Super Bowl IT Team using IBM BladeCenters and Virtualization
January 31st, 2009 | 
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The Computerworld.com article NFL’s Super Bowl IT team gets ready for game day explains how the NFL has assigned a 17 person IT staff the responsibility for Super Bowl XLIII IT operations at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, FL on Sunday Feb 1, 2009. Computerworld explains that the team is using four IBM BladeCenter S chassis located across multiple locations. The article also mentions that virtualization software is in use.
Read the entire article, but here’s some interesting excerpts revealing more about the IT team and how they are taking advantage of server consolidation with IBM blades and virtualization.
“That team was tasked with creating a complete IT operation for Super Bowl XLIII in a matter of weeks. Its coaches are Joe Manto, the NFL’s vice president of IT, and Jon Kelly, the league’s director of infrastructure computing. Their opponent is the same one that IT managers face everywhere: anything that can threaten system availability and uptime.
It doesn’t help matters that one of the four IBM BladeCenter S systems being used in Tampa is located on a wood floor in a tent that lacks any climate control capabilities. But so far, so good — and with the four BladeCenter boxes at different locations, and virtualization software ready to provide redundancy, neither Manto nor Kelly seems all that worried.”
Unfortunately the type of virtualization software is not revealed, and though the author only mentions virtualization in the context of redundancy, later in the article there is evidence that there has also been a significant reduction in hardware from past Super Bowls.
“This is the first year that the NFL has completely turned over its server processing workload for the Super Bowl to blade systems. Each BladeCenter chassis includes two blade servers, each with a pair of sockets for quad-core chips. In the past, the league would bring “tens of servers” to the game to provide IT support”
Updated 02.01.08 – I have received confirmation from a trusted VMware source that the NFL is a VMware customer. Also check out David Marshall’s VMBlog.com post NFL’s Super Bowl IT Team Uses IBM Blades and Virtualization for Redundancy and CRN.com’s post IBM VAR’s Super Bowl Blade Servers Lead To NFL Deal. Although neither post declares the NFL is definitely using VMware products at the Super Bowl, they do publically recognize the NFL as a known VMware customer.
Blades, virtualization, and the Super Bowl. It could only be better if my Falcons were playing.
I found out about the Computerworld.com article from the post at www.boche.net: NFL’s Super Bowl IT team gets ready for game day. I’m sure Jason would rather the Vikings be the NFC representative.
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