Faced with the need to manage server sprawl in shipboard datacenters; to optimize use of real estate, power and cooling in shipboard datacenters; to design redundant IT systems for current and future megaships; and to replace outdated technology, Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) implemented Sun solutions that enabled the company to realize all four goals.

The cruise line successfully consolidated more than 20 aging servers aboard its Norwegian Sky with just three Sun Fire X4150 Servers using Intel Xeon 5400-series quad-core processors. This server consolidation ratio of more than 12:1 enabled NCL to maximize use of limited resources in its onboard datacenters since these new systems occupy a smaller space, require far less power and cooling, and are easier for the IT staff to manage. The solution serves as a model for the datacenters on NCL's new megaship, Norwegian Epic, which will launch in 2010.

NCL also chose VMware ESX to partition the physical servers into multiple virtual machines, where the x86-based applications now run. The Sun Fire X4150 server, in combination with VMware ESX, was the perfect choice for NCL, making it possible to eliminate three of the four server racks that previously occupied priceless real estate. With such a dramatic reduction of hardware in the datacenter (footprint reduced by 75%), the temperature dropped from 32 to 23 degrees Centigrade (96 to 78 degrees Fahrenheit), significantly reducing NCL's power and cooling costs.

“Application management, deployment, and performance have increased dramatically compared with the old physical systems. That is partially because of the technology refresh, but also because of the virtualized Sun Fire X4150 servers,” says Jeff McVay, NCL’s vice president of IT Infrastructure and Operations. “We are currently running 37 virtual machines on three Sun Fire X4150 servers. We still have 50% capacity open, and we can easily expand without having to purchase more racks.”

An additional Sun Fire X4150 server running Windows is connected to a StorageTek SL24 tape autoloader and is used solely for backup. For storage, NCL chose two Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS appliances, because it could use them as Internet SCSI devices on a gigabit network backbone and avoid the cost of a Fibre Channel investment. System backup time was reduced by nearly 90%.

Backups that previously took 14 hours to complete are now accomplished in just one hour. Weekly hardware maintenance has been cut from 90 minutes to just 10 — without interruption of service. “Without a doubt, the streamlined management is better than we've ever had before and allows the IT staff to focus on delivery of services rather than system management,” says Vincent Cirel, NCL's chief information officer.

Sun's Try and Buy Program enabled NCL to test the Sun Fire X4150 server and to discover that the server far exceeded expectations. “With VMware ESX, we were able to virtualize every single onboard application using Sun products. Other competitors tried, but none of them were able to virtualize 100% of our applications. Some of the vendors didn't even know their applications could run virtualized,” says McVay. “With the new Sun systems, we are a lot more agile and flexible in meeting business needs, whereas we were very static with the old monolithic approach.”

More Information

Sun Fire X4150 Server

Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance

Sun StorageTek SL24 Tape Autoloader [...read more...]

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