Munder Capital Management Implements Compellent SAN

Compellent Technologies, Inc. announced its customer, Munder Capital Management, based in Birmingham, Mich., has amplified the benefits of data center virtualization by implementing the company’s storage area network (SAN) as the foundation for new Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V-based computing platforms.

The combination of server virtualization and holistic management tools from Microsoft and advanced storage virtualization technologies from Compellent has enabled Munder Capital Management, a financial investment company with $28.5 billion in managed assets, to create a highly efficient, flexible and easy-to-manage data center. The money management firm now has an IT infrastructure that can quickly adapt to changing business conditions.

“Many organizations implement server virtualization to reduce costs, simplify maintenance and enhance business continuity, but soon discover that gaining these advantages using traditional storage systems can be difficult and costly,” said Bruce Kornfeld, vice president of marketing, Compellent. “Compellent is helping organizations unlock the full benefits of Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and maximize server and storage utilization, using the most cost-efficient hardware to cut power and cooling costs by up to 93 percent.”

"To extend the life of their data centers customers must embrace virtualization strategies; key business processes can be simplified and automated using common management tools for virtual and physical machines,” said Bill Laing, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Windows Server and Solutions Division. “We are working with Compellent to deliver valuable virtualization solutions that help customers consolidate and unify management of their IT assets, while making their data centers more sustainable in the process.”

Virtualizing the data center starts with virtualized storage to reduce costs and increase flexibility. Munder Capital Management, tested several server virtualization solutions before pairing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V technology with two existing Compellent SANs to further increase performance, shrink floorspace and lower energy costs.

“Our new virtual data center based on Compellent and Microsoft has enabled us to easily manage and replicate all our physical and virtual resources, so we can provide around-the-clock access to data, which is critical for a securities business,” said Mike Dufek, director of information technology for Munder Capital Management. “Using Microsoft and Compellent virtualization together has helped us provision and recover servers in minutes, reduce the number of physical servers from about 130 to 90, and save about $1,000 per month on maintenance, cooling and power costs.”

Facing regulatory requirements, Munder Capital Management uses Compellent software to create space-efficient data snapshots every 15 minutes and replicate the snapshots between its primary and remote sites. Compellent’s seamless interoperability with Windows Server 2008 enables the financial firm to consolidate multiple servers and efficiently run its applications on fewer systems. The virtual servers are also centrally managed by Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

As the Microsoft Storage Solutions Partner of the Year, Compellent simplifies numerous storage tasks and makes it possible for administrators to recover data for Microsoft Windows Server 2008-based applications quickly and easily. Compellent is a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner and a sponsor-level partner of the Microsoft Partner Solutions Center (MPSC) in Redmond, Wash. The Compellent SAN was also selected as a core storage component of the MPSC’s virtual data center and disaster recovery strategy.

The Compellent SAN helps enterprises eliminate storage management for virtual machines, easily provision storage for multiple servers, and automatically classify and migrate storage to the appropriate tier while delivering continuous data protection. Automated tiered storage optimizes performance and cost by dynamically placing blocks of data on the preferred—and most cost-effective—storage disks. Thin provisioning helps customers improve utilization without wasting physical capacity. And, by booting virtual servers from the SAN, users can revert to a previously known configuration for fast, accurate recovery and deployment and high availability.