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The National Concert Hall has implemented Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V achieving better IT performance for lower cost, easier management and creating a faster, more secure, booking service for National Concert Hall patrons.  The National Concert Hall’s ticketing system relies heavily on IT and allows concert-goers to make bookings by phone and online.  “Our Audience View web server, which hosts our ticketing website, and our credit card processing server, are both virtual. This means they cannot go down. This is a testament to the stability of the Hyper-V system,” commented Philip Deacon, IT manager for the National Concert Hall.  Pictured:  Maestro Philip Deacon (IT manager, National Concert Hall), Renowned Violinist Declan Faller (infrastructure product manager, Microsoft Ireland).

Note:  Bespoke Violin designed and crafted by artist Philip Kennedy.

The National Concert Hall has implemented Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V achieving better IT performance for lower cost, easier management and creating a faster, more secure, booking service for National Concert Hall patrons. The National Concert Hall’s ticketing system relies heavily on IT and allows concert-goers to make bookings by phone and online. “Our Audience View web server, which hosts our ticketing website, and our credit card processing server, are both virtual. This means they cannot go down. This is a testament to the stability of the Hyper-V system,” commented Philip Deacon, IT manager for the National Concert Hall.

The call centre runs with 22 thin clients running on Terminal Server 2008. Access control is carried out using wireless mobile scanning devices reporting back to a Microsoft SQLServer 2005 which is at the core of the National Concert Hall’s ticketing system. In addition to the implementation of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and virtualisation, The National Concert Hall have further strengthened their already finely tuned technological Orchestra by implementing a host of Microsoft services and solutions which include;

· System Center Essentials and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 which manages and monitors both the physical and virtual infrastructure of servers and desktops, all from a single set of tools.

· Exchange 2007 SP1 Enterprise Edition running as a virtual machine exchange cluster.

· Office Communications Server 2007providing instant messaging and presence features.

“All of these solutions are working in perfect harmony to orchestrate a perfect performance for a world class venue such as The National Concert Hall,” summarised Declan Faller, infrastructure product manager with Microsoft Ireland.

Virtualisation had played a significant part in helping The National Concert Hall to streamline its IT. Previously it had been running VMware infrastructure which ran 19 virtual servers on three physical machines. Last year the organisation’s VMware licence was up for renewal at the same time as it had upgrade rights to Windows Server 2008. Microsoft’s virtualisation tool Hyper-V is built in to Windows Server 2008 meaning organisations can take advantage of Virtualisation without needing to purchase third-party software.

“With Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V is part of the product, as opposed to companies having to go out and buy a virtualisation solution. It’s another role on the server if the company is using the latest Windows technology,” says Declan Faller.

By replacing the pre-existing VMWare ESX infrastructure with Windows Server 2008 running Hyper-V, IT administrators can virtualize multiple operating systems such as Windows or Linux on a single server. In this case, the new virtualisation system runs on a cluster of three machines. No additional modifications were required and the organisation was able to use its existing server and storage hardware.

Larry Doyle, managing director of IT services company Netforce, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, who worked with the National Concert Hall to upgrade their IT infrastructure said, “From a performance point of view, there’s been a significant improvement in the system. I would tend to feel that Windows operating systems perform better in Hyper-V than in VMware – and it’s on the same hardware that the VMware installation had been on. I was blown away at how fast it is. The true test of this is, we went from VMware to Hyper-V on the same kit and it runs faster on Hyper-V.”

The main benefit to The National Concert Hall is a reduction in costs, Deacon confirms. “Through our Microsoft Licensing agreement, we had the rights to Hyper-V and Server 2008. Therefore we did not have to renew our VMware subscription.” The result, he says, was a “considerable” cost saving in itself as well as reduced expenditure on hardware and power, by using virtual machines running on fewer physical servers. He added that, “I suppose one of the major benefits for me, with our slim IT resources, is that Hyper-V is simple and straightforward to use. The learning curve, particularly having used other virtualization systems, was negligible.”

Installation of Windows Server 2008 was seamless, taking no more than a weekend to install. Declan Faller added, “The beauty of this is, the IT administrators don’t have to go out and acquire a new skill set. Valuable IT staff time isn’t taken up by attending virtualisation training and there is a further cost saving by not having to take additional third-party training. IT managers can run a virtualisation environment using the skills they already have.”