Sunlight Service Group has consolidated its
mission-critical Microsoft application data onto a single
centralised storage system.
The workwear rental firm said the move had allowed it to save
time and money and bring together disparate data that was spread
across branch sites.
Sunlight deploys data to more than 1,000 employees in 55 UK
sites from a central location.
The firm moved its Microsoft applications onto
3PAR Inserv S400 Storage Servers. The
applications include a centralised Microsoft Dynamics AX
business management system, Microsoft SQL servers, clustered
Microsoft Exchange servers and Sharepoint Services for
collaborative content and document management applications.
The storage servers feature thin provisioning - technology that
allows the user to allocate space to servers easily on a
"just-enough" and "just-in-time" basis, thereby making storage
resources more cost-efficient.
Sunlight also eliminated a redundant switching environment,
lowering its infrastructure costs.
"In order to consolidate disparate IT systems, improve
efficiency and reduce costs, we sought to invest in a resilient and
scalable storage platform to support our new centralised Dynamics
system," said Najeeb Ahmad, technical projects and support manager
at Sunlight.
Ahmad said that the system had enabled the firm to meet its
rigorous service level demands for a centralised data repository,
as well as reduce its total cost of ownership for storage by more
than 50% compared with alternative storage systems.
"We have just two IT administrators dedicated to both servers
and storage, and less than 2% of their time is now spent
administering the 3PAR system," he said.
Sun plans open source Nas >>
Carphone Warehouse cuts storage costs with
pay-as-you-go servers >>
Powys County Council saves 75% in server and
storage energy costs >>
Comment on this article:
computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk