Oil Company Delivers IT Services in Hours Versus Weeks with Hyper-V Private Cloud Overview Country or Region: France Industry: Manufacturing—Oil & gas Customer Profile Total is one of the largest publicly traded oil and gas companies in the world, with operations in more than 130 countries. Total engages in exploration, development, production, refining, and distribution. Business Situation The Total Exploration and Production division wanted to accelerate its delivery of servers to the business, reduce data center costs, and improve IT service availability. Solution The company is replacing VMware with the Hyper-V technology in Windows Server 2012 and uses Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1 to manage a private cloud environment in a highly automated fashion. Benefits Deliver servers in a day versus weeks Reduce operating costs while expanding IT holdings Deliver meaningful service levels to the business “Today, we can deliver a server to our geoscientists in one day instead of three weeks. This makes it possible for the business to start drilling weeks faster and deliver barrels of oil sooner.” George Alexander, Head of IT Architecture Quality Methods, Total Exploration and Production With global oil supplies shrinking, the oil business has become more competitive and expensive. French oil and gas giant Total is active in every segment of the industry and works to stay ahead of these challenges. To gain a responsive, cost-effective IT infrastructure, Total is replacing VMware with a private cloud model based on the Windows Server 2012 operating system and Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1. It can now deliver servers to the business in one day instead of three weeks, promoting greater agility across the business. Total is also reducing IT costs, slashing millions from hardware-related expenses, and enabling its lean IT staff to manage a growing infrastructure. With a private cloud environment, Total can now guarantee meaningful service levels to the business, practically eliminating maintenance-related downtime and the need for complex clustering architectures.
Transcript
Oil Company Delivers IT Services in Hours Versus Weeks with Hyper-V Private Cloud
OverviewCountry or Region: FranceIndustry: Manufacturing—Oil & gas
Customer ProfileTotal is one of the largest publicly traded oil and gas companies in the world, with operations in more than 130 countries. Total engages in exploration, development, production, refining, and distribution.
Business SituationThe Total Exploration and Production division wanted to accelerate its delivery of servers to the business, reduce data center costs, and improve IT service availability.
SolutionThe company is replacing VMware with the Hyper-V technology in Windows Server 2012 and uses Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1 to manage a private cloud environment in a highly automated fashion.
Benefits Deliver servers in a day versus weeks Reduce operating costs while
expanding IT holdings Deliver meaningful service levels to the
business
“Today, we can deliver a server to our geoscientists in one day instead of three weeks. This makes it possible for the business to start drilling weeks faster and deliver barrels of oil sooner.”
George Alexander, Head of IT Architecture Quality Methods, Total Exploration and Production
With global oil supplies shrinking, the oil business has become more competitive and expensive. French oil and gas giant Total is active in every segment of the industry and works to stay ahead of these challenges. To gain a responsive, cost-effective IT infrastructure, Total is replacing VMware with a private cloud model based on the Windows Server 2012 operating system and Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1. It can now deliver servers to the business in one day instead of three weeks, promoting greater agility across the business. Total is also reducing IT costs, slashing millions from hardware-related expenses, and enabling its lean IT staff to manage a growing infrastructure. With a private cloud environment, Total can now guarantee meaningful service levels to the business, practically eliminating maintenance-related downtime and the need for complex clustering architectures.
SituationWith net income of US$16 billion in 2012, Total is the fifth-largest publicly traded integrated oil and gas company in the world. Total operates in more than 130 countries and employs 97,000 people. Based in Paris, France, Total engages in all aspects of the petroleum industry, including upstream operations (oil and gas exploration, development, and production) and downstream operations (refining, marketing, distribution, and shipping). It is also a major chemicals manufacturer.
Total Exploration and Production (E&P) is the division responsible for upstream operations—finding and drilling for oil and gas, which has become an extremely competitive and high-stakes game. The cost of drilling a single well can range into tens of millions of dollars, and Total has to move ever faster to submit bids, obtain permits, set up drilling operations, and get oil to market.
