The Netherlands Bankers’ Association (Nederlandse Vereniging van Banken, NVB) was established in 1989 to represent the common interests of Dutch banks. Almost all banks operating in the Netherlands, including foreign bank branches, belong to the NVB membership. The association strives to achieve effective operation of market forces whilst taking into account the interests of its interlocutors. The NVB has 50 employees and is headquartered in Amsterdam, with a subsidiary in The Hague.

The Challenge: Separate Network Services and Applications without Adding Servers

NVB has a traditional Windows®-based office environment with a back office running Microsoft® Exchange and Microsoft® SQL Server®. “The reason to look into virtualizing servers was actually very ordinary,” said Laurens Verbruggen, manager of General and Technical Services at the NVB. “We are located in the centre of Amsterdam and have very limited server space. We started looking for a cost-efficient method to separate network services like DNS and DHCP from applications that were running on the same servers, because when a server needed to be rebooted for maintenance, all services and applications on that server went down with it. Adding additional or redundant servers was not possible, because new servers simply would no longer fit in the cabinet. We needed a solution to save space and create room for future expansion while enabling the separation of services. We felt that server virtualization was the only viable solution.”

Implementing Citrix XenServer, Enterprise Edition

The IT system at NVB consists of thin clients running sessions on Microsoft® Terminal Services and a supporting back office. The organization´s policy is to replace each of the seven servers once every three to four years. Anticipating server replacement in 2008, the organization implemented a Dell EMC Storage Area Network (SAN) in 2007 to consolidate storage and improve data management. Early in 2008, Silver Citrix® Solution Advisor Square1 supported the NVB in selecting Citrix® XenServer™, Enterprise Edition for server virtualization, advised on the server hardware configuration from Dell, and installed the new physical and virtual environment according to the upgrade plan.

“The Citrix solution had the best price/feature ratio and included advanced functionality that was optional with other solutions. In addition, we had already had good experience with Citrix Access Gateway, which we use for remote access to Terminal Services for our management team. The selection of the Citrix server virtualization solution was a logical next step.”

Verbruggen continued, “The virtualization of four of our servers went gradually. We added two new physical servers, created virtual machines on them, installed Windows Server 2003 and smoothly upgraded six important services and applications to six new virtual servers. Finally, we retired the four old servers. Our end users did not see any difference in functionality on virtualized servers.“

Saving Money, Cabinet Space and Energy

The NVB now runs network services and applications such as Microsoft SQL Server on two physical systems. The organization had to buy only two new servers and license Citrix XenServer, Enterprise Edition instead of six new servers with Windows Server® 2003 licenses. “Microsoft allows multiple instances of Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition to run virtualized, so we did not have to go shopping for Windows server licenses,” commented Verbruggen. “The new servers that run multiple Windows instances are physically the same as we would have bought as replacements for the original systems. They just have more memory. In the end, the new infrastructure even saved us some money and energy in addition to meeting the requirement of saving space.” The organization now virtualizes almost the complete IT infrastructure, from Exchange Server and SQL Server to Web servers and print servers and network service such as DNS, DHCP and Windows Domain Controllers, on XenServer. Only Microsoft Terminal Services runs on physical hardware without virtualization.

Flexibility in Service Allocation

The new environment is easier to manage, even though it consists of more server workloads. The XenServer management console gives a consolidated view of all the virtual servers, so moving workloads or changing resources for workloads has become extremely easy. “We divided network services and applications onto the six virtual servers to make server management simpler. We can patch or reboot one virtual server without disturbing applications on the other servers,” concluded Verbruggen. “We are a small organization, and patching servers and applications does take time. With XenServer all tasks just feel simpler; systems are well organized and easier to monitor with out-of-the-box functionality such as the easy-to-use XenCenter management console and XenMotion to do live upgrades. Administrative tasks that previously needed to be done over the weekend to prevent disruption of services now can be done during working hours. XenServer improves the reliability, availability and flexibility of our infrastructure.“

Future Plans

In the future, NVB plans to enhance the existing Terminal Services environment with Citrix XenApp™, enable clientless access over the Citrix Access Gateway™ SSL VPN, and eventually virtualize the XenApp servers with Citrix XenServer. The new virtualized architecture can be expanded easily to create redundant services or applications when necessary.

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