News Release

Tutor Perini Deploys Cisco's Unified Computing System for Data Center Consolidation

New Data Center Provides Simplified Management, High Performance and Availability, and Reduced Hardware Footprint and Power Consumption
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Sep 01, 2009

SAN JOSE, Calif. – September 1, 2009 – Cisco today announced that Tutor Perini Corp., a leading civil and building construction company, has deployed the Cisco® Unified Computing System in its new data center, which serves several business entities. Tutor Perini will consolidate five existing data centers into one newly built facility. All applications and data will be migrated to the Cisco Unified Computing System platform, which unites network, computational, storage access and virtualization into a single cohesive system. The consolidation project was motivated by the need to reduce operating costs, maximize virtualization, optimize resources and simplify management. In addition, the company is expanding its existing thin-client environment.

The Unified Computing System implementation at Tutor Perini marks the first deployment of Cisco' s new computing platform, which was announced in March and began shipping this summer.

Facts:

  • At Tutor Perini, the Cisco Unified Computing System is configured with four chassis, 22 server blades, and two Cisco 6120 Fabric Interconnects. The system connects to 83 terabytes of data in an Ethernet environment.
  • The standards-based Cisco Unified Computing System integrates with an existing environment of Cisco routers and switches, third-party equipment, and VMware virtualization technology, as well as the company's thin-client infrastructure.
  • Tutor Perini has moved three of five data centers to the new data center, using VMWare technology to move servers, virtual machines and data over the network to the new site.
  • With the Cisco Unified Computing System, Tutor Perini will be able to deploy four times as many virtual machines per VMware ESX host as it could in its previous environment, a key factor in helping the company to achieve its cost reduction goals. 
  • To account for future growth in the next three years after the migration, Tutor Perini has built in capacity to allow for 30 percent growth over the next three years. The company can add more blades as needed to the Cisco Unified Computing System, which can accommodate up to 40 chassis within a single management entity.

Technology and Business Benefits

  • Cost Savings include:
    • Equipment consolidation: Tutor Perini's new Cisco Unified Computing System consists of four chassis with integrated switching and integrated management, with the ability to scale to 40 chassis in a single system. The consolidation project reduced the hardware footprint by 60 percent; two data center rows now support up to 7,500 users.
    • Increased server utilization: With the Cisco Unified Computing System, Tutor Perini's IT department anticipates it will now be able to support four times as many virtual machines per VMware ESX host than before, and expects to achieve 90 percent CPU utilization. 
    • Simplified cable management: Using a Unified Fabric design, and integrated network and storage access, Cisco's Unified Computing System requires fewer cables to be purchased and managed than other solutions. Reducing the number of cables not only provides cost savings, but also provides improved air flow for greater power and cooling efficiency.
    • Lower energy consumption: Consolidating servers and switches onto the Cisco Unified Computing System will reduce power by 38 percent from the previous architecture.
    • ROI: Tutor Perini expects a return on its investment within 36 months.
  • Simplified Management: Using Cisco UCS Manager Service Profiles, Tutor Perini's IT department can provision new VMware ESX hosts and their I/O properties in significantly less time. Instead of using up to five management consoles, the IT staff can now manage chassis, blades and fabric connectors through one interface. The UCS Manager also provides roles-based access, allowing each technical domain the appropriate level of access to manage the aspects of the system aligned to its area of responsibility.
  • High Performance: The Cisco Unified Computing System uses two instead of three memory slots per channel, enabling steady application performance and preventing the IT team from running out of memory before running out of processing power. The slowest processing speed for the Cisco Unified Computing System is 33 percent faster than other solutions evaluated by Tutor Perini, and the deployed system is able to support 30 users per server.
  • High Availability: Built-in redundancy and automatic failover help ensure the availability of critical business applications and a customer Web portal at all times.
  • Thin Client Support: Thin clients are appealing in the construction industry because of short laptop life in dusty environments and concerns about theft on construction sites. Currently, about 20 percent of Tutor Perini employees use thin-client devices instead of PCs. Tutor Perini allocated some of the blades in the Cisco UCS for virtual machines and others to support thin-client applications. "With its ability to scale efficiently and the performance improvements provided by the Intel 5500 series processors, the Cisco UCS will enable us to take advantage of the economics of thin clients," says James McGibney, data center lead at Tutor Perini Corp. The ability to scale memory on the blades up to 384 gigabytes helps ensure that performance will not be affected as the number of thin client users continues to grow.

Services

  • Cisco Services played a key role to ensure that Tutor Perini's data center architecture would deliver maximum benefits, while reducing risks and adhering to a tight timeframe. The Cisco Services team reviewed the architecture design and deployment plans, then supported Tutor Perini on-site during the deployment phase.

Supporting Quotes

  • James McGibney, data center lead at Tutor Perini Corp.:

    • "After conducting a thorough evaluation of our options, we were unanimous on selecting Cisco for this critical data consolidation effort. Nothing else came close in terms of management simplicity, energy efficiency, application availability and cost reduction, all of which have made it possible for us to hit our initial ROI targets and deploy an architecture that can scale with us over the coming years."

  • Jason Morgan, senior network engineer, Tutor Perini Corp.:

    • "During the planning, preparation and implementation of the Unified Computing System the Cisco Services team worked side-by-side with us to advise on best practices in architectural design and deployment. The Cisco team was very knowledgeable and really took our project to a level of partnership I have not seen before."

Supporting Resources:

Technorati Tags:

Cisco Unified Computing System, UCS, Data Center Consolidation, Data Center, Virtualization, Tutor Perini

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