The local authority is also able to reduce 97% of server hardware by running 94 virtual servers on only three physical machines.
Hillingdon wanted a storage system that would enable it manage its increasing data. Though it was using only 10% of the data at any time, it could not store the remaining data offline as it could be required at short notice.
Compellent has automatically moved the least used data to low cost, high density disk drives. Less used data was migrated from high-performance Fibre Channel disks to less expensive SATA storage.
Roger Bearpark, assistant head of ICT for the London Borough of Hillingdon, said: “Our green IT initiative enabled us to reduce the carbon footprint by 20% over 18 months. A significant part of this was achieved by replacing our disparate array of servers and storage hardware with a greener virtual environment using Compellent and VMware.”
Compellent’s SAN enables Hillingdon to asynchronously replicate continuous snapshots between its two sites for disaster recovery. In addition, Compellent’s storage resource management software, Enterprise Manager, automates the replication process and enables Hillingdon to manage both environments from a single console.
The replication system has been extended to Hillingdon Primary Care Trust (PCT). The data at PCT is stored on the secondary SAN – the disaster recovery target for the borough – while the borough’s primary SAN acts as the backup site for the PCT’s data.
The integration system was deployed by Compellent partner Fordway Solutions.
Earlier in November 2008, Compellent SAN has completed Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster Configuration Programme (FCCP) validation. As part of the programme, Compellent tested and validated two-node and eight-node Fibre Channel and iSCSI high-availability hardware configurations based on Windows Server 2008.
