Customer Story

1. Technical Case Study
SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp.
By Midori Morooka Since it was founded more than 30 years ago, SOFTBANK
and Masaki Gonda,
SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp.
Group has aspired to use technology to enhance the well-being
of people and the communities in which they live. Today, the
SOFTBANK Group consists of 190 subsidiaries and affiliated
companies delivering products and services that touch more
than 37 million subscribers worldwide. SOFTBANK Group’s
primary areas of focus are communications and the Internet,
including serving as one of the leading Internet-oriented
venture capital firms.
In addition, cloud-based services offered through our division, SOFTBANK
TELECOM Corp., helped the people of Japan as they responded to the
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­ evastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. We’ll cover this in more detail
later, but for now suffice it to say that it’s truly exciting to see what happens
when inspiration, technology, and service come together.
A Pioneer in Cloud Computing
Across its telecom groups, the SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp. IT team quickly
identified opportunities to improve IT service delivery. At the top of our list was
turning IT from a cost center into a profit center.
By focusing on consolidating and standardizing our IT infrastructure across
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­ elecom divisions, we were also able to build our cloud-service offerings called
“White Cloud.” Today, these include White Cloud Desktop service (DaaS)—our
first cloud offering—and, more recently, our White Cloud vCloud DataCenter
(vCloud) service, which was previously called White Cloud Shared Hardware
as a Service Premium (SHP).
Launched internally in 2008, White Cloud DaaS quickly achieved solid returns,
including reducing calls to our internal IT help desk by 90% and increasing
individual employee productivity by 10%. In 2010, we began offering White
Cloud DaaS to our external customers. Within SOFTBANK Group alone, we
currently have more than 22,000 virtual desktops, making our deployment
one of the largest VDI use cases in the world.

2. Integral to the success of our IT infrastructure consolidation and our ability
to introduce more high-availability, flexible cloud services was standardizing
on best-in-class technologies, including NetApp® storage. Our White Cloud
DaaS and White Cloud vCloud services are built on NetApp storage tech­ ology.
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Through a strategic partnership, IBM provides the NetApp storage technologies
to us as the IBM N series for the White Cloud DaaS service. The White Cloud
vCloud service is built on the NetApp FAS3200 series.
Technology and Service in Action
On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan,
destroying lives, homes, and infrastructure across the country and rattling
the economy. At SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp.—where White Cloud DaaS was
already serving thousands of employees—the company’s top management real-
ized that the White Cloud DaaS offering could be of great value in the disaster’s
aftermath, enabling us to address new government energy requirements while
helping other organizations across Japan resume ­ perations faster.
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Within weeks of the earthquake, we expanded White Cloud DaaS to an additional
14,000 SOFTBANK Group employees. The fast, secure scalability of NetApp
storage was instrumental in helping us accomplish this. At the same time, we
offered our White Cloud DaaS at half price to our customers, the government,
and nonprofit organizations, providing almost zero profit to SOFTBANK TELECOM
Corp. Through our own success with White Cloud, we knew we could help
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­ isplaced workers be productive in the ­ urrent environment.
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In addition to aiding business continuity, the underlying scalable NetApp storage
infrastructure helped extend the reach of our White Cloud DaaS ­ ervice and sig-
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nificantly decreased energy usage across locations. That, combined with other
measures and efforts by employees and affiliated ­ ompanies, reduced electrical
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power usage at SOFTBANK Group head­ uarters by 39%.
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Building a Solid Storage Foundation for Cloud Services
The decision to first adopt our own cloud services was part of SOFTBANK
TELECOM Corp.’s ambitious strategy to create proven, powerful cloud services
for customers. We also wanted to build on the skills we developed with VMware®
virtualization and with virtualized storage. VMware was the natural choice for
us because we were already a VMware partner representing VMware vCloud®
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­ atacenter Services in Japan.
