County Government Expands Data
Center with Increased Storage Capacity
and Networking Performance

Supporting almost 100,000 full-time residents and seasonal waves of eager tourists, a county that long balanced nature and history was slipping into the past using outdated data center equipment. Faced with either modernizing its data center or opening it up as an IT museum, the local government contacted SHI.

Challenge:

Making due with aging infrastructure, the county’s small IT staff spent endless cycles performing day-to-day maintenance on its existing storage solution, wireless network and outdated phone system. After a sudden and severe drop in the performance of their primary applications pushed storage capacity to the limit, the county desperately needed a complete overhaul of its data center.

Solution:

Knowing state and local governments often seek multiple, competitive solutions by engaging both indirect channel partners and OEMs directly, SHI’s storage architects knew all options were on the table. Calls to various partners were initiated with the goal of delivering a best in class solution on time and under-budget.

SHI and HPE Nimble Storage offered a Storage Assessment to evaluate the customer’s current storage infrastructure and project the amount of data they would accumulate as they continued to expand. To address their server storage, networking and wireless setup, SHI enlisted the help of Cisco and Meraki who offered several options that could handle fluctuations in network bandwidth.

The county reviewed various proof of concepts – a process that took nearly nine months – and was confident in both the technologies presented and SHI’s vendor-agnostic approach. The awarded contract included:

• Cisco Unified Computing Systems (UCS), Power Supplies and Accessory Kits
• Meraki Cloud Security Appliances, Enterprise Software Licenses and Dual-Band Antennas
• HPE Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash Hard Drives featuring 210 TB capacity

After deployment, the increased storage and faster network performance injected the desired agility and reliability into the county’s primary applications and freed IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives. SHI’s ability to span both manufacturers and technologies produced an efficient solution that unlocked value for the customer in terms of design, support, procurement and deployment.