Virtual computing for real flying airplanes

Lufthansa Technik Malta is a success story but very few people realise that information and communication technology has been a crucial factor in this success. The airplanes that are routinely serviced at Luqa do not only require human engineering and technical skills but also a strong information technology backbone. The inauguration of the new facility a year ago almost to the day also prompted the implementation of a new, more robust ICT network that caters for the growing demands of the industry.

Indeed the company is in fact one of the first local companies to adopt Microsoft's Windows Server Virtualisation (MWSV).

In computing, virtualisation is a means of creating a virtual version of a physical resource. You can have one single computer server with different operating systems installed on it, each working independently, but without the need to have different physical machines each hosting a different operating system and its related software.

"Microsoft Windows Server Virtualisation fitted exactly our needs in terms of group standardisation and technology requirements," Paul Baldacchino, head of IT at Lufthansa Technik Malta, told i-Tech "During the new building project we were continuously driven to choose energy efficient equipment and platforms. MWSV gave us the hardware savings we were aiming for. The product also ensured dynamic scalability and upgrading for near and distant futures projects".

Before the implementation, the company had a two-server-based system supporting 55 computers and the software used was Microsoft Windows Small Business Suite. The advent of the new hangar and increased user-base were amongst the main factors that motivated the company to change and to address the expansion to over 300 computers.

The new network at Lufthansa Technik Malta is interconnected to the parent company in Hamburg over a dedicated high-speed link. Other external links are also in place for various services and redundancy.

"MWSV complemented our data centre design. We planned a small, efficient yet powerful server farm that provided resilience and scalability. Coupled with the hardware, MWSV resulted in a mature solution with extremely positive figures in terms of uptime and ease of maintenance. We also had no problem implementing critical business applications on MWSV," added the head of IT at Lufthansa Technik Malta.

The network in Luqa is a wired network connected to a dual linked fiber-optic backbone. All active equipment operates at 1GB or 10GB speeds. The fiber backbones lead to two data centres hosting critical links and platforms in redundancy mode to support 24x7 operations. The main data centre houses a Blade chassis system with Microsoft Hyper-V operating 17 virtual servers, together with five physical rack servers in the data centre.

The local operation provides various systems including data management, e-mail and services to the user community. The whole platform is interconnected with voice, data and video making use of the same infrastructure and directory services. The telephone system operates on VOIP with devices physically connected to the infrastructure or through the wireless network which operates in over 95 per cent of the facility.

The hardware was brought in line with the overall infrastructure project at the time of the new premises set-up. Once all the blocks where in place the system was setup and configured. MWSV provides so many configuration scenarios that the company actually had a very smooth transition. Making use of physical to virtual features very little work was actually performed on the virtual platform. Most work was preparing the old servers for transfer, the head of IT explained.

"MWSV has been the silent winner. I have heard very little issues surrounding MWSV from my staff and this I believe is a good measurement. The administrators found the product user friendly and the resources and knowledge forums available to be more than is required to maintain. We also owe our success to Kinetix who supported this implementation," concluded Mr Baldacchino.

Kinetix is a Maltese company providing IT consultancy, design, installation, and ongoing support and maintenance for networks and IT infrastructure. It was entrusted with the upgrade of this network.

Jonathan Vella, infrastructure solutions architect at Kinetix, offers several reasons why Microsoft Windows Server Virtualisation was chosen for this project.

"We managed to optimise hardware assets to cut costs. Indeed we saved on 70 per cent of hardware costs and increased server utilization from 10-15 per cent to about 70 per cent. We also cut the time it takes for our IT staff to provision a server by up to 70 per cent, which is critical to the productivity of the development and IT departments. There is also better continuity of IT service to internal users through live migration and clustering technology from Microsoft Hyper-V, which offers better and more familiar user interface as well as lower cost of ownership than other virtualisation solutions like VMware."

Asked about which companies could benefit from this technology, Mr Vella replied that basically any business that needs to grow must consider server virtualisation.

"Using Hyper-V, a business is able to achieve a dynamic IT infrastructure and can almost double computing capacity on demand across the enterprise, which is huge. With Hyper-V you can deliver consistent availability. Customers can easily gain a pretty solid guarantee of 100 percent uptime without breaking the bank."