Microsoft Virtualization: Customer Solution Case Study

Bank Eases Disaster Risk, Boosts IT and User Productivity, with Virtual DesktopsProductivity, with Virtual Desktops

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Financial services—Banking services

Customer ProfileThe Bank of Hawaii, based in Honolulu, serves businesses, consumers, and governments in Hawaii, American Samoa, and the West Pacific. It has 2,500 employees.

Business SituationThe bank needed to update the aging PCs in its mission critical Operations Group, while reducing the risk of business disruption.

SolutionThe bank kept its PCs and virtualized its desktop environment using Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure technology. It extended the virtualization solution to its disaster recovery site.

Benefits Offers more effective, flexible options

for business continuity Keeps desktop downtime from

diminishing worker productivity

“We hope a disaster never comes, of course. But if it does, we’re prepared, thanks to our use of the Microsoft VDI [Virtual Desktop Infrastructure] Standard Suite.”

Joe Tham, Senior System Consultant, Bank of Hawaii

The Bank of Hawaii operates in a physical climate that many consider ideal, but its business climate is just as challenging as the one facing businesses everywhere. When it came time recently to replace aging personal computers in its mission-critical Operations Group, the bank chose instead to retain the computers and make them part of a virtual desktop infrastructure based on Microsoft technologies. The result helps mitigate the risk of business disruption, creates more effective and flexible options for business continuity, simplifies IT management, and supports worker productivity.

SituationLooking for the best bank in the United States? You could go from coast to coast without finding it—because the nation’s best bank is in Hawaii, according to Forbes magazine. Forbes ranked the Bank of Hawaii the “top bank” in a January 2010 and 2011 analyses of the financial health of the country’s 100 largest banks.

One factor that surely contributes to the bank’s financial health is its focus on business continuity and reducing the risk of business disruption. “A business disruption, whatever the cause, doesn’t just mean a loss of income during downtimes,” says Joe Tham, Senior System Consultant at Bank of Hawaii. “It means a potentially major expense in bringing systems back online. The risk of business disruption, like any risk we can identify, is one that we have to mitigate.”

That consideration was a factor when the bank looked at its Operations Group. That group serves the mission-critical function of processing checks—both the checks that are presented for payment, and the checks that are returned for nonpayment and other reasons. Processing these checks entails receiving their scanned images from the bank’s branches, verifying that the check images correspond correctly to the data entered about them, and forwarding the massive electronic files of images and data to the U.S. Federal Reserve for payment.

The bank’s operations personnel worked on aging Pentium 4 personal computers running an older version of the Windows desktop operating system. The computers had remained in service because they’d

continued to meet the basic data-entry needs of check processing. When it finally came time to replace the computers, the bank saw the opportunity to enhance the business continuity of its Operations Group.

The bank had a disaster recovery site for business continuity, but it envisioned improvements. The site housed another set of PCs to which the Operations Group personnel could go if their primary office, at the bank’s Honolulu headquarters, became unavailable. But activating the site and relocating the staff to it in the event of a disaster would take time—time that the bank wanted to minimize, for the sake of its customers as well as for its own sake.

Further, there were costs associated with maintaining and periodically replacing another set of PCs, as well as paying for the space and resources to house it. A better approach would both give the bank greater agility in the event of a disaster, and minimize the continuing costs of maintaining a disaster recovery location.

SolutionThe Bank of Hawaii found that it could meet these needs by turning to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) technology. In that model, instead of relying on the increasingly insufficient processing power and related resources of its existing PCs, the bank could use VDI to centralize and virtualize the desktops on modern, more powerful hardware in its datacenter. The Operations Group personnel would then access those virtualized desktops through their existing PCs, which were satisfactory for the more basic role that they would play in the virtualized environment.

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“Given the serious competition out there today, the risk of business disruption, like any risk we can identify, is one that we have to mitigate.”

Joe Tham, Senior System Consultant, Bank of Hawaii

Tham and his colleagues considered conducting a proof of concept using a popular virtualization technology, but rejected the option. “We saw what it was going to cost, and there was no way it would have been cost-effective for us or fit in with our focus on cost control,” says Tham. “We decided there had to be another option that would meet our technology needs just as well.”

That option was the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Standard Suite. Tham’s research led him to conclude that Microsoft VDI provided both the performance and flexibility that the bank needed. For example, Microsoft VDI technology was compatible with the

Microsoft server-side virtualization technology that the bank already used. That would make it possible for the bank to consider end-to-end virtualization solutions from the server to the desktop.

For the present, however, Tham and his colleagues focused on solving the immediate needs of the Operations Group, as well as on providing the bank with a successful demonstration of Microsoft VDI Standard Suite. They deployed the Microsoft VDI Standard Suite across two environments: a production environment at the bank’s headquarters, and the remote disaster recovery facility.

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“The risk of business disruption, like any risk we can identify, is one that we have to mitigate.”

Joe Tham, Senior System Consultant, Bank of Hawaii

Figure 1. The bank’s production environment includes the virtual desktops and servers at left. The virtualized disaster recovery site is shown in the dotted box.

