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Dairylea's aging infrastructure consisted of three HP EVA storage arrays for their VMware environment, running over 100 applications critical to Dairylea's business units. While the production environment was stable and meeting the requirements, backup and disaster recovery had been a significant challenge for many years. Continued weekly backup failures and the recognition that recovery from a disaster could take over 48 hours compelled the IT team to seek a replacement to their overall backup and DR approach. Jeremy Wheeler, Dairylea's Innovation Architect, and his team spent months looking for a cost-effective solution that would allow the company to better protect critical data and deliver RPOS of less than 24 hours and RTOs of less than 4 hours in the event of a significant outage or disaster in the primary environment. Given a limited staff, Dairylea needed to ensure that the solution would be simple to manage, and provide a straightforward failover process in the event of a real outage. Given cost constraints, Dairylea needed the solution to be bandwidth efficient and deliver replication without impacting users of the production application environment.

Dairylea Cooperative was facing challenges with their existing IT infrastructure. They were burdened with the management of multiple solutions and vendors, which was proving to be a significant burden. They were in need of a backup replacement and disaster recovery capabilities. The company was looking for a solution that could consolidate their data center, modernize their infrastructure, support Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), run production applications, support test/dev and QA, and facilitate data migration.

Francis Drilling Fluids, Ltd. (FDF) had been using an IBM BladeCenter infrastructure, IBM SAN storage, DLT tape solutions, and Veeam for VM backup protection. Over time, the company saw more demand for new applications and experienced significant growth in VM servers, which put significant strain on the existing legacy infrastructure and the small IT team. The added complexity from the VM server 'sprawl' coupled with initiatives to improve data protection, DR, and co-location hosting, the company's IT department decided to take a closer look at converged infrastructure. The company works hard to ensure alignment between business strategy and IT strategy, according to Steve Schaaf, Chief Information Officer for FDF. However, with a small IT shop, executing on that vision can be challenging.

Francis Drilling Fluids, a medium-sized enterprise in the transportation services industry, was facing challenges with their existing IT infrastructure. They had a mandate to implement disaster recovery (DR) and improve their backup and recovery systems. However, they found the management of multiple solutions and vendors to be manageable, but not ideal. This led them to seek a more streamlined and efficient solution.

iON Solutions, a managed service provider, was facing challenges with its aging IT infrastructure. The company's infrastructure included eight legacy servers and a Dell EqualLogic SAN, along with two backup SANs running Veeam Backup and Replication. The main driver for the project was infrastructure modernization, but the company also needed to improve its backup and disaster recovery capabilities. The company's customers rely on it to provide critical IT services, so availability, flexibility, and data protection are paramount in its IT infrastructure. The company pledges to minimize risk, drive cost savings, improve security, and to maximize efficiency for greener computing in commercial organizations and in government. Therefore, when it came time for a server refresh, President Derek Fowler decided to cast a wider net and consider new technologies for the company's aging infrastructure.

SwiftecIT, a mid-sized Boston Area IT services provider, was facing challenges with its legacy IT infrastructure. The company was experiencing growth and needed to manage more customers, an increasing number of internal applications, and more hosting servers for its nascent cloud services. The legacy infrastructure was no longer able to provide the speed, flexibility, backup, high availability, and data recovery functionality that the company and its clients required. SwiftecIT needed a solution that would lower total cost of ownership, scale incrementally as the business grows, and be simple to use.

SwiftecIT, a small business in the computer services industry, was facing challenges with their existing IT infrastructure. They had a mandate to implement disaster recovery (DR) and improve backup/recovery. However, they found the management of multiple solutions and vendors to be manageable, but not ideal. The company was looking for a solution that could consolidate their data center, modernize their infrastructure, support Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and handle production applications, test/dev, and QA.

MLB Network was facing challenges with the management of multiple solutions and vendors, which was proving to be a significant burden. They were in need of a development environment for DIAMOND, their asset management system, and core services that could take advantage of HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure tools. The company was looking for a solution that could help them consolidate their data center, modernize their infrastructure, and refresh their technology. They also needed a solution for their production applications, test/dev and QA, and data migration.