This sense of urgency trickles all the way down to the company’s data center. “Our geoscientists are creating new algorithms, statistical methods, and approaches for evaluating prospect fields all the time,” says André Bidegaray, Engineering Manager of Production IT for Total Exploration and Production. “When they come up with a new idea, they want to move it into production as quickly as possible.”
While it takes only a day or two to modify an algorithm, it took the Total E&P IT organization several weeks to deliver servers for testing that algorithm. Deploying servers to affiliate data centers in remote parts of the world took even longer. The server deployment cycle that took a month in France could take four to five months in Africa, due to shipping, customs, and other delays. Bidegaray’s team constantly worried about matching server inventory to business needs. If a team needed 20 servers, the IT group could deplete its entire stock, and the next business team might have to wait one to
three months while IT ordered more servers.
“We’re investing more each year in finding oil, because oil is getting scarcer globally,” says George Alexander, Head of IT Architecture Quality Methods for Total. “We’re hiring more scientists who are working on ever tighter deadlines. The time to bid on contracts is constantly shrinking. We needed to shift money away from IT to exploration, and we needed to greatly accelerate the delivery of IT services to help the business succeed. Our management wants to see increased agility and reduced infrastructure costs each year.”
Total had achieved some server deployment speedups and cost reductions by virtualizing parts of its two main data centers, in Paris and Pau, France. The Total E&P IT organization used VMware virtualization software to create 600 virtual machines for test and development. However, it still had 600 physical servers in France and another 3,000 physical servers in 30 affiliate data centers around the world. Total knew that to squeeze significant time and costs out of its IT services delivery model, it needed to extend its use of server virtualization to production servers and create a much more automated cloud computing environment.
Additionally, the more dependent Total became on technology, the more critical it was that this infrastructure remain always available. “We do business in just about every time zone, so there’s never a good time for downtime,” Alexander says. “Routine updates required that we take servers offline. We also didn’t have consistent server images, which introduced human error in image creation. It was very difficult to guarantee service levels to our internal customers.”
SolutionIn January 2012, Total E&P issued a request for proposals for help in building a private cloud environment. In a private cloud,
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“We needed to shift money away from IT to exploration, and we needed to greatly accelerate the delivery of IT services to help the business succeed.”
George Alexander, Head of IT Architecture Quality Methods, Total
Exploration and Production
servers within an organization’s data center are extensively virtualized and pooled in an elastic infrastructure that can be dynamically reconfigured in a highly automated fashion.
On one side, two long-term providers both proposed building the private cloud with VMware, already in use at Total. On the other side, Econocom-Osiatis, a local Microsoft Partner experienced in data center projects and close to Total, partnered with Microsoft Services Consulting to propose a private cloud solution based on the Windows Server 2012 operating system, Hyper-V virtualization technology, Microsoft System Center 2012 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), and Microsoft Datacenter Services (DCS) 2.2, the Microsoft private cloud reference implementation. In a seminar that Econocom-Osiatis organized for Total architects and engineers, the Microsoft team presented its solution.
The Microsoft private cloud solution would generate significant cost savings for Total—and a more comprehensive solution. “Microsoft offered complete end-to-end integration, from the operating system to the virtualization layer to the management layer,” Alexander says. “It also had a huge cost advantage, because all the software was included in our existing Microsoft license. We’re already a big Microsoft shop, and even though we also run the Red Hat Linux operating system, we could run Linux virtual machines in the Hyper-V environment.”
Beyond the licensing efficiencies, Total was impressed by the superior flexibility that a Microsoft private cloud solution would provide. The alternative proposals included cloud appliances—preconfigured server racks—which Total would simply plug into its network. However, this approach did not fit well with the company’s IT environment. “It was expensive and tied our hardware sourcing to our software sourcing,” Alexander says. “We didn’t want to have to
replace an entire appliance if we needed to replace or upgrade just one element.”
Total had recently hired Sogeti, another local IT partner, to manage its two data centers in France, so Microsoft, Econocom-Osiatis, and Sogeti worked together to propose an end-to-end approach from design to production.