For our storage infrastructure, our IT team concluded that we needed a new,
agile, and cost-efficient infrastructure for cloud services. We chose NetApp
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­ torage technology sourced through IBM. The unified architecture of the
NetApp storage technology enabled us to start small and scale nondisruptively
as we grew while keeping costs low. We initially estimated that our new storage
systems could manage 700 virtual desktops. Later, we used a block-and-cell
design (see Figure 1) that enabled us to expand the number of desktops
to thousands.
In addition to adopting an agile, cost-effective solution, security was critical.
We needed to be able to isolate users and customers within the virtualized envi-
ronment. The built-in multi-tenancy capabilities of NetApp technology proved
essential because we could divide the storage area for each customer and
securely deliver the appropriate level of service to meet each ­ ustomer’s needs.
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3. Today, our unified storage infrastructure built on NetApp technology comes with
logical partitioning, so we can isolate customer services and maintain excellent
security. The logical partitioning does not require additional physical hardware,
resulting in a less costly storage infrastructure that is still secure and flexible.
In addition, this storage architecture helps us maintain a competitive edge
by offering built-in capabilities such as thin provisioning and deduplication
to expand the system and still conserve disk capacity.
We also took full advantage of FlexClone® software to instantly replicate data
volumes and datasets without requiring more storage space. By combining
that with thin provisioning and deduplication, we effectively control storage
Midori Morooka consumption.
Manager, Information System Division
Communication Service Management Department
SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp.
Finally, more consistent storage management enables us to administer the
entire system through a single console, which further reduces costs. We can
Ms. Morooka has worked for SOFTBANK
perform capacity management, virtual machine management, and more from
TELECOM Corp. for the last 25 years.
She held positions as an instructor in the same screen. Other APIs allow us to manage the basic storage functions
technical support and as the system through the VMware console if we choose. This reduces the learning curve for
management team leader prior to her some administrators.
current role as general manager of the
Communication ­ ervice Management
S For the White Cloud DaaS infrastructure, we combined the IBM x3550 ­ ervers
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Department in the Information System and the IBM N series storage, which is based on NetApp storage technology.
Division. She is also the planning We decided that this combination would deliver the best cost/performance
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­ anager for the group-wide commu­
while improving operational management.
nications infra­ tructure. Ms. Morooka
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contributed to implementing NetApp
storage for 19,500 virtual desktops White Cloud DaaS Infrastructure Details
for SOFTBANK Group employees,
The completed White Cloud DaaS infrastructure was considerably different from
leveraging her success in implementing
NetApp storage during a prior project. what we had planned. It called for using a low-end HP storage array that we
figured could handle 300 virtual desktops. In subsequent plan reviews, we
became concerned about how difficult the system would be to maintain and
provision. We also were concerned about how expensive it would be to scale.
With our White Cloud DaaS today, NetApp technology lets us scale easily while
minimizing storage and administration costs.
The current White Cloud DaaS infrastructure uses a block-and-cell design
architecture. This is a simple design that lets us start small and scale easily.
Each block contains 500–1,000 virtual PC desktops that connect to the storage
­
through NFS, and each cell can contain multiple blocks. In practice, we ended
up with 700 desktops per block. This design can scale big to support business
­
growth. (See Figure 1.)
To grow the system we can add virtual desktops to each block, which users can
access through the cloud with PCs, laptops, Wyse Thin Clients, or Apple® iPad®
tablets. We have an innovative way of scaling. When we need to add fewer than
100 desktops, we use VMware View™ and cloning capabilities. However, when
we need to add more than 100 virtual desktops, we rely on FlexClone technol-
ogy through the rapid cloning utility (RCU) to enable fast deployment and save
storage capacity.
Occasionally, we have to achieve the security of a multi-tenant environment
by isolating network access to NAS instead of our usual multi‑tenant function.
In these cases, we configure NAS storage even if only a few users are involved.
Then we use MultiStore® functions to create a logical security partition.
In instances in which we have to back up virtual desktops, we use Snapshot™ and
SnapMirror ® capabilities. A virtual desktop can be divided into a virtual machine
and the user profile data. We do not back up the virtual machines because it is
faster to simply redeploy the virtualized systems than to initiate a full backup
and restore process.
