Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) > Case Studies > The Neenan Company and NexCore Group Improve Disaster Recovery with SimpliVity’s OmniCube

The Neenan Company and NexCore Group Improve Disaster Recovery with SimpliVity’s OmniCube

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Logo
Company Size
200-1,000
Region
  • America
Country
  • United States
Product
  • SimpliVity’s OmniCube
Tech Stack
  • Oracle 10g
  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • Microsoft Exchange
  • AutoDesk Revit
  • Microsoft Remote Desktop Services
Implementation Scale
  • Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
  • Cost Savings
  • Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
  • Construction & Infrastructure
Applicable Functions
  • Business Operation
  • Discrete Manufacturing
Services
  • Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
The Neenan Company is a fully integrated design-build firm located in Fort Collins, Colorado. It has a small IT team of three professionals responsible for protecting all 40 of the mission critical virtual machines (VMs) that keep the business running each day. Applications such as CMiC construction and project management software powered by Oracle 10g, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, AutoDesk Revit, and collaboration software running on multiple Microsoft Remote Desktop Services app servers mean that comprehensive, efficient disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity is a top priority for The Neenan Company’s IT team. NexCore Group, a partner of the The Neenan Company, is a healthcare real estate development, acquisition, and management company located in Denver, Colorado. Despite having less storage needs, NexCore Group manages a lot of the same mission-critical applications as its partner firm and places the same amount of emphasis on protecting itself from data loss or business downtime.
The Challenge
The Neenan Company and NexCore Group, both operating in the construction and real estate industries, were facing challenges with their existing disaster recovery methods. As the quantity of data grew between the two businesses, so too did the disaster recovery requirements within their data centers. They were in constant danger of a crippling hardware failure, which could result in downtime up to, and even exceeding, 48 hours depending upon how many hard disks were damaged. In addition to the serious recovery-time disadvantage, both companies had significant concerns regarding natural disasters and potential damage to the physical equipment within the data centers. Given the weekly tape pick-up cycle, they were seeking a better system that did not risk an entire week’s worth of work. While improving both companies’ disaster recovery capabilities was a top priority, they also saw an opportunity to conduct a technology refresh of the two data centers and leverage a new solution to reduce annual maintenance and operating expenses.
The Solution
The Neenan Company and NexCore Group decided to implement SimpliVity’s OmniCube solution. They installed two OmniCube CN-3000s in Fort Collins and two OmniCube CN-2000s in Denver, respectively. Installation and onboarding was completed within a few days and the team was up and running—with all 40 mission critical VMs on the OmniCubes. With this unique setup, the two companies effectively leveraged their OmniCubes to decrease complexity and increase efficiency. Due to OmniCube’s versatility, they were able to incorporate the new hyperconverged infrastructure into some of their existing systems. For networking, the team leveraged trunked 4×1 GbE ports on their Ethernet switches. For added protection, they not only began using OmniCube’s lightning fast disaster recovery and backup, but also leveraged the legacy Veeam system, and occasionally, leftover LTO tapes.
Operational Impact
  • The Neenan Company and NexCore Group have seen significant improvements in their disaster recovery and backup capabilities.
  • The Neenan Company’s performance alone increased more than 75 percent and they have saved 100:1 to 200:1 in terms of capacity.
  • With backups now being exchanged between the two companies’ different locations and no need for physical offloading, the IT teams can now rest easy when it comes to data protection.
  • What would have taken up to 48 hours to complete can now be done in a few hours— and with no need for an expensive offsite disaster recovery facility.
  • The companies were impressed with the hyperconverged infrastructure’s impressive inline deduplication and compression.
Quantitative Benefit
  • 75 percent increase in performance
  • Up to 24 times faster backup performance and improved disaster recovery
  • Double improvement in Oracle RMAN and Export backup times
  • Eliminated more than $30,000 worth of annual expansion upgrades
  • Capacity savings of 100:1 to 200:1 via In-line deduplication, compression, and optimization

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