3par Donates the Use of Storage Infrastructure for UK Charity Event Red Nose Day 2009

3PAR, Inc. announced that the 3PAR Utility Storage infrastructure built for UK charity event Red Nose Day 2009 processed over $29 million in donations towards the total of nearly $80 million pledged on the evening of this year’s event.

Red Nose Day is a nationwide UK fund raising event
organized by Comic Relief every two years

To support the Red Nose Day 2009 transaction storm on the culminating night of television broadcasting that took place on March 13th, 3PAR donated the use of a 3PAR InServ T-Class Storage Server to supplement the existing T-Class array already deployed at Comic Relief hosting provider and 3PAR customer Carrenza Hosting. This technology contribution from 3PAR enabled the charity to smoothly take in more than a half million donation transactions over a period of just seven hours- triple the amount of traffic supported on the evening of the previous Red Nose Day in 2007 and double the peak traffic ever experienced by the national event.

"3PAR supported us brilliantly by lending us all the storage we needed for this year’s campaign," said Charlotte Melen, Web Technology Program Manager at Comic Relief. "The truly exceptional online donation platform coped easily with a 25% growth over 2007 and double the peak traffic ever seen on the night of television. On that night we took in nearly $80 million in donations; we are overwhelmed at the success of the campaign at such a difficult time. It is testament indeed to the humanity of the UK public."

Carrenza chose to use its cloud-based Utility Computing Services (UCS) platform as the collection processing engine to support donations made on the evening of Red Nose Day 2009 – the point at which transaction activity peaks. The UCS collection processing engine backend offered by Carrenza was built on 3cV, a solution that combines highly virtualized utility storage from 3PAR with HP BladeSystem c-Class server blades and server virtualization software from VMware.

Carrenza used the additional technology donation from 3PAR to augment its existing InServ T-Class array and streamline Comic Relief’s direct attached storage (DAS) environment, which had previously relied on a maze of small- and medium-sized arrays. Consolidating onto the 3PAR InServ T-Class array increased flexibility and provided an estimated 90% reduction in administration time for Comic Relief’s backend storage environment.

"We were already using the InServ T-Class as part of our Utility Computing Services, so we were well acquainted with its efficiency, agility, and ease of use," said Jason Reid, Technical Director at Carrenza. "That’s why we were confident that an additional 3PAR array would be the best choice for painlessly weathering the transaction storm we were bracing for on the evening of Red Nose Day 2009. Without 3PAR’s generous technology donation of an additional T-Class system, it could have been a long night for us."

Carrenza used 3PAR System Reporter to monitor the InServ T-Class arrays and ensure smooth operations throughout the night of March 13th, which saw transaction levels peak at 116 transactions per second – more than double the previous record for the event. With 3PAR, Carrenza was able to support these high transaction rates because 3PAR InServ arrays distribute transaction load across all system resources to assure high, predictable performance levels. In addition, with 3PAR, Carrenza was able to further optimize performance by simply and dynamically allocating volumes to the various storage tiers available within the utility storage arrays in order to smoothly support fluctuating traffic levels.

"In these tough economic times, Comic Relief’s support for vulnerable and disadvantaged people is needed more than ever, and we are extremely proud that our technology donation could make fundraising that much easier," said David Scott, President and CEO for 3PAR, "3PAR is the ideal platform to deliver the consistently high performance levels required to make an event of this magnitude so successful."

Red Nose Day is a nationwide UK fund raising event organized by Comic Relief every two years. The event encourages people to cast inhibitions aside, put on a red nose, and ‘Do Something Funny for Money’- the theme of this year’s event. Funds raised are used to make a difference in the lives of thousands of extremely vulnerable and disadvantaged people across the UK and Africa.