Customer Solution Case Study
/ CopenhagenCity Council Server Migration Cuts Data Recovery Time from Days to Minutes
Overview
Country or Region:Denmark
Industry:Government
Customer Profile
City of Copenhagen council, with 43,000 employees, is Denmark’s largest employer and delivers local authority services to 500,000 people in the nation’s capital.
Business Situation
Copenhagen council wanted to replace an ageing infrastructure, which was largely based on Microsoft® Windows NT® Server 4.0, to reduce servicing costs and add extra storage capacity.
Solution
Working in cooperation with HP and Microsoft, COM-ITcollaborated to provide a new system with hardware running Microsoft® Windows® Storage Server 2003, a dedicated file and print server based on Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2003 that is dependable and best value in networked storage.
Benefits
Low total cost of ownership
Better update management
Remote backup from central location
Faster and easier file restoration
Extra capacity for storage / “By using Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003, we no longer need a local administrator to change backup tapes in each separate office, because we now have almost instant backup.”
John Hansen, IT Manager, City of Copenhagen Council
City of Copenhagen Council delivers local authority services to 500,000 people in the Danish capital and is the country’s biggest employer. The council needed to replace its ageing Microsoft® Windows NT® Server 4.0 infrastructure with a cost-efficient solution that would help reduce system administration time and reduce the risk of lost data. Working in cooperation with HP and Microsoft, COM-IT implemented new hardware running Microsoft Windows® Storage Server 2003 with Active Directory®.Not only has the city council saved money and continued its relationship with HP and Microsoft, but administrators now carry out backups automatically from a central location. Update management is also done remotely without human intervention, with accidentally lost data recovered in minutes rather than days.
Situation
The City of Copenhagen council, with 43,000 employees, is Denmark’s largest employer and delivers local authority services to more than 500,000 inhabitants. The 55-member council’s seven committees cover finance, culture and recreation, education and youth, health and welfare, family and employment, building and construction, and energy, water, and the environment. The council’s administrative structure is based on the one-stop principle so that, as far as possible, citizens need only contact one of the seven separate service areas with a particular request or problem.
Seven out of ten people living in Copenhagen have access to a computer—either at home, at work, or at their place of education. In its IT strategy, the council has taken into account that the public and the business community are increasingly demanding services on the Internet. The IT infrastructure was previously based on Microsoft® Windows NT® Server operating system version 4.0 with 10 servers, and five Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server operating system units with five servers, spread across 10 separate locations. MicrosoftWindows Storage Server 2003is part of Microsoft Windows Server System integrated server software, which simplifies the development, deployment, and management of flexible business solutions.
John Hansen, IT Manager, City of Copenhagen council says: “Because of our ageing infrastructure, the requirement for more disk space, and a need to consolidate the old Windows NT 4.0 servers, we started to look for a new solution that would be less expensive to operate. The council also needed the peace of mind that is delivered through better control of its estate and automated [update] management. Backups were a time-consuming process involving local administrators dividing their time between a number of different locations.”
The project began to move forward in February 2004 when councillors committed the funding from various budgets, including the family and employment service, which has 25,000 users. Lars Bo Iversen, Technical Specialist, Microsoft, says: “Microsoft was the only solution considered, however, there was quite a long lead time on this project, but no other alternatives were discussed. The purchasing process was very straight forward. The council needed to find the best way of improving service delivery with modern IT for a customer-facing area involving several small offices.”
Solution
City of Copenhagen council has invested in new network attached storage (NAS) hardware from HP. “The 10 remote offices each have an HP StorageWorks 1200 NAS device with 320 gigabytes (GB) of storage, and the central location has an HP StorageWorks 4000 NAS device, acting as a gateway to 2.5 terabytes of data on an HP StorageWorks EVA5000 SAN. HP's Storage Mirror Software is used to replicate the data from all the remote offices to the central location, to remove the need for local backup in the remote offices. Finally, the central NAS device is replicated to lower cost MSA1000 SAN storage in another remote location, for full disaster recovery.”