Four-Month DeploymentBecause Sogeti was set to assume management of Total data centers in Paris and Pau in just a few months, Total wanted the private cloud infrastructure in place when the Sogeti team arrived. “It was absolutely critical to get the timing right because of the new outsourcing contract,” says Bidegaray. “We wanted to make sure that when the Sogeti team arrived, it would have the environment and tools it needed to succeed.”
The Microsoft team got to work and delivered the complete private cloud infrastructure in just four months, utilizing many of the tools and methodologies developed by Microsoft Services Consulting. Econocom-Osiatis is an expert at deploying the DCS solution from Microsoft Services and was critical in designing the Microsoft private cloud solution for Total. The complementary expertise of Econocom-Osiatis and Microsoft Services Consulting, and their close working relationship, were key success factors.
Thanks to this synergy, Microsoft, Econocom-Osiatis, and Sogeti were able to customize the DCS solution to fit Total’s expectations and smoothly migrate the existing infrastructure to the Microsoft Hyper-V private cloud environment.
Large-Scale MigrationToday, the Total E&P private cloud environment consists of a few hundred virtual machines running on a few dozen host servers, all running the Windows Server 2012 Datacenter operating system.
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“Microsoft offered complete end-to-end integration, from the operating system to the virtualization layer to the management layer.”
George Alexander, Head of IT Architecture Quality Methods, Total
Exploration and Production
And it will continue to grow as the E&P team plans to migrate 90 percent of all physical servers into the private cloud environment. Total is now rapidly migrating all its virtual machines to Hyper-V, and all new servers are being deployed in the cloud. The company plans to add approximately 150 new virtual machines a year to its cloud environment. The goal is to ultimately have all virtual servers in the Total data center running on Hyper-V.
Total will eventually run all Windows applications and many Linux applications in its Microsoft private cloud environment, including SAP, Microsoft SQL Server databases, geosciences applications, oil and gas production applications, and infrastructure and productivity applications. Total also runs many Oracle database servers, and although current policy requires that it use physical servers to optimize performance, Total plans to virtualize these servers to gain increased agility and lower costs.
On the Horizon: Public Cloud Computing, New Operating System Release Total may one day incorporate Windows Azure into its environment. Windows Azure is the Microsoft public cloud environment that provides compute, storage, hosting, and management services. “The European Union allows us to put our data anywhere in the Union, which is a positive measure; however, we are a very conservative, risk-averse organization,” Alexander says. “When we determine that public cloud computing is safe, we will definitely consider it. The value of having servers ‘on tap’ is enormous. We have tremendous cost pressures on our IT infrastructure, and using Windows Azure could help us spend our IT dollars where they deliver the greatest value.”
While Total was setting up its private cloud environment, Microsoft released Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2, which introduced advances in private cloud
computing capabilities, flexibility, and management. The IT team is interested in the Storage Spaces feature, which it could use to construct low-cost storage systems and simplify storage administration.
Total E&P has had such success with its private cloud environment that other divisions of Total are actively considering deploying the same solution.
BenefitsWith its Microsoft private cloud solution, Total Exploration and Production is able to deliver servers in hours instead of weeks, eliminate maintenance-related downtime and the need for complex clustering architectures, reduce hardware costs, and enable its IT team to manage a growing infrastructure with no staff increases. Most important, the Total E&P team can now deliver meaningful service-level agreements to internal customers and respond faster in all areas of the business.
Deliver Servers in a Day Versus WeeksBy creating a private cloud environment and shifting to an “IT as a service” delivery model, Total E&P has been able to speed server delivery from three weeks to one day. Instead of laboriously and manually installing software on a physical server, testing it, racking it, and connecting it to services, the IT team can simply replicate and connect a master virtual machine image using System Center 2012.
