Dublin Airport Authority sings praises of VMware virtualisation platform

Dublin Airport Authority sings praises of VMware virtualisation platform

Dublin Airport Authority has revealed the benefits of the new IT infrastructure it introduced last year, which included VMware’s vSphere platform.

The virtualisation project has helped the airport to save cash, create a centrally managed environment and standardise its IT.

Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) began with a test of virtualisation using Microsoft’s Hyper-V platform. Martin Clohessy, DAA’s server and storage manager, explained to Computer Weekly: “We used Hyper-V for testing and found out that virtualisation brought a lot of IT efficiency, improved our speed to delivery and helped us save costs.”

Ultimately, they selected VMware’s vSphere platform to deliver their infrastructure as the Hyper-V system took too long to switch to another server when things went wrong. Clohessy explained that VMware’s platform was worth investing in: “Microsoft was cheaper than VMware, but what’s the point of having something that wouldn’t do what you want it to?”

The role of the IT infrastructure is hugely important for DAA, which managed the transit of 23 million passengers each year to and from Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports. Part of the project involved the virtualisation of more than 360 servers. DAA’s head of IT, Gary Luttrell, told Computer Weekly that the departments is already seeing some major benefits from the new system as of the third quarter of this year.

He said that the new storage infrastructure delivers efficiency and agility on a higher level than was ever possible with the old system.

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