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4. 1 Cell (4 Block)
1 Block (500 ~ 1,000 VM) 1 Block (500 ~ 1,000 VM)
ESX Cluster
N3400 #2
N3400 #1
MultiStore
NFS Data Store N3400 #3
(OS Images Only) 1 Block (500 ~ 1,000 VM)
CIFS
RCU Home Directory
Dedup
SnapMirror
1 Block (500 ~ 1,000 VM)
Management
Operations Manager
Wyse Thin Clients
VSC ESX Cluster
PC
iPad
Figure 1) White Cloud DaaS storage architecture.
Tools and Technologies for White Cloud DaaS
At various points, SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp. uses different tools and
protocols, most of which are included as part of the storage and data
management platform. These are:
• Storage monitoring—Operations Manager
• Automated provisioning—RCU and NMSDK
• Storage utilities—FlexClone, Snapshot, SnapMirror
• Storage efficiency—Thin provisioning, deduplication
• Security—MultiStore for multi-tenancy
• Protocols—NFS, CIFS
• Thin clients—Wyse, Apple iPad
• Connection broker—Developed in house
White Cloud vCloud Infrastructure Overview
SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp. is the only provider of VMware vCloud Datacenter
services in Japan. Our White Cloud vCloud service is infrastructure as a service
(IaaS).
As mentioned earlier, we previously offered White Cloud Shared HaaS ­ remium
P
(SHP) as an IaaS service. White Cloud vCloud is the replacement service for
SHP and offers more flexible options, such as the self-service portal feature, to
our users. The main difference between the two from a technical standpoint is
that White Cloud vCloud uses VMware’s vCloud Director. (VMware vSphere®
was used in SHP.) vCloud Director enables the consolidation of virtual infra­
structure across multiple clusters, the encapsulation of application services
such as portable vApps, and the deployment of those services on demand,
but still with isolation and control.
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5. White Cloud vCloud consists of three clusters connected to a 10GbE switch.
The resource cluster in the middle runs the VMware ESX server and the
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­ ustomer virtual machines. The administration cluster on the right-hand side
handles the administrative tasks while the staging cluster on the left-hand side
runs piloting and testing. These connect to NetApp FAS3200 series storage
containing both SAS and SATA disk. The power of NetApp unified storage is
that it can handle different types of disks with no problem. (See Figure 2.)
SHP offered end-user data backup as an option, which was important to
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­ ifferentiate us from our competitors. It was a feature that we wanted to
keep offering to end users even after moving to White Cloud vCloud. In the
Masaki Gonda environment using vCloud Director, we are able to back up with integrity since
Systems Engineer, Cloud Services Division
Cloud Services Department
the solution coordinates with vCloud Director, vCenter™, and each element in
­
SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp. the storage, as you can see in the diagram below. We had a problem initially,
Mr. Gonda has been a systems engi- however, because there weren’t many vendors at that time who offered a
neer with SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp. backup structure that worked with vCloud Director transparently. We consulted
for the last six years. He previously with NetApp and they introduced us to NetApp Snap Creator™. This framework
worked in the security and mobile let us easily build a structure to back up and restore data working with any
areas, and now works in systems application or middleware and offer the same level of service that we had
engineering in the Cloud Service
with SHP. (See Figure 3.)
Development department, working on
general infrastructure, including server,
When a backup job is run in the White Cloud vCloud environment using Snap
network, and storage. While with the
company he has contributed to imple- Creator, Snap Creator accesses vCloud Director and gets data from vCenter,
menting NetApp storage in the White which is under vCloud Director. It then takes a backup of the linked vApps and
Cloud VMware vCloud Datacenter ser- VMs online. NetApp Snapshot enables fast backup, and we ­ rovide protection
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vice, leveraging his experience utilizing by replicating the online backup data using SnapMirror.
NetApp storage and virtualization tech-
nologies during a previous project.
