue Shield of Minnesota

(BCBSM) was inﬂexible and

costly to operate and maintain.

■

Solution

IBM helped consolidate 140 HP

Intel-architecture servers to a

single IBM System z with six

Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL)

engines. Key applications now

run in SUSE Linux Enterprise

virtual servers, while IBM DB2

databases run on z/OS on the

same physical machine.

■

Beneﬁts

BCBSM expects to reduce TCO

signiﬁcantly over ﬁve years;

energy-efficient server platform

helps to achieve green comput-

ing objectives; virtualization cuts

server provisioning times by

99 percent and provides

enormous ﬂexibility to meet

emerging business objectives;

full disaster recovery can be

achieved within 90 minutes—

97 percent faster than before.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of

Minnesota (BCBSM) is the largest

health plan in the state, providing

health coverage to more than 2 million

members. With headquarters in

Eagan, MN, and branch offices in

Arrowhead and Rochester, BCBSM

employs 3,800 people and operates as

a not-for-proﬁt, taxable organization:

more than 90 percent of the premiums

it receives are paid back out for health

care claims.

To maintain this high ratio of payouts to

premiums and provide the best possi-

ble value to its members, BCBSM puts

continual downward pressure on its

operational costs. In the IT department,

this translates into a strategy of doing

more with less—choosing the hardware

and software that will drive business

optimization while reducing acquisition,

implementation, support and mainte-

nance costs.

A new platform

“For several years, we had been run-

ning our IBM DB2® databases on the

IBM System z® platform—but our

applications servers, including those for

SAP ERP, were running in a Microsoft®

Windows® environment on Intel®

processor-based hardware from HP,”

explains Ted Mansk, Director of

Infrastructure Engineering and

Databases at BCBSM.

“Since Microsoft releases patches for Windows about once a month, we needed to

invest a sizeable amount of time to keep the operating systems current. This

caused downtime for the business as well. We decided to investigate some other

options and see if we could ﬁnd a cost-effective solution that would avoid these

issues.”

BCBSM evaluated various UNIX® options, and also looked at Linux® on the

IBM System z mainframe platform.

“We did our due diligence and spoke to a lot of other companies about how they

constructed their application server landscapes,” comments Ted Mansk. “The feed-

back we received was that Linux on System z was one of the most stable plat-

forms imaginable: none of the references had ever experienced a serious outage.

Our own experience of running DB2 on z/OS® on the System z platform bears this

out—you don’t have to worry about it, it just works.”

Finding the most cost-effective option

BCBSM then performed a ﬁve-year TCO study to see if Linux on the System z

platform could deliver comparable price-performance to a distributed Windows or

UNIX-based server landscape.

“Even without factoring in the maintenance and support costs—which would be

considerable for a large estate of physical servers—we found that running a virtual-

ized Linux environment on System z would be somewhere between 30 and

50 percent less expensive than a distributed architecture,” says Ted Mansk.

“Suddenly, the choice of infrastructure had become an easy decision.”

Pulling out all the stops

Working with IBM, BCBSM migrated around 140 application servers from the HP

hardware onto six new Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) processors installed in its

System z9® Enterprise Class mainframe. The IFLs have enabled the organization

to decommission almost all of the old physical machines.

“We had to start the project after the annual ﬁnancial close in December, and we

needed to complete it within two months to avoid delaying a number of other

strategic projects,” comments Ted Mansk. “IBM showed extraordinary dedication

to help us complete the project within an extremely tight deadline. The project team

worked seven-day weeks over the winter holiday season to get the job done.”

Advantages of virtualization

For BCBSM, running the application servers on virtual instances of SUSE Linux

Enterprise Server in partitions on the IFL processors delivers several advantages.

First, the lead time for server provisioning has been reduced by more than

Solution Components

Hardware

●

IBM System z9® EC

●

IBM System z10™ EC

Software

●

IBM DB2®

●

IBM z/OS®

●

IBM z/VM®

●

SUSE Linux® Enterprise Server

99 percent. When the business requires a new test or development environment,

the IT team can deploy a new Linux virtual server within 20 minutes. There is no

longer any need to source a new physical server, wait for delivery, then install and

conﬁgure it—a process which could take six to eight weeks.

“Since the move to Linux on System z, we’ve received some really positive feed-

back from the business,” comments Ted Mansk. “Users really appreciate the fact

that when they need something, we can now get to work on it at once, instead of

having to wait weeks for new hardware to arrive. Equally, because the System z

platform is so much more reliable than our previous infrastructure, we no longer get

any complaints about performance and availability issues.”

Availability and disaster recovery

In fact, since the new infrastructure went into production, BCBSM has not experi-

enced a single incidence of unplanned downtime or underperformance. Equally,

the company’s disaster recovery capability has been improved dramatically by the

new solution.

“With the old distributed architecture, we would have struggled to restore our appli-

cation servers within 48 hours,” says Ted Mansk. “With all these servers running on

System z, we can perform a full disaster recovery at our secondary data center

within 90 minutes—an improvement of nearly 97 percent. In addition, the ease of

maintenance also contributes to improving availability.”

With Linux on IBM System z, BCBSM can achieve near-continuous availability by

reducing the need for planned downtime. It is possible to perform nearly all mainte-

nance to the hardware, z/OS and DB2 while all systems are up and running—a

feature unparalleled in the industry and a speciﬁc design goal of the platform.

Realizing the cost savings

Finally, BCBSM expects the new infrastructure to deliver cost savings over and

above the predicted TCO savings in the initial cost-beneﬁt analysis.

“When we performed the initial cost-beneﬁt calculation, we did not factor in the

maintenance and support costs, or the cost of power, cooling and server room

space,” comments Ted Mansk. “The savings in these areas are likely to be consid-

erable. For example, we only need 1.5 full-time employees to manage the entire

System z Linux environment—which would be unthinkable if they were looking after

140 physical servers.”

“Equally, in terms of energy efficiency, the System z not only enables cost

savings—it also helps us reduce our impact on the environment. We take a lot of

pride in being good corporate citizens, so anything we can do to make the organi-

zation more sustainable is a major beneﬁt.”

Looking to the future

In mid-2009, BCBSM migrated its database to DB2 version 9, and upgraded its

hardware platform to z10™ Enterprise Class. The new, more powerful z10 quad-

core processors should deliver a considerable improvement in performance, help-

ing the organization handle its rising application and database workload without

increasing hardware licensing costs.

“From every perspective, running applications under Linux on System z makes

sense for our organization,” concludes Ted Mansk. “Performance, reliability,

disaster recovery, server provisioning and cost efficiency have all seen dramatic

improvements—helping BCBSM deliver better service and better value to its mem-

bers across the state.”

For more information

Contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner. Visit us at:

ibm.com/systems/z

IBM Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A.

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and System z are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their ﬁrst occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at

ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.

Intel is a trademark or registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both.

Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.

Other product, company or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

References in this publication to IBM products, programs or services do not imply that IBM intends to make these available in all countries in which IBM operates. Any reference to an IBM product, program or service is not intended to imply that only IBM’s product, program or service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program or service may be used instead. Offerings are subject to change, extension or withdrawal without notice.

All client examples cited represent how some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Performance data for IBM and non-IBM products and services contained in this document was derived under speciﬁc operating and environmental conditions. The actual results obtained by any party implementing such products or services will depend on a large number of factors speciﬁc to such party’s operating environment and may vary signiﬁcantly. IBM makes no representation that these results can be expected or obtained in any implementation of any such products or services.

THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS-IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.

ZSC03049-USEN-00