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EMC Chosen by City of Denton, TX

Replacing "under-performing" NetApp, IBM and Dell Compellent

EMC Corporation announced
that the City of Denton, Texas has
standardized on EMC technologies including VNX unified storage and
VPLEX Metro virtual storage technology, as well as Vblock Infrastructure
Platforms from VCE Company LLC, replacing its under-performing NetApp, IBM and Dell Compellent storage environment.


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At 90% virtualized, the City of Denton is leveraging VMware virtualization and
cloud infrastructure technologies including VMware vSphere and vCenter Operations
Management Suite to optimize efficiency, streamline management and
transform its IT infrastructure.

Since implementing its EMC-based infrastructure, the City of Denton has
increased performance, streamlined administration, and developed a solid business
continuity strategy.

Customer Benefits:

  • Performance: Since moving to a ‘FLASH 1st’ strategy with VNX,
    Denton’s storage performance has increased by more than 230%.
  • Streamlined Administration: Integration between VNX and VMware reduced administration
    time, freeing Denton’s IT staff to focus on more critical projects.
  • Reliability: The City of Denton has increased the reliability of its tier 1
    applications since implementing a test and development environment with VNX.
  • Business Continuity: VPLEX data mobility allows Denton to utilize all the resources in
    both its data centers for production applications, HA and DR, while avoiding
    $180,000 in missed revenue per day if an outage of its billing system for
    city-owned utilities occurred.

Customer Challenges and Solution:

The City of Denton’s NetApp storage environment was no longer providing
adequate capacity and system performance. Operating under constant threat of
tornados and flooding, the City of Denton also lacked a viable DR solution.
With potential outages costing $180,000 per day in lost revenue from city-owned
utilities, it needed a better HA plan to avoid costly disasters.

It replaced its under-performing NetApp, IBM and Dell Compellent
storage solution with VNX running FAST Suite, including FAST VP (Fully
Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools) and FAST Cache, to manage its
Microsoft SQL, Exchange, JD Edwards ERP and Harris Northstar billing
environment.

To help increase reliability of its tier 1 applications, the city
created a test and development environment using VNX. Embracing a FLASH 1st
strategy, it leverages the FAST Suite to ensure that active
data is stored on flash drives for performance, while cold data is
stored on inexpensive, high-capacity drives for efficiency.

To reduce complexity and operation costs while improving system
performance and availability, the City of Denton built a DR site. The VPLEX
Metro, with its ‘Federated AccessAnywhere’ technology, was installed at a
remote data center site, enabling to actively share
resources across both data centers and achieve complete business continuity.

In addition, the City of Denton implemented a Vblock Infrastructure Platform
that integrates Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) technologies, Cisco
networking, VNX storage and VMware vSphere virtualization in its DR facility
for replication of VNX storage. Denton has also optimized efficiency by
virtualizing 90% of its server infrastructure with VMware vSphere and
streamlined management with VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite and EMC
Unified Infrastructure Manager (UIM).

Kevin Gunn, director of technology Services, City of Denton, Texas,
said: "Because we rely on taxpayer
dollars, it’s very important we use technology efficiently while also
delivering high-quality services to city employees and the public. VNX and the
FAST Suite optimize our use of tiered disk drives and cache memory, helping
boost performance without requiring us to make a huge investment in expensive
disk drives. Our staff has increased their efficiency by reducing the time they
spend on tedious administration tasks, allowing them to focus on more critical
IT projects.
"

"Our previous NetApp
storage array was maxed out, which resulted in our virtual servers performing
poorly. Since deploying VNX with the FAST Suite, we’ve now seen an amazing
performance increase of over 230%.
"

"We really like the
flexibility of having iSCSI, FC and NAS all in VNX’s unified storage over
NetApp. For example, we would need to buy additional hardware, licensing and
maintenance when we wanted to add FC as a backup target for our video
surveillance data with NetApp. With VNX, we can easily scale to meet our IT needs
without impacting performance.
"

"If the billing system
for our city-owned utilities suffers an outage, we’d lose about $180,000 per
day in missed revenue. It was clear to our elected officials that preventing a
financial loss of such magnitude made EMC’s VPLEX solution well worth the
investment.
"

"Because we can freely
move virtual machines and data across inter-site distances with VPLEX, we’re
able to fully leverage resources in both our data centers without expensive
equipment sitting idle in a dark DR facility. We’ve achieved
seamless and efficient business continuity that protects our city government
from downtime around the clock.
"

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