In the production environment, 40 virtual desktops for the Operations Group now run from a central deployment of Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V virtualization technology. That deployment is hosted on a single server computer, a Dell PowerEdge R710 with dual CPUs and 96 gigabytes (GB) of RAM.Operations Group personnel use Microsoft Remote Desktop Services to access their virtual desktops from their existing PCs. “Hyper-V provides a very powerful foundation for the Microsoft VDI Standard Suite,” says Tham.

In addition to the virtualized desktops, the production environment includes several virtualized servers, which are hosted on the same physical server. These include a gateway server for Remote Desktop Services, a session host, a management server running Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, and a license server.

The disaster recovery site hosts another 40 virtualized desktops and the same configuration of virtual servers on another Dell server computer running Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. (See Figure 1.)

To use the VDI environment, a worker in the Operations Group logs on to his or her PC as usual. The user then clicks an icon for a connection broker, and Remote Desktop Services connects the PC to a virtual desktop maintained in a pool at the central site.

The user works with the bank’s line-of-business processing application exactly as he or she did in the physical setting. From

the user’s perspective, nothing has changed.

BenefitsThrough its use of the Microsoft VDI Standard Suite, the Bank of Hawaii has achieved its key aim for the new Operations Group infrastructure: It has reduced risk by deploying a more-effective business continuity solution.

Offers More Effective, Flexible Options for Business ContinuityAccording to Tham, the bank’s virtual disaster recovery site is now more effective than before. For example, the bank can use it to keep the Operations Group staff working when a temporary disruption in the production environment could otherwise cost the bank hours in lost operations.

That’s what happened on a recent morning, when a third-party application in the production environment caused a system shutdown. Instead of having to wait for the problem to be fixed—which could have left staff sitting for hours—Operations Group personnel continued their work at their regular computers without significant disruption. The failure in the production environment activated the disaster recovery site, and the employees connected to the virtual desktops hosted there.

In more extreme situations, in which the bank’s facility might become inaccessible, personnel now can use the Microsoft VDI Standard Suite to connect to the disaster recovery desktops from anywhere—a branch or other office of the bank, an affiliated facility, or even from their homes. This flexibility wasn’t possible when

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employees had to be transferred to the disaster recovery site—and only to that site—to continue their work.

“We hope a disaster never comes, of course,” says Tham. “But if it does, we’re prepared, thanks to our use of the Microsoft VDI Standard Suite.”

Keeps Desktop Downtime from Diminishing Worker ProductivityThe bank also sees productivity gains among both its IT department and the Bank Operations Group workers as a result of the move to the Microsoft VDI Standard Suite. By using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and its template capability, the IT staff were able to deploy all the virtual desktops in one day—a fraction of the time it would have needed to deploy physical PCs. Now, building additional or replacement desktops is a matter of replicating a desktop by using the existing template—again, a major savings over building a physical PC.

“The ability to use System Center Virtual Machine Manager simplifies the lives of our support personnel,” says Tham. “That frees them to spend time on the tasks that truly require their attention, and that add the greatest business value to the organization.”

The virtualization solution also supports the bank’s software deployment process, providing a crucial backout method when needed. The IT department uses the Windows PowerShell command-line interface and scripting language to take a snapshot of the virtual machines prior to implementing a software update. The snapshot is maintained until IT can confirm that the update runs properly in production.

It’s not just IT that sees a productivity gain from the virtualization solution. Previously, when desktop PCs failed in the Bank Operations Group, the workers who used those PCs were sidelined as well, until the PCs could be repaired—potentially a day-long process.

Now, with desktop virtualization, workers access a virtual desktop image from a pool of virtual machines. If the image fails for any reason, the affected worker simply accesses another PC image from the pool and continues working. Meanwhile, the failed image is repaired or replaced without idling the worker.“It’s great to know that we have Microsoft VDI Standard Suite backing us up in case of a business disruption,” says Tham. “It’s also great to know that it’s delivering productivity gains to us every day.”

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“It’s great to know that we have Microsoft VDI Standard Suite backing us up in case of a business disruption.”

Joe Tham, Senior System Consultant, Bank of Hawaii

“The ability to use System Center Virtual Machine Manager simplifies the lives of our support personnel.”

Joe Tham, Senior System Consultant, Bank of Hawaii

Microsoft VirtualizationMicrosoft virtualization is an end-to-end strategy that can profoundly affect nearly every aspect of the IT infrastructure management lifecycle. It can drive greater efficiencies, flexibility, and cost effectiveness throughout your organization. From accelerating application deployments; to ensuring systems, applications, and data are always available; to taking the hassle out of rebuilding and shutting down servers and desktops for testing and development; to reducing risk, slashing costs, and improving the agility of your entire environment—virtualization has the power to transform your infrastructure, from the data center to the desktop.

For more information about Microsoft virtualization solutions, go to: www.microsoft.com/virtualization

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about the Bank of Hawaii, call (888) 643-3888 or visit the website at: www.boh.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published April 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Standard Suite Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise− Microsoft System Center Virtual

Machine Manager 2008 R2

Technologies− Hyper-V− Microsoft Remote Data Services

Hardware Dell PowerEdge R710 servers