CASE STUDIES SHARED DISASTER RECOVERY

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Dell EqualLogic helps to realize a vision of shared Disaster Recovery

Introduction

Three organisations based in Derbyshire, North East Derbyshire District Council (NEDDC),
Derbyshire Dales District Council and Bolsover District Council have recently implemented a
shared IT service with a view to investigating ways of increasing efficiencies. One of the first
areas investigated was Disaster Recovery (DR).

NEDDC had already implemented a Disaster Recovery (DR) solution back in 2007, but the
servers at the DR site were due a refresh. As NEDDC began to plan for this Nick Blaney, ICT
Manager for the joint ICT service became aware of some regional funding and decided that
there could be some cost savings by implementing a shared DR solution.

Challenge

Whilst developing the idea two other organisations, Amber Valley Borough Council and the Peak
District National Park Authority also expressed an interest in participating in the scheme. After
an initial assessment it was discovered that all these organisations had differing IT systems.
Some had virtualised, some had SANs in place and some had disaster recovery contracts in
place that used the traditional “lift and shift” service which literally sent servers to the site in
a lorry.

The challenge was therefore to decide on the best solution to enable all the authorities to
be able to share a DR Service and benefit from economies of scale, reducing on-going cost
of ownership. Nick Blaney successfully managed this process and was instrumental in the
development of a solution that would work for all the authorities.

Solution

The agreed solution combined VMware server virtualisation and Dell EqualLogic SANS. A
tender was produced, which Nviron were awarded due to their proven track record with a
number of the authorities in the region and their close working relationship with Dell. Nviron
also offered the best value for money.

Nviron initially produced a detailed project plan to implement VMware VSphere server
virtualisation supported by Dell EqualLogic SANS for all the authorities in the region. This
part of the project is currently being rolled out to each organisation. Each remote SAN will
then be configured to synchronise across the WAN to the DR SAN, a Dell EqualLogic 6500
48TB SAN, based at the shared DR site. The system has been designed to have enough server
capacity to enable any one authority to implement DR at the main site at any one time.

Result

The solution will enable all the participating organisations to benefit from a robust DR system that permits any one of the authorities to be up and running in hours, rather than days. By sharing a central DR solution each organisation will save a huge amount of money. Each organisation will now be at the same level in terms of DR and the economies of scale ensure that the investment will pay for itself in just over twelve months.