It’s no surprise that the Dallas Cowboys stadium, host of Super Bowl XLV, is the most technologically advanced stadiums on the planet – but did you know it ran on HP’s technology?    At 60 yards long and 70 feet tall, the Dallas Cowboys Stadium  boasts the largest HD monitor in the world.  Walk anywhere in the stadium and  you’ll see one of  3000 additional monitors each with its own IP address that enables it to carry content customizeable per location in the stadium.  Approach a concession stand and you’ll find computer generated menus that can be changed on the fly throughout the course of a game.  As well, real-time business intelligence  gives Dallas Cowboys management a real-time picture of what inventory is moving and what is needed where.  All of these services plus Dallas Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones’s 30+ other businesses are supported by the Dallas Cowboys IT infrastructure supported with 250 HP ProLiant servers (including over 130 blade servers), HP Insight Dynamics and HP Virtual Connect and an IT staff consisting of CIO Pete Walsh and just 11 internal IT staff.

Bill Haggard, Director of Enterprise Infrastructure for Dallas Cowboys commented,  “If we had gone all physical with the servers, if HP BladeSystem was not what it is today, we would have in the neighborhood of 500 physical servers.  We will end up with ~130 HP ProLiant c-Class server blades running what would have taken 500 physical servers to host.”  One virtualized application is the Cowboys’ point-of-sale terminal application, Radiant POS. Each of the 212 concession stands needs its own Radiant server.  All 212 Radiant servers are virtualized on just 16 HP ProLiant BL460c server blades.  With mirrored 100-terabyte SANs at the stadium and a remote location, it’s designed to support growth for the next 15 to 20 years. 

For more details on the Dallas Cowboys HP Infrastructure solution, check out this HP Video:
UPDATE: on 2/2/2011, I was asked to remove the video HP created discussing how the Dallas Cowboys used HP to support their infrastructure.  The email I received stated, “According to the Cowboys, they are asking this because the NFL Internet guidelines for all member clubs (teams) do not permit teams to share their marks and logos with sponsors for use on external web sites.  They claim that use of this nature can be seen by fans in other markets and viewed as advertising and promotion in another team’s territory.”  It’s unfortunate, because it was a good video, but oh well, that’s business. 

I would like to point you to the transcript of an interview with Bill Haggard, Director of Enterprise Infrastructure posted on Wikibon.com.  It’s pretty interesting, so check out the post here: http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Transcription:_Bill_Haggard,_Director_of_Enterprise_Infrastructure,_Dallas_Cowboys,_at_VMworld