TECHNOLOGY BC/DR
100-megabyte connections. The previous storage platform took 20 days of external consultancy to deploy – at additional cost to NCP. But with Dell EqualLogic SANs, the implementation time was much shorter. “I installed each Dell EqualLogic SAN in just 20 minutes, unassisted. In the past, an equivalent task required 20 days’ service from our solutions provider. This is saving us around £10,000 a year,” says Law. What’s more, the SANs are so simple to maintain that a one-day workshop with an engineer gave Law all the skills he needed.
The previous system could only be scaled outside business hours due to the length and complexity of backup, restore and expansion tasks. Now, thanks to the SAN’s modular design, the team can add one in minutes, in a process that’s invisible to end users. As a result, Law and his colleagues can respond effectively to requests for extra capacity, while minimizing total cost of ownership. “We only had to buy what we needed, because we knew we could extend the SAN easily – EqualLogic SANs are highly scalable,” Law says.
As a direct result of the system’s scalability, NCP has removed size restrictions on employees’ server space and Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 mailboxes. “We can add capacity so simply and cost-effectively that we’ve been able to give employees unlimited mailbox space,” says Law.
Law has also taken advantage of the all-inclusive Dell EqualLogic software package by using the thin provisioning feature. Thin provisioning is a storage virtualization technology that allows organisations to allocate only the capacity needed for applications, while the hosts see the full volume size. This means that the extra capacity can remain in the SAN’s free space pool until it’s needed.
“We have 7 terabytes of storage, but we have presented 10 terabytes of space to our applications. This means we can delay purchasing storage capacity until it is required,” says Law. “Traditionally, it’s difficult to re-allocate storage once it has been deployed, so thinly provisioning volumes through our Dell EqualLogic SANs provides us with greater flexibility, plus savings on the power required to run surplus storage systems.”
The benefits of thin provisioning are complemented by server virtualization, meaning incremental gains for NCP as it continues to deploy virtual machines. Law says: “With our Dell EqualLogic SANs and virtualized servers, we’ll have a flexible, available, robust system to support the needs of employees and customers.”
Where once he had to pay for additional functionality, Law and his colleagues now have a complete solution with a single price. “There are no hidden costs with the PS series SANs. All the functionality we need is there, with no additional fees, and no licensing issues to worry about. The systems offered by other vendors we looked at required extensive set-up and configuration to achieve the same results,” Law explains.
Without manual backups, the IT team has gained considerable time savings. “We’ve reduced 10 days’ manual backup a month to almost nothing thanks to the backup enhancing capabilities of PS series snapshots and Auto-Replication,” says Law. Due to a restructuring of the company that coincided with the EqualLogic project, direct savings are difficult to determine, but Law estimates that another employee would probably be required if the storage system had remained the same. Says Law: “Our EqualLogic iSCSI SANs have helped us create a team of IT professionals whose skills are used effectively and strategically. The routine tasks take care of themselves.”
Similarly, the team can restore lost data quickly using SAN- based snapshots. “Auto-Snapshot Manager allows us to recover data at the application level and Smart Copy automates data validation checks. Together, they help us minimise downtime for end users and simplify management,” says Law.
Centralisation of storage has also improved visibility. The team can monitor the system proactively and ensure that the SANs are performing at their best at all times. “With EqualLogic SANs, management is neat and seamless,” says Law. “Our approach is more strategic now that we can view all our storage through a single interface.”
All critical data – including data stored in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 and Oracle Database 10g – is now replicated between the two sites with a maximum time-gap of just 10 minutes. Law says: “If we had to start a server in an alternative location, it would be easy. No more waiting for tapes, no worries about missing data. With Dell EqualLogic PS4000E and PS5000E SANs, all data is backed up on a minute-by-minute basis, for all our business-critical applications. Our backups will never be more than 10 minutes out of synch. Before, we had an eight-hour gap.”
The replicated configuration means there is no single point of failure. “Rather than discrete servers holding isolated pools of data, everything is in one place. If we were to lose one site, the other would take over and business would carry on as usual,” says Law.
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