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The Government of Québec saves money and resources by consolidating on an IBM System z z9 Enterprise Class

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CUSTOMER: Government of Québec - Centre de Services Partagés du Québec and Direction Générale des Technologies de l'Information et des Communications HEADQUARTERS: Québec City, Québec BUSINESS: Government services HARDWARE: Five System z890s, a System z 800, an S/390 9672 and the System z9 Enterprise Class (z9 EC) SOFTWARE: Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, IBM z/VM, WebSphere Application Sever, WebSphere Portal Server, LWWCM, WebSphere MQ, WebSphere Business Integration and Tivoli Access Manager (TAM) CHALLENGE: Consolidating hundreds of Oracle databases SOLUTION: Virtualizing the IBM z9 EC with the use of Integrated Facilities for Linux and the z/VM platform

There's consolidation and then there's consolidation. What's the difference? Well, how about putting 200 Oracle databases as opposed to, say, one or two or even six databases onto one server. That's what the Direction Générale des Technologies de l'Information et des Communications (DGTIC), which provides communication and IT services to the government of Québec, Canada, recently did. In the process, it won the SHARE 2007 Award for Excellence in Technology - the first Canadian organization to do so.

Perhaps more important - at least on a practical, business level - it also saved a great deal of money, in part by reducing its server-acquisition requirements, stopping the acquisition of Oracle database licensing and reducing yearly, recurring software costs. For example, the number of Oracle database licenses based on processor was lowered by 90 percent. As a result, DGTIC expects to recoup the upfront costs of this consolidation effort by 2008.

How did it do it? Cleverly. Using the new IBM* System z* z9* Enterprise Class (z9 EC), it consolidated 27 processors to three Integrated Facilities for Linux* (IFLs) running z/VM*. During the migration, new Oracle databases were created directly on the z9 EC, saving an equivalent of 22 processors without increasing the number of IFLs. The use of the virtualization capabilities of z/VM created the possibility for hundreds if not thousands of virtual machines running on the one server, helping the organization realize a 30-percent savings compared to other solutions on midrange platforms.

A Modest Proposal

Established in May 2005, the Centre de Services Partagés du Québec (CSPQ) was created to provide all departments and agencies of the Government of Québec with the administrative services they need to function properly, including financials, materials and information resources. As part of this, the Québec City-based DGTIC, which was established in 1996, was tasked with supporting the CSPQ with the appropriate IT resources.

DGTIC's primary goals are to simplify citizens' access to government services; consolidate IT services; develop robust e-government capabilities; and provide networking and telecom solutions to the CSPQ. As Marc Plamondon, manager of DGTIC's Service des Logiciels Centraux, humbly puts it, "DGTIC is the IT service provider for the CSPQ." (The DGTIC has now been reorganized under two directives: the Direction Générale des Technologies de l'Information, or DGTI, for IT services and the Direction Générale des Réseaux de Télécommunications, or DGRT, for network and telecommunication services.)

Plamondon's modest statement belies the true and essential role the DGTIC plays in the bigger Government of Québec picture. When it was created in 1996, it took control of all of the government's mainframe assets, which also meant inheriting a large software portfolio. Because the software is specific to different branches of the government, it has to support them on isolated mainframes, all of which DGTIC is responsible for. These mainframes include five System z 890s, a System z 800, an S/390* 9672 and the z9 EC.

The DGTIC had also taken responsibility for a vast array of UNIX* and Intel* technology-based servers, the number of which increases as the government continues to roll out new applications, many of which were Web-based. Because of this, the DGTIC had some problems deploying new applications and providing the appropriate support services, such as backup and recovery. In fact, the addition of these new Web-based applications, which are part of the Government of Québec's new Prestation électronique de Services project, required the organization to add more servers to its IT environment, pushing its server assets from the tens to the hundreds. Not only did this mean increased hardware costs, but also increased software-licensing costs, staffing requirements and deployment times.

At the same time, software-licensing costs associated with DGTIC's Oracle environment were spiraling out of control. "Oracle billing is based on how many processors it's running on, and with the new needs, we were requiring between 40 or 50 licenses," notes Karen-Ann Plourde, project manager with the DGTIC. Realizing that there was the potential for massive cost savings, the organization began searching for a solution that would help it consolidate its many Oracle database instances on fewer processors. As part of this process, it looked at such platforms as UNIX, Intel and virtualization on midrange Linux boxes. None of them, however, gave it the savings it was seeking.

Instead, it decided to look at a different solution. A first proof of concept involving a mainframe was developed in 2003. It included installing all of the necessary software, including z/VM and Novell SUSE Linux, as well as Oracle, on a z800. The goal of this exercise was to prove that the solution was indeed viable. At that time, the performance characteristics of the solution were a secondary consideration.

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