Case Study: Dundee City Council achieves decade-long 24/7 availability and lower TCO with IBM System z Enterprise Linux Server

City government discovers the outstanding reliability of Linux on System z

Dundee City Council, the local government serving about 145,000 residents in Scotland, faced an overcrowded, overheated data center and the risk of service interruptions that could affect critical social care, payroll and online services. To improve reliability and reduce costs while maintaining 24/7 availability, the council engaged IBM to explore a virtualization and consolidation approach.

IBM consolidated the council’s Oracle database environment onto IBM zEnterprise BC12-based Enterprise Linux Servers (System z) running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and z/VM, with one zBC12 at each data center, two IFL engines supporting roughly 50 virtual Linux servers, and IBM Global Technology Services support. The IBM solution achieved ten years of continuous availability, enabled a ten‑fold workload increase without adding staff, provides 20‑minute disaster recovery, and cut energy, cooling and floor-space requirements, lowering total cost of ownership.

Dundee City Council

Tim Simpson

IT Infrastructure Manager