New Delhi: Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL), better known as Tata Indicom, recently consolidated its multiple servers into three Sun Fire 15K servers. The server setup at TTSL initially consisted of multiple servers running a mix of operating systems, and was difficult to scale. The company has succeeded in consolidating it to three Sun Fire 15K servers and avoided setting up redundant data centres in the process. The result is a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and higher availability, besides other benefits. eFE undertook a case study of the changeover. 


The Client
TTSL is a leading private basic service provider offering basic telephony, ISP, NLD (national long distance), broadband and CDMA (code division multiple access) mobile services. Having established its presence in the Andhra Pradesh telecom circle, the company plans to roll out its services in five new circles in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, New Delhi and Gujarat. 

A Heterogeneous Environment
Prior to server consolidation, TTSL was using 11 servers that were used to run diverse enterprise applications such as ERP (enterprise resource planning), billing, order management, CRM (customer resource management) and data warehousing. 

The company had invested in 11 different types of servers, with distinct configurations to run its applications, and managing these servers was not an easy task. According to TTSL general manager-IT, AV Rajendran: “From the business side, we were to provide a single window for all India customers and so decided on a single server instance strategy.” 

These servers were neither scalable nor did they meet the new demands of the company and its expansion plans — to offer services in five new telecom circles. Mr Rajendran said that the only way out was to buy additional servers and create new data centres across the new circles. TTSL was also finding it difficult to manage its disk-attached storage. So it decided to consolidate storage and implement network-based storage using a SAN (storage area network) so that it could plan and set up a disaster recovering site in Mumbai. 

The Options
The company had two options to solve its business problems. The first was to replicate its data centres across all five telecom circles. The second option was to consolidate its existing 11 servers and deploy top-of-the-line servers that would meet future requirements as well as bring down data centre management and administration costs. Consolidating the servers gave TTSL the option of doing away with disk attached storage, implementing a SAN using Brocade switches and an EMC Symmetrix 8830 box; and later setting up a disaster recovery site. 


With server consolidation, TTSL has managed to reduce its IT support manpower. 

TTSL evaluated various servers in early 2002. After initial talks with Sun Microsystems, the company decided in April 2002 to consolidate all its servers into three Sun Fire 15K servers. 

TTSL invested $2 million on three Sun Fire 15K servers and hired Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as the systems integrator for the deployment. The installation was completed in three months. Two Sun Fire 15K servers, located in Hyderabad, are partitioned into six domains and are currently using 92 CPUs, with 50 per cent headroom available. The third Sun Fire 15K server is being used at the company’s disaster recovery site in Mumbai. 

Benefits
By consolidating its servers, TTSL has been able to avoid setting up additional data centres in each circle and has reduced its IT support manpower. Says Mr Rajendra, “Server consolidation helps in better utilisation of resources. Roll-out of applications is slower with distributed architecture. It helped in cutting cost of operations and management, enabling better scalability.” 

The quantifiable benefits are: 

• Lowering IT support manpower: Consolidation has helped TTSL in lowering its IT support manpower by 25 per cent. 
• Lesser number of licences: The consolidation helped TTSL reduce number of software licences required. 
• No replication: TTSL would have had to replicate its Hyderabad data centre in other circles had it stuck to its earlier setup. Through consolidation it has managed to avoid this expensive and time-consuming task. 
  

Pitfalls
According to Mr Rajendran, “As the infrastructure is consolidated, there is the risk of impacting services across India in the event of the central server going down. We have overcome this by having a cluster of servers as well as a disaster recovery site.”