IBM IBM SYSTEM Z Installation guide

IBM Case Study
BCBS Minnesota achieves a significant
TCO reduction with virtualized Linux on
IBM System z
Overview
■Challenge
The Microsoft Windows and
Intel processor-based server
landscape at Blue Cross and
Blue Shield of Minnesota
(BCBSM) was inflexible and
costly to operate and maintain.
■Solution
IBM helped consolidate 140 HP
Intel-architecture servers to a
single IBM System z with six
Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL)
engines. Key applications now
run in SUSE Linux Enterprise
virtual servers, while IBM DB2
databases run on z/OS on the
same physical machine.
■Benefits
BCBSM expects to reduce TCO
significantly over five years;
energy-efficient server platform
helps to achieve green comput-
ing objectives; virtualization cuts
server provisioning times by
99 percent and provides
enormous flexibility to meet
emerging business objectives;
full disaster recovery can be
achieved within 90 minutes—
97 percent faster than before.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of
Minnesota (BCBSM) is the largest
health plan in the state, providing
health coverage to more than 2 million
members. With headquarters in
Eagan, MN, and branch offices in
Arrowhead and Rochester, BCBSM
employs 3,800 people and operates as
a not-for-profit, taxable organization:
more than 90 percent of the premiums
it receives are paid back out for health
care claims.
To maintain this high ratio of payouts to
premiums and provide the best possi-
ble value to its members, BCBSM puts
continual downward pressure on its
operational costs. In the IT department,
this translates into a strategy of doing
more with less—choosing the hardware
and software that will drive business
optimization while reducing acquisition,
implementation, support and mainte-
nance costs.
A new platform
“For several years, we had been run-
ning our IBM DB2® databases on the
IBM System z® platform—but our
applications servers, including those for
SAP ERP, were running in a Microsoft®
Windows® environment on Intel®
processor-based hardware from HP,”
explains Ted Mansk, Director of
Infrastructure Engineering and
Databases at BCBSM.
“ From every
perspective, running
applications under
Linux on System z
makes sense for our
organization.
Performance,
reliability, disaster
recovery, server
provisioning and
cost efficiency have
all seen dramatic
improvements—helping
BCBSM deliver better
service and better
value to its members
across the state.”
— Ted Mansk, Director of
Infrastructure Engineering and
Databases at BCBSM

“Since Microsoft releases patches for Windows about once a month, we needed to
invest a sizeable amount of time to keep the operating systems current. This
caused downtime for the business as well. We decided to investigate some other
options and see if we could find a cost-effective solution that would avoid these
issues.”
BCBSM evaluated various UNIX® options, and also looked at Linux® on the
IBM System z mainframe platform.
“We did our due diligence and spoke to a lot of other companies about how they
constructed their application server landscapes,” comments Ted Mansk. “The feed-
back we received was that Linux on System z was one of the most stable plat-
forms imaginable: none of the references had ever experienced a serious outage.
Our own experience of running DB2 on z/OS® on the System z platform bears this
out—you don’t have to worry about it, it just works.”
Finding the most cost-effective option
BCBSM then performed a five-year TCO study to see if Linux on the System z
platform could deliver comparable price-performance to a distributed Windows or
UNIX-based server landscape.
“Even without factoring in the maintenance and support costs—which would be
considerable for a large estate of physical servers—we found that running a virtual-
ized Linux environment on System z would be somewhere between 30 and
50 percent less expensive than a distributed architecture,” says Ted Mansk.
“Suddenly, the choice of infrastructure had become an easy decision.”
Pulling out all the stops
Working with IBM, BCBSM migrated around 140 application servers from the HP
hardware onto six new Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) processors installed in its
System z9® Enterprise Class mainframe. The IFLs have enabled the organization
to decommission almost all of the old physical machines.
“We had to start the project after the annual financial close in December, and we
needed to complete it within two months to avoid delaying a number of other
strategic projects,” comments Ted Mansk. “IBM showed extraordinary dedication
to help us complete the project within an extremely tight deadline. The project team
worked seven-day weeks over the winter holiday season to get the job done.”
Advantages of virtualization
For BCBSM, running the application servers on virtual instances of SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server in partitions on the IFL processors delivers several advantages.

First, the lead time for server provisioning has been reduced by more than
99 percent. When the business requires a new test or development environment,
the IT team can deploy a new Linux virtual server within 20 minutes. There is no
longer any need to source a new physical server, wait for delivery, then install and
configure it—a process which could take six to eight weeks.
“Since the move to Linux on System z, we’ve received some really positive feed-
back from the business,” comments Ted Mansk. “Users really appreciate the fact
that when they need something, we can now get to work on it at once, instead of
having to wait weeks for new hardware to arrive. Equally, because the System z
platform is so much more reliable than our previous infrastructure, we no longer get
any complaints about performance and availability issues.”
Availability and disaster recovery
In fact, since the new infrastructure went into production, BCBSM has not experi-
enced a single incidence of unplanned downtime or underperformance. Equally,
the company’s disaster recovery capability has been improved dramatically by the
new solution.
“With the old distributed architecture, we would have struggled to restore our appli-
cation servers within 48 hours,” says Ted Mansk. “With all these servers running on
System z, we can perform a full disaster recovery at our secondary data center
within 90 minutes—an improvement of nearly 97 percent. In addition, the ease of
maintenance also contributes to improving availability.”
With Linux on IBM System z, BCBSM can achieve near-continuous availability by
reducing the need for planned downtime. It is possible to perform nearly all mainte-
nance to the hardware, z/OS and DB2 while all systems are up and running—a
feature unparalleled in the industry and a specific design goal of the platform.
Realizing the cost savings
Finally, BCBSM expects the new infrastructure to deliver cost savings over and
above the predicted TCO savings in the initial cost-benefit analysis.
“When we performed the initial cost-benefit calculation, we did not factor in the
maintenance and support costs, or the cost of power, cooling and server room
space,” comments Ted Mansk. “The savings in these areas are likely to be consid-
erable. For example, we only need 1.5 full-time employees to manage the entire
System z Linux environment—which would be unthinkable if they were looking after
140 physical servers.”
Solution Components
Hardware
●IBM System z9® EC
●IBM System z10™ EC
Software
●IBM DB2®
●IBM z/OS®
●IBM z/VM®
●SUSE Linux® Enterprise Server

“Equally, in terms of energy efficiency, the System z not only enables cost
savings—it also helps us reduce our impact on the environment. We take a lot of
pride in being good corporate citizens, so anything we can do to make the organi-
zation more sustainable is a major benefit.”
Looking to the future
In mid-2009, BCBSM migrated its database to DB2 version 9, and upgraded its
hardware platform to z10™ Enterprise Class. The new, more powerful z10 quad-
core processors should deliver a considerable improvement in performance, help-
ing the organization handle its rising application and database workload without
increasing hardware licensing costs.
“From every perspective, running applications under Linux on System z makes
sense for our organization,” concludes Ted Mansk. “Performance, reliability,
disaster recovery, server provisioning and cost efficiency have all seen dramatic
improvements—helping BCBSM deliver better service and better value to its mem-
bers across the state.”
For more information
Contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner. Visit us at:
ibm.com/systems/z
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2009
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Produced in the United States of America
March 2009
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