The Coughlan Companies, a multinational corporation with a central data center in Minnesota and four offices throughout the U.S. and the U.K., was facing challenges with its fragmented IT environment. The company relied on a mix of legacy equipment across its different sites, which was becoming increasingly inefficient, risky, and costly to operate. The IT team had to manage the entire multinational operation from Minnesota, with little or no IT support at the remote locations. Managing the disjointed IT environment was a manually intensive, time-consuming endeavor involving a number of distinct administrative systems. Moreover, a full remote system backup or restoral could take days using the company's legacy data protection and recovery tools. The company planned to refresh and standardize its remote office infrastructure to eliminate operations expense and complexity, improve performance, and mitigate risks.

Coughlan Companies was in the process of a capacity purchase and upgrade of their existing infrastructure, which led to an overall platform review. Prior to deploying HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure, they found the management of multiple solutions and vendors to be manageable, but not ideal. The company was looking for a solution that could simplify their IT infrastructure and improve performance.

NewPage, a leading paper manufacturer in North America, was facing a high-cost, outdated legacy infrastructure. The company was maintaining an impressive 95% virtualized infrastructure, but the rigid “silos” of legacy compute servers and expensive, complex SAN-based storage were inhibiting the team’s ability to scale to meet business needs. The aging and underperforming 50TB EVA8000, 46TB EVA4400, and 150TB VNX5500 were also due for a refresh. The virtualized environment was becoming increasingly difficult to scale and manage, resulting in diminished productivity. The team of ten was spread thin managing their 166 RU legacy systems. The legacy infrastructure’s physical requirements continued to increase, a 100% virtualized infrastructure seemed increasingly unlikely.

NewPage Corporation was facing challenges due to the management of multiple solutions and vendors, which was manageable but not ideal. They were looking for a solution as part of a data center migration or consolidation initiative. The company was in need of a solution that could help them avoid managing multiple vendors and the associated multiple maintenance cost streams. They were also looking to consolidate their data center footprint and save on electricity and air conditioning.

Central One Federal Credit Union was facing challenges with their existing infrastructure. They were in the process of a capacity purchase and upgrade which led to an overall platform review. The management of multiple solutions and vendors was proving to be a significant burden for the company. They needed a solution that could consolidate their data center, modernize their infrastructure, and support their Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), production applications, and test/dev and QA processes.

The IT team of a New England-based Credit Union had been managing slow, steady growth in their environment for several years. Until recently, they maintained a non-virtualized environment, with over 30 physical servers, each dedicated to a specific application workload. Driven by the need to improve their DR capabilities and the concern that they would soon outgrow the physical capacity of their two data centers, the IT team decided to pursue a “P-to-V” migration project, implementing VMware and deploying virtual machines for each of the existing physical servers. In planning this project, the team recognized the need for an infrastructure update that aligned with the flexibility and scalability that VMware enables. After a detailed analysis, the team chose to adopt Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) SimpliVity, HPE SimpliVity’s federated and hyperconverged infrastructure platform that delivers high-end data protection and management functionality, while enabling dramatic cost savings compared to traditional infrastructure.

Abba Technologies, an IT services and solutions provider based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was facing several challenges with their legacy infrastructure. The company was dealing with long backup times, multiple complex management consoles, and their infrastructure was nearing its end-of-life. The company was running Exchange, SQL, and other customer-specific applications which were becoming increasingly difficult and slow due to their outdated infrastructure. The company was faced with the decision of whether to update their existing infrastructure, which would involve a costly upgrade but allow them to avoid a complete renovation of their IT environment, or switch to a new technology that could address their goals of updating old equipment and simplifying their IT infrastructure.

Abba Technologies was operating its IT environment on a complex system that included 9 ESXi hosts, fiber channel switches, two enterprise class storage arrays, several different backup solutions, and 7.5TB of off-site deduplication backup. This created a complex management environment for Abba Technologies and its customers. The company's five-year-old legacy infrastructure was nearing its end-of-life utility and a hardware refresh was needed. The company was faced with the decision of whether to update its existing infrastructure, which would involve a costly upgrade but allow the company to avoid a complete renovation, or make the switch to a new technology that could address its goals of updating old equipment and simplifying the IT infrastructure.