“Today, we can deliver a server to our geoscientists in one day instead of three weeks,” Alexander says. “This makes it possible for the business to start drilling weeks faster and deliver barrels of oil sooner. Our business deals with multibillion-dollar investments, so we have to get it right the first time—our bids, drilling methodologies, schedules, everything. Plus, we need to change our exploration models regularly. With a responsive Microsoft cloud-based IT infrastructure, we can accommodate the constant changes in our business and the
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“With a responsive Microsoft cloud-based IT infrastructure, we can accommodate the constant changes in our business and the constantly accelerating pace of the oil and gas business.”
George Alexander, Head of IT Architecture Quality Methods, Total
Exploration and Production
constantly accelerating pace of the oil and gas business.”
By adopting private cloud computing, Total has been able to standardize and automate most administrative tasks, which saves time and money. “For the first time, all our servers are built correctly the first time, so there’s no rework and associated delays,” says Bidegaray. “In a private cloud, we are building identical servers every time.”
Reduce Operating Costs While Expanding IT HoldingsAlthough the highly virtualized private cloud model will save Total millions of dollars over the next five years in hardware-related costs, including server acquisition, power, cooling, and data center space, its biggest savings is labor. “Although we have outsourced the management of our IT infrastructure, we want to see a continued downward cost of running our data centers, and we’ve committed to decreasing our costs over the next three years,” Bidegaray says. “Our Microsoft private cloud solution is helping us support that goal. We’re projecting needs for a huge number of servers, and we wouldn’t be able to manage them without providing the highly automated management environment that System Center 2012 provides.”
By making its IT staff more efficient, Total will be able to redirect those employees to higher-value tasks. “We’ll retrain our affiliate IT staff from just deploying and maintaining physical servers to activities such as optimizing backups and disaster recovery—critical in some of the countries in which we operate—and working with local users to deliver better business solutions,” Bidegaray says. “Instead of minding servers, our people can deliver better service to business users.”
Total also realizes savings in third-party software licensing. “When we pay for a Windows Server license, we get all the Hyper-V licenses for that host,” Alexander
says. “With other solutions, every virtual machine requires extra licenses.”
As an energy firm, Total also attaches great importance to energy efficiency in all its activities, and its highly virtualized data center helps it achieve significant reductions in data center energy use.
Deliver Meaningful Service Levels to the BusinessServer standardization leads to higher availability. In the past, every time the IT team updated or otherwise touched a server, the IT staff had to take servers out of production and often upset the application. In a private cloud environment, updating a host server simply involves moving the virtual workloads on that server to another host server, updating the first server, and then moving the workloads back, with close to zero downtime. “While we’re not a bank with the need for nonstop availability, any downtime longer than five minutes is a problem, because we’re a global organization,” Alexander says.
The Total E&P IT organization has rarely offered service-level agreements (SLAs) to internal customers before, because service levels were always resource-constrained. However, with its more flexible cloud environment, the IT team can now offer SLAs that are meaningful to the business. “By using a private cloud environment, we can deliver outstanding availability without using more complicated availability structures such as clustering,” Alexander says. “We simply add more powerful host servers to our cloud and gain redundancy through volume. With our private cloud infrastructure, we are in a much better position to help the business succeed in today’s fast-moving, cost-sensitive oil markets.”
Transform the data centerThe hybrid cloud from Microsoft transforms the data center by extending existing investments in skills and technology with public cloud services and a common set of
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“We’re projecting needs for a huge number of servers, and we wouldn’t be able to manage them without providing the highly automated management environment that System Center 2012 provides.”
André Bidegaray, Engineering Manager of Production IT, Total Exploration and
Production
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 Econocom-Osiatis products and services, visit the websites at:www.econocom.com;www.osiatis.com
For more information about Sogeti products and services, visit the website at:www.sogeti.com
For more information about Total products and services, visit the website at:www.total.com
management tools. With an on-premises infrastructure connected to the Windows Azure platform, you can deliver services faster and scale up or down quickly to meet changing needs.
For more information about transforming the data center, go to:www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/cloud-os/modern-data-center.aspx
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This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published November 2013
Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Windows Server 2012 Datacenter− Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1
Technologies− Hyper-V
Microsoft Services− Microsoft Services Consulting− Microsoft Services Enterprise
