Cork City Council

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Located on the Celtic Sea in the southwestern part of Ireland, the 1,000-year-old city of Cork recently found itself struggling with the very contemporary issue of how to develop a cost-effective information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy. As the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland, it has watched demand for city services-and the accompanying data storage requirements-grow. Cork’s population of 123,000 is expected to increase as the city lures additional technology and healthcare companies (Apple Computer, Pfizer and Novartis are already present), and promote its growing financial services and manufacturing sectors and its port. To adequately handle current storage needs and prepare for future growth, Cork City Council needed an alternative to its slow and unmanageable storage system. The existing solution used multiple servers with direct attached storage and had a single point of failure in the controller card for the storage devices. Non-critical data had already twice been lost due to card failures. Each server also needed to be backed up separately to tape. And, as storage demand increased, backups became unwieldy, maintenance and system management too complex and costly, and capacity stretched.

Although the city council reviewed storage proposals from EMC and HP, Sun StorageTek systems offered the highest security and reliability. Additionally, Sun provided a solution best tailored to the city's needs and budget. Sun StorageTek Professional Services designed and implemented a tiered information management solution using a SAN connected by high-speed switches. Sun StorageTek disk systems ensure the city's most critical data and applications are highly available and online. The Sun software management suite delivers a single point of control for managing disk-based storage and backup. A Sun StorageTek modular library system provides automated and reliable tape storage and backup for the city’s less often used data.

With its high-performance, reliable and scalable storage solution, Cork City government is delivering improved data access and capacity while more efficiently using taxpayer-funded resources. The city's 700 users have continuous access to data and applications, thanks to improved reliability. Government officials no longer worry about losing important data. Automated backups have dramatically reduced backup times by eliminating manual tape changes, allowing IT staff to use its time more efficiently, and have enhanced security. Server and data consolidation and centralized management of storage solutions has helped Cork City government reduce the cost and complexity of accessing data. A simpler solution from a single vendor has also translated into lower training and administrative costs. The city can rest assured knowing that its storage platform provides plenty of capacity to handle current and future needs, and can be easily upgraded without major service disruptions or additional software licensing costs. In the long term, system flexibility and easy maintenance will lower the city’s total cost of ownership.

As Cork prepares for the start of its second century, the Sun StorageTek solution provides a sound ILM platform that will help the city meet its new challenges.