Company A Company B
vApp vApp vApp
Virtual
Machine
Org_vDC Org_vDC Layer
vCloud Director
Snap Creator
Operations Manager
Management Cluster
Resource Cluster Resource Cluster
vCloud
Staging Cluster Layer
MultiStore
FAS3240AE
Storage
SAS Shelf Layer
SnapMirror
SATA Shelf
Figure 2) White Cloud vCloud storage architecture.
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6. VMware vCloud Director
Snap Creator
VMware
vCenter
Snapshot Copies
Backup Admin
NetApp Storage
Mirror with SnapMirror
to Other Site
Snapshot Copies
Figure 3) White Cloud vCloud backup environment using NetApp Snap Creator.
We also offer our customers the option of developing and implementing
their own tools using the vCloud API to handle automation and orchestration in
the delivery of vCloud services. We will continue to offer services that support
our customers in delivering automation, in addition to the previously mentioned
self-service portal.
Results
The White Cloud DaaS initiative, which was started to optimize our own business,
has now been used by many customers. From our users’ standpoint, the
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­ enefits include:
• Increased individual productivity by about 10% daily by supporting use
of smartphones and tablets, resulting in increased efficiency and less overtime
• Reduced internal help-desk calls by 90%
• Reduced energy consumption as a group by 39% using White Cloud DaaS
in combination with other company initiatives and employee
efforts (the government requested reducing energy use by 25%)
• Achieved rapid implementation of virtual desktops in seconds using storage
cloning technology
• Achieved highly efficient use of storage through deduplication
Since White Cloud vCloud was launched in July 2011, its sales have been higher
than we anticipated. The service achieved an 80% increase in month‑over-
month sales for the past three months.
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7. Conclusion
White Cloud DaaS and White Cloud vCloud, with their NetApp technology, have
provided significant benefits. For the White Cloud DaaS initiative in ­ articular,
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we were able to simplify implementation and speed deployment through the use
of feature-rich, NetApp based IBM N series storage. This enables us to more
easily implement multi-tenancy and provide the necessary security and isolation.
SnapMirror and MultiStore also make it easy to protect data and scale the system.
At the same time, through highly efficient use of existing storage capacity, we
minimize the need to buy more storage, which enables us to keep costs low.
With White Cloud vCloud and the NetApp FAS3200 series we were able to
quickly build a new service, bring up new customers, and incorporate customers
of the previous SHP initiative into the new service.
Our NetApp FAS3200 series unified storage and its close integration with
VMware’s vCloud support SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp’s vCloud services
and enable easy implementation.
About SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp.
SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp. is the core fixed telecommunications entity within
SOFTBANK Group, a leading Japanese telecommunications and Internet pro-
vider that operates under the corporate philosophy of “endeav­ ring to benefit
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society and the economy and to maximize enterprise value by fostering the
sharing of wisdom and knowledge gained through the ­nformation Revolution.”
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www.softbanktelecom.co.jp/en
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that
a
­ ccelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost efficiency.
Discover our passion for helping companies around the world go further,
faster at www.netapp.com.
NetApp Products • NetApp FilerView ®
• NetApp FAS storage systems Management Software
• NetApp Data ONTAP® 8 • NetApp FlexClone®
• NetApp Snapshot™ • NetApp RAID-DP ®
• NetApp SnapMirror ® • NetApp Rapid Cloning Utility
• NetApp FlexVol ® • NetApp vFiler ®
• NetApp Thin Provisioning • NetApp Snap Creator™
• NetApp Deduplication • NetApp DFM
• NetApp MultiStore® • NetApp SnapRestore
• NetApp SnapManager ® • NetApp Flash Cache
for Virtual Infrastructure
Protocols
• NetApp Virtual Storage
• NFS, CIFS
Console 2.0
© 2012 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions of this document may be reproduced without prior written consent of NetApp, Inc.
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are registered trademarks and View and vCloud Director are trademarks of VMware, Inc. Apple and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. All
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