Our municipal buildings date back to the 1970s, and use power
supplies from the same period. Since moving in there we had simply
gone out and bought the hardware we needed, when we needed it. The
result was that we actually had no idea how many servers we had on
site or how full they were. However, one thing was for certain; our
building was completely out of power and, if we kept adding
hardware in the way we had done, roads would literally have to be
dug up and new power cables put in to keep up with demand,writes Roger Bearpark, assistant head of ICT at the London
Borough of Hillingdon.
Unfortunately, we faced 100% year-on-year data growth, driven
mainly by the growth of employees' email boxes, the need to retain
documents such as benefits assessments records, and the increased
use of digital images in planning applications and property and
highway inspections - so another increase in hardware seemed on the
cards.
I'd read a fair amount about server and storage virtualisation
in the past, but it had always seemed a fringe technology and, from
a public sector perspective, a potentially conservative and
disruptive choice. Some of my peers had begun talking about using
virtualisation in test and development environments, but we decided
to take the plunge and launch it into our live environment. It was
a decision that filled my team with equal measures of excitement
and trepidation.
Within six months of putting out our first tender, we had the
first of our VMware virtual server environment in operation,
closely followed by two virtualised Compellent SANs. I have to be
honest and say that from the outset, nobody was quite sure what the
outcome was going to be, but we structured the roll-out team in
such a way that everyone got to experience and learn about each
part of the installation programme - helping to eliminate any
potential fears and letting all the team take real ownership of
managing the new server and storage platforms.
Looking back, the experience has been very much like stepping
into a new car; you know there's a powerful engine underneath, and
you know you can put your foot to the floor and go faster than
you've done before. However, it takes some time to get used to the
controls and get the confidence to see what it can really do.
Metaphorically speaking, when we put our foot down after all our
familiarisation, we weren't disappointed at all.
As a validation of my own faith and that of my colleagues, we've
won and been finalists a number of IT industry awards over the past
six months. I shouldn't brag, but it's not all that surprising
given that we've saved around £20,000 alone by reducing power
consumption from 34 kWh to 1.1 kWh. We also reduced server hardware
by 97% and reduced disk space requirements by 45%, saving a further
£6,500 a year in power costs by moving data onto less expensive,
energy-efficient drives - all of which also helps us do our bit for
the environment. In addition, we saved a further £50,000 as we
didn't have to expand the IT team to deal with our growing data
volumes - good news for these economically uncertain times.
Using the host of tools inherent within the Compellent solution
we have worked to establish a very cost effective and technically
advanced Business Continuity solution that also offers our PCT
neighbours a platform upon which to build their own continuity
plans. This provides disaster recovery functionality at a fraction
of the cost of other replication solutions and based on a
technology we understand and trust.
As you might have gathered, I get very frustrated when IT
professionals are reluctant to take risks, and I think here we have
shown that a little bit of bravery and courage to try something new
can go a long way.