Abba Technologies purchased HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure as a result of a data center migration or consolidation initiative. Prior to deploying HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure, they found the management of multiple solutions and vendors to be a burden.

The IT department for the City of Arvada needed to update its Computer Aided Dispatch and Record Management System (CAD/RMS), a critical application that drives dispatching and logging for the emergency 911 services and police employees working around the city. The existing system was running on Cisco Blade servers connected to a Dell Compellent SAN, and this configuration was becoming too expensive to augment and maintain effectively. The department looked for an affordable, efficient, reliable, and easily manageable solution that would enable the IT staff to maintain the high-end levels of service expected by the city staff. They also needed to improve their disaster recovery capabilities.

The Credit and Investment Ombudsman (CIO) was experiencing growth challenges within its IT. The organization’s new levels of growth required a new data platform for the next chapter in the organization’s life. The legacy IT infrastructure was designed for the early stages of the organization’s operation. CIO was running all their applications on physical servers, and they had not invested in virtualization. Their legacy infrastructure impaired CIO’s ability to expand and adapt to new business growth. It was time to make a change. CIO was challenged by managing a cluttered data center of aging hardware and software. Their physical environment consisted of general purpose Dell servers with built-in storage. The physical stack consumed multiple racks in their data center. The complex infrastructure ran Microsoft Small Business Server and other database servers. The servers were dedicated to running specific applications such as WebApp, Database, email messaging, accounting and various line of business applications.

The University of Namibia (UNAM) was looking to refresh their entire legacy infrastructure and simplify the management and maintenance of their systems. They were facing challenges with data center consolidation, infrastructure modernization, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), supporting Tier-1 applications, and virtualizing their physical infrastructure. They approached Salt Essential IT, a value-added reseller of SimpliVity, for advice on available VDI solutions. After several meetings and a Proof of Concept (POC) on Pivot3, a tender was offered for Pivot3. However, SimpliVity's OmniCube had become available and was presented as a potential solution.

The Neenan Company and NexCore Group, both operating in the construction and real estate industries, were facing challenges with their existing disaster recovery methods. As the quantity of data grew between the two businesses, so too did the disaster recovery requirements within their data centers. They were in constant danger of a crippling hardware failure, which could result in downtime up to, and even exceeding, 48 hours depending upon how many hard disks were damaged. In addition to the serious recovery-time disadvantage, both companies had significant concerns regarding natural disasters and potential damage to the physical equipment within the data centers. Given the weekly tape pick-up cycle, they were seeking a better system that did not risk an entire week’s worth of work. While improving both companies’ disaster recovery capabilities was a top priority, they also saw an opportunity to conduct a technology refresh of the two data centers and leverage a new solution to reduce annual maintenance and operating expenses.

The Neenan Company was facing challenges with their existing IT infrastructure. They had a mandate to implement Disaster Recovery (DR) and improve their backup and recovery systems. The management of multiple solutions and vendors was proving to be a burden for them. They were looking for a solution that could consolidate their data center, modernize their infrastructure, and provide support for their remote and branch offices. They also needed a solution that could handle their production applications.

The Town of Newington’s IT department faced an infrastructure that was becoming increasingly complicated. As the IT environment continued to expand, more ports, connectivity, interconnects, and cabling meant that the team of five was fighting a constant uphill battle when trying to diagnose system issues. In addition to this, the Town of Newington’s host count was growing along with the VM app and storage growth. The team’s two data centers were quickly running out of space, and with nine out of 15 possible TB used up, it was only a matter of time before further scaling would be necessary. The town’s backup and DR capabilities had grown outdated and required an upgrade. For years, Newington had been using IBM TSM and a complex, manual LTO tape rotation process for backup and DR. However, upgrading this system would have entailed a complete restructure of the backup solution and reconfiguration of all backup jobs. The IT team was tasked with finding the best virtualized, automated platform that would offer disruption-free backup and DR with minimized upkeep.

The Town of Newington was facing a challenge with the management of multiple solutions and vendors. Although it was manageable, it was not ideal. They were in the process of a capacity purchase/upgrade of their existing infrastructure which led to an overall platform review. This review led them to consider HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure as a potential solution to their challenges.

Nuh Cement, a global producer and supplier of cement, ready-mixed concrete, and building products, was facing challenges with its legacy IT systems. The systems were becoming increasingly inefficient, risky, and expensive. The manufacturer’s siloed IT infrastructure included legacy servers and stand-alone storage systems—all deployed in a single data center. The company’s IT department relied on a variety of data backup and recovery tools for data protection. Disasters or hardware failures had the potential to impair critical IT services and disrupt business; restoring applications could take hours or even days using the legacy data protection solutions. Dissatisfied with the performance, reliability, and economics of its aging information systems, Nuh’s IT team launched a business transformation program to upgrade the company’s IT infrastructure.

Salt Essential IT, a small business in the computer services industry based in Namibia, was facing challenges with their existing infrastructure. They had to manage multiple solutions and vendors, which was manageable but not ideal. This led to a capacity purchase and upgrade of their existing infrastructure, which in turn led to an overall platform review. The company was looking for a solution that could consolidate their data center, modernize their infrastructure, and support their production applications, test/dev and QA, and data migration.

One Source Networks (OSN) was developing multiple new services to meet the evolving needs of its global enterprise customers. When tasked with rolling out the company’s new Cloud Lync Enterprise offering, they decided to broaden their scope beyond traditional servers, SAN and storage architectures. The new infrastructure had to be world-class to support the robust Cloud Lync Enterprise service, while delivering operational improvements. OSN’s Cloud Lync Enterprise is a fully-managed, dedicated offering that provides organizations with the feature functionality and security of a premises-based Lync environment, with the global scale and cost efficiency of a hosted service.

Princess House, a leading online retailer of housewares, crystal and collectables, was facing challenges with its aging IT systems which were becoming increasingly inefficient, risky and costly. The retailer’s legacy IT infrastructure included Dell PowerEdge servers and EqualLogic storage systems—all deployed in a single data center. The IT department relied on four different data backup and recovery tools to protect a variety of enterprise and line-of-business applications. Using the fragmented data protection solutions, the IT team was able to back up fewer than 30% of the company’s virtual servers. Disasters or equipment failures had the potential to impair IT services and disrupt business; restoring critical applications could take hours or even days using the legacy data protection solutions. Dissatisfied with Dell’s customer support, and unhappy with the performance, reliability and economics of the company’s aging IT systems, Sean Lane, IT Manager for Princess House, initiated a data center modernization program.

Saddleback Valley Unified School District (SVUSD) was facing a 25 to 35 percent annual storage growth rate, which required constant management of its 50TB iSCSI SAN through costly annual expansion. The school district had approximately 100 VMs managing a myriad of heavyweight, mission-critical applications such as collaboration software, Web servers, multiple SQL databases, and a massive, 3,000-user Microsoft Exchange Server. Each year, Rich Dear, Systems Manager at SVUSD, had to expand the school district’s iSCSI SAN to accommodate application performance and user data growth. In addition, SVUSD’s server infrastructure was in need of an upgrade. The IT team was also looking to reduce its data center footprint along with the associated energy costs and management overhead.

Syntrophos, a Shared Service Center founded by four cities in the Netherlands, provides high quality ICT, GEO-information, and consulting services to over 120,000 citizens, as well as seven smaller governmental agencies. The company employs over 1400 staff and has a dedicated IT team of eleven focused on running and maintaining its mission-critical applications. With applications such as Oracle 11g; Microsoft SQL Server, DFS, and IIS; Horizon Workspace; CheckPoint Firewall; and Apache Webserver in its physical data centers, end user access to these critical services is a key priority. However, with plans to migrate all virtual machines and consolidate the four cities’ data centers by early 2015, Syntrophos faced major consolidation challenges and needed a solution that could virtualize and migrate the entire IT environment while supporting its Tier-1 applications.