New Zealand Government Council Helped by HP Converged Infrastructure

Hewlett-Packard
Development Company, L.P. announced that Northland
Regional Council (NRC), a New Zealand government agency, has selected HP
Converged Infrastructure to improve employee productivity by increasing the
performance, scalability and efficiency of its virtualized IT environment.

NRC provides environmental and emergency management, public transport planning
and funding, and coastal navigation and safety services for 159,000 residents
in northern New Zealand. The agency’s existing storage infrastructure was
unable to support rapid data growth or upgrades to web applications used by
constituents. Plus, reduced performance of NRC s business-critical applications
due to the aging infrastructure was hindering productivity of the organization’s
176 employees.

NRC selected HP Converged Infrastructure solutions to improve storage capacity
and performance while simplifying data center management. By upgrading to 3PAR StoreServ Storage and HP ProLiant DL380p Generation 8 (Gen8) servers, NRC
has improved employee productivity and constituent service through a 40%
increase in business-critical application performance, reducing the time
required for database tasks by 50% and speeding VDI login time by 63%.

With the enhanced system scalability, NRC was able to upgrade land development
consent and monitoring applications, which reduced website latency, improving
usability for visitors. Additionally, the agency is using the 3PAR
Management Console to simplify administration by
provisioning virtual volumes with a few mouse clicks.

To reduce the risk of downtime in the event of a disaster, NRC also deployed a
3PAR StoreServ Storage system at its DR site. The new storage
system, which was installed and configured in hours, enables NRC to
restore data in less than 30 minutes twice as fast as with its previous storage
system, eliminating workflow disruptions. The ability to manage 3PAR
StoreServ Storage systems at NRC s primary and DR data centers via a single
management console also reduces administrative time.

"Our existing IT infrastructure just couldn’t
t support business-critical applications and kept us from efficiently
delivering services to constituents," said Daniel Blake, senior systems
engineer, NRC. "Since
upgrading to HP Converged Infrastructure, our virtual environment runs so much
faster, we ve been able to increase staff productivity by spending less time on
data center administration and more time enhancing public services."

NRC also implemented 3PAR Thin Provisioning Software to improve storage
efficiency and asset utilization. As a result, the agency saved approximately
50% in storage capacity (based on client results), which will minimize future hardware investments as it
scales its storage infrastructure. This hardware
reduction is expected to curtail costs related to data center power and
cooling.

System
performance and efficiency also is enhanced with HP Adaptive Optimization
Software, which automates the previously manual task of administering data
across three storage tiers. By distributing data to the right storage tier at
the right time, the software reduces data center administration while
maximizing system performance and utilization capacity, which further reduces
the need for future storage investments.

New ProLiant DL380p Gen 8 servers in NRC’s production environment also helped boost
application performance by 40%, while allowing the agency to relocate
existing ProLiant DL585 servers to its DR site, thereby
enhancing BC.

"Rapid data growth created by greater demand
for citizen services can hamper a government agency’s ability to deliver
services," said Mike Prieto, VP and GM storage AsiaPac and Japan, HP.
"With the efficiency, scalability and
performance of HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage, Northland Regional Council delivers
improved service capabilities and productivity by ensuring uninterrupted access
to data and applications for constituents and employees."