The city of West Torrens, which is home to Adelaide Airport, has implemented a server virtualisation and redundancy strategy to protect its data from unexpected disasters such as air crashes and floods. Under its previous disaster recovery plan, it would have taken up to three weeks after a major incident before the council was fully operational.
However, by deploying new servers it is a drag-and-drop exercise in which entire virtual machines can be backed up, and system restoration can happen in minutes rather than weeks. The council's manager of information services, Chris James, said the need to upgrade the council's disaster plan was driven home when fire devastated a neighbouring local government office. At the time, James said West Torrens was relying on uninterruptible power supply technology that allowed systems administrators to conduct a controlled shutdown sequence if power failed.
He said data was backed up nightly to disks and tapes, but resuming normal operations could have taken up to three weeks. "We began formulating a technological and policy-based disaster recovery plan to ensure we could remain operational in the face of unforeseen events," James said. "This was also an opportunity to update our information systems strategy, utilising current technology to optimise the IT server architecture." Recognising that a virtualised environment would help meet disaster recovery objectives, the council engaged Technical Architecture Solutions (TAS) to implement the server plan.
TAS formulated a two-stage plan that included virtualising a number of servers then replicating these to a second physical site to provide full disaster recovery capabilities. In all, 24 of the 26 physical servers were virtualised and consolidated on to four physical servers. Within a month, the council and TAS converted 15 physical servers into virtual machines, running on top of the VMware ESX Server hypervisor on four IBM X3650 servers, each with two dual-core 3GHz CPUs and 16GB of RAM.
PlateSpin PowerRecon was used during capacity planning, while VMware Converter and PlateSpin PowerConvert facilitated the virtualisation of council's application environment by converting existing servers into virtual server images. James said the quick wins proved the project was viable and led to the remaining servers being virtualised.
He said virtualising the data centre environment freed up 24 physical servers, some of which have been reused to construct the disaster recovery capability. "To ensure continuous availability, virtual machines can be mirrored daily between the primary and backup data centres over a dedicated fibre-optic connection," James explained.
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. Zones provide focussed content from CIO and leading technology partners.- White PaperJoin Lee Benjamin, a Microsoft Exchange MVP and Ryan Shipkowski, network administrator for Matthews, to discuss the process and ROI of implementing an email archiving solution, with emphasis on a case study from Matthews International.
- White PaperYour organisation may well have devised and implemented an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) some time ago in order to guard against the risks of inappropriate use of computer systems by your workers, but are you confident that your AUP remains 'fit for purpose'? Read on to discover how you can enhance the effectiveness of your AUP.
- White PaperLearn to tie virtualized computing to virtualized storage, to offer a dynamic set of capabilities within the data centre and create improved performance and system reliability. Discover how best to utilize EMC Celerra in a VMware ESX environment.
Discover how SOA can create smarter outcomes for your business.
Attend and learn:
- How SOA is helping leading companies to become more agile
- Where you should be applying SOA processes in your company
- The top SOA implementation mistakes to avoid
Click here for more information.
- +
CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
- +
TJX Maxx hacker banged up for 30 years 09 January, 2009 11:26:00
Key figure in the infamous TJX Maxx Wi-Fi hack of 2005 has been sentenced to 30-years in prison by a Turkish court.Maksym Yastremskiy, the Ukrainian accused of being a key figure in the infamous TJX Maxx Wi-Fi hack of 2005, has been sentenced to 30-years in prison by a Turkish court. - +
Data breaches rose sharply in 2008, says study 08 January, 2009 08:27:00
More than 35 million data records were breached in 2008, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center.More than 35 million data records were breached in 2008 in the U.S., a figure that underscores continuing difficulties in securing information, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). - +
Rogue SSL certificate exploit puts VeriSign on the spot 07 January, 2009 11:04:00
Wishes "white hat" researchers had notified VeriSign before public demo.Following the success of researchers last week in creating a false SSL certificate based on VeriSign's RapidSSL brand, the company is scrambling to explain how it happened, how it's preventing it from reoccurring, and whether its other SSL certificate-generation services are at risk. - +
With Gaza conflict, cyberattacks come too 05 January, 2009 08:03:00
Pro-Palestinian hackers have defaced thousands of sites following attacks in Gaza.The conflict raging in Gaza between Israel and Palestine has spilled over to the Internet. - +
5 ways to secure your Blackberry 18 December, 2008 12:58:00
What do Tom Cruise and the McCain campaign have in common? They have both been bitten by the loss of a Blackberry. Mobile expert Dan Hoffman gives advice on how to keep your cherished mobile device safe, even if it's out of your handsWhat do Tom Cruise and the McCain campaign have in common? They have both been bitten by the loss of a Blackberry. Mobile expert Dan Hoffman gives advice on how to keep your cherished mobile device safe, even if it's out of your hands.
Research software developer appoints Susan Dart to new Business Development Director role 08 January, 2009 09:08:00
Research software developer appoints Susan Dart to new Business Development Director role 08 January, 2009 09:08:00
Anyware Introduce Two Powerful PCI TV Tuner Cards with S5 Power Up and Windows Media Center Remote 07 January, 2009 17:30:00
Fortinet Cures Mobile Phone “Curse of Silence/CurseSMS” Attack 07 January, 2009 16:30:00
SEAGATE SHIPS DESKTOP HARD DRIVE WITH WORLD’S HIGHEST AREAL DENSITY – 500GB PER DISK 06 January, 2009 15:34:00
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
|
Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Enterprise Planning
No matter how good its products or innovative its services, no organization can perform to its full potential without an adequate planning structure in place. Discover how this can be done by reading on.