Zoran Markou, IT Consultant, City of Copenhagen council, says: “The storage mirroring software also makes it possible for the NAS 4000 to take over the print and file functions from the NAS 1200, if an event happens to cause the remote office system to be unavailable."
All the HP servers are running Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003, a dedicated file and print server based on Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2003 operating system, that is dependable and best value in networked storage solutions. NAS devices running Windows Storage Server 2003 come preconfigured for simple “plug and play” integration into an existing network.
The council is using Windows Storage Server 2003, with native Active Directory® service. It is designed to help keep an organisation's data highly available and protected, whether that information is local to users, stored remotely at different branch or departmental sites, or consolidated into a data centre. Markou says the council is using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) as the first step to restore deleted and corrupt files for the users.
Using VSS, a new infrastructure feature, IT staff can create “point in time” snapshots of volumes. This can result in easier, more reliable backups and smaller backup windows when used with compatible backup applications. Markou says: “VSS replaces Veritas Backup Exec, which was running on the old servers. It is a non-intrusive process and users do not need to stop work on open files during backup. On the NAS 4000 is a central backup solution that also copies the data to normal tape backups.”
Benefits
High Performance with Low Total Cost of Ownership
City of Copenhagen council has a history of successful partnership with HP, Compaq, and Microsoft, but also invested in the system because it offered a scalable and flexible solution to give the council high capacity and performance at an affordable price. Hansen says: “The previous positive experience with HP and Microsoft was very persuasive in adopting this particular solution especially with the technical support available, and fast time to market. We were able to migrate easily and quickly from our old expensive servers and save money and resources.”
Administrators Save Time on Backup
The council has improved the speed and agility of its IT administration by implementing new HP hardware with Windows Storage Server 2003. “By using Windows Storage Server 2003, we no longer need a local administrator to change backup tapes in each separate office because we now have almost instant backup with asynchronous replication even if the servers were to break down. Recovery time is much faster because servers can fail over to the central backup,” says Hansen.
Remote Update Management Avoids Manual Interventions
With Windows Storage Server 2003, the council is achieving much better standards of [update] management for its consolidated servers, and administrators have full control of the estate.
“[Update] management for servers is now done automatically and remotely without manual intervention by administrators,” says Markou. “As a result we are saving a lot of money on servicing the servers.”
Increased Storage Utilisation Saves Buying New Servers
Windows Storage Server 2003 is helping the council to develop a highly effective alternative to direct attached storage. Hansen says: “Adding storage to the network means users can share storage resources from a centralised pool, thus helping us to cut down the many storage resource problems associated with direct attached storage. We now have no need to add more storage by buying additional servers.”
Less Risk of Lost Data as Security Improves
The new system is much more secure with less risk of lost information for users. Lars Bo Iversen says: “Data protection has been increased dramatically. Instead of taking days to recover files that have accidentally been deleted, it now takes five to 10 minutes. The user experience has improved.”
Finally, the new disaster recovery process using HP hardware has massively reduced the vulnerability of the system and simplified the business processes.
Hansen says: “The low total cost of ownership was the top attraction of this solution, but we also liked its availability features and the fact that it is easy to manage. The excellent partnership between HP and Microsoft ensured that we had attentive technical support throughout the implementation.”
Microsoft Windows Storage Server
Windows® Storage Server 2003 is a dedicated file and print server based on Windows Server 2003 that is designed for dependability, seamless integration, and best value in networked storage. Windows Storage Server 2003 integrates with existing infrastructures and supports heterogeneous file serving as well as backup and replication of stored data. Windows Storage Server is also an ideal solution for consolidating multiple file servers into a single solution that enables cost reduction and policy-based management of storage resources.
For more information about Windows Storage Server 2003, go to:
Windows Storage Server 2003, part of Windows Server System integrated server software, simplifies the development, deployment, and management of flexible business solutions.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to: