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UK Firm Modernizes IT Infrastructure and Improves Data Protection with SimpliVity
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Professional Service
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Infrastructure Inspection
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Lawlords, a UK-based full-service firm of costs lawyers, law costs draftsmen and costs consultants, was facing challenges with its aging IT infrastructure. The firm relied on a mix of non-redundant legacy HP and Dell servers with internal storage. This outdated infrastructure was becoming increasingly risky and costly to maintain. Equipment failures or catastrophes had the potential to impair critical IT services and disrupt business. Furthermore, Lawlords was constrained by inefficient tape-based backup procedures. Applications and data were backed up daily, after business hours. Manual restorations from tape took hours, and any changes that occurred since the last nightly backup were simply lost. Stuart Taylor, IT Manager for Lawlords, initiated a data center modernization program to improve the reliability and agility of the firm’s IT infrastructure.
About The Customer
Lawlords is a leading full-service firm of costs lawyers, law costs draftsmen and costs consultants based in the United Kingdom. The firm has offices in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Carlisle. Lawlords provides a range of services to its clients, including cost budgeting, cost management, cost negotiation, and more. The firm prides itself on its commitment to delivering high-quality services and achieving the best possible outcomes for its clients. However, Lawlords was facing challenges with its aging IT infrastructure. The firm relied on a mix of non-redundant legacy HP and Dell servers with internal storage. This outdated infrastructure was becoming increasingly risky and costly to maintain. Equipment failures or catastrophes had the potential to impair critical IT services and disrupt business. Furthermore, Lawlords was constrained by inefficient tape-based backup procedures. Applications and data were backed up daily, after business hours. Manual restorations from tape took hours, and any changes that occurred since the last nightly backup were simply lost.
The Solution
After evaluating a number of potential options including solutions from HP, NetApp and EMC, Taylor selected SimpliVity OmniCube hyperconverged infrastructure as the foundation for the company’s next-generation data center. SimpliVity OmniCube provides a scalable, modular, 2U building block of x86 resources that offers all the functionality of traditional IT infrastructure—in one device, with a unified administrative interface. The solution eliminates cost and complexity by assimilating a variety of IT functions including the hypervisor, compute, storage, network switching, replication, backup, WAN optimization and real-time data deduplication. The solution delivers the best of both worlds: x86 cloud economics and enterprise capabilities including data efficiency, performance, data protection and global unified management. Lawlords implemented a geographically distributed OmniCube configuration for ultimate data protection and resiliency. The firm replaced four HP tower servers with two 2U SimpliVity OmniCube CN-2200 nodes in its primary data center in Manchester. The redundant configuration ensures continuous availability in the event of hardware failures. The firm also deployed an OmniCube CN-2200 in their Carlisle office for disaster recovery.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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