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.
- +
Adobe launches hosted services, adds Flash to Acrobat 03 June, 2008 09:02:44
Adobe to launch Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storageAdobe this week is set to unveil the next version of its Adobe Acrobat software, which adds support for the company's Flash multimedia technology. The company also plans to launch a new Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage.
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. - White PaperJoin industry expert Bob Spurzem and Chuck Arconi of Fox Hollow to discover how to reduce Exchange total storage and keep it at a manageable level. Learn how Exchange storage growth can be contained without sacrificing security and accessibility.
- 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 PaperView this webcast and discover the drivers for changing network design practices, why many organisations are changing their approach to network architecture and how enterprises should be moving forward with open architecture multi-vendor network solutions. Register now and learn how your business can maximize the business value of the enterprise network.
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.
- +
Chris Hoff on Virtualization and Cloud Computing 20 November, 2008 10:55:00
Chris Hoff, chief security architect for the systems and technology division at Unisys and an advisor on the Skybox Security customer advisory board, is one of the biggest critics of virtualization security out there. Not because it isn't important - but rather because it is vital and needs to mature rapidly. - +
Cybersecurity is focus of new start-up incubator 20 November, 2008 07:19:00
Texas uni announces the Institute for Cyber Security.The University of Texas at San Antonio Tuesday announced a technology incubator aimed at fostering IT security-based start-ups within the state. - +
Dilip Sarangan on Physical Security M&A 20 November, 2008 11:18:00
Dilip Sarangan tracks physical security companies for Frost & Sullivan. He expects the industry's "need to have" products to weather the economic storm well, with the big players (now including IBM and Cisco) looking for value-priced acquisitions. - +
International Challenges in PCI Security 20 November, 2008 09:15:00
In a country that's seen many regulatory compliance challenges this decade, the headaches of PCI security tend to be analyzed from a largely American perspective. - +
PCI council sharpens oversight of security auditors 19 November, 2008 10:53:00
Quality assurance plan targets security assessors and scanning vendorsThe PCI Security Standards Council Monday unveiled a plan to sharpen oversight of the hundreds of security-service providers now authorized to evaluate merchant networks under the organization's Payment Card Industry data standards.
Vignette Announces 2008 Excellence Awards 21 November, 2008 10:50:00
PGP and Ponemon Institute Unveil Inaugural Australian Data Breach Study 2008 20 November, 2008 17:34:00
Symantec Cloud Services Transform Data Centre Operations Through Proactive Management 20 November, 2008 12:06:00
Verizon Business Offers Tips to Building a Successful Unified Communications and Collaboration Plan 20 November, 2008 12:04:00
AARNet Brings 4K Digital Cinema to Australia: First 4K HD Video Signal delivered into Australia by AARNet 20 November, 2008 12:02:00
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
|
Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management: Trends for Emerging Businesses
Hyperion surveyed 163 companies to understand BI and EPM requirements, evaluation processes, and extent of adoption. Top areas of current and future investment for emerging businesses include budgeting and planning as well as management reporting solutions. Read on to discover more.
Buying Guides
Latest Products
Buying Guides
