County government evolves data center with scalable storage and networking solutions

SHI modernizes a U.S. county’s storage and networking infrastructure with solutions from Cisco, Meraki, and HPE Nimble Storage.

Challenge:

Supporting almost 100,000 full-time residents and seasonal waves of eager tourists, a county that long balanced nature and history was slipping into the past using outdated data center equipment. Faced with either modernizing its data center or working with a proverbial IT museum, the county government contacted SHI.

Making do with aging infrastructure, the county’s small IT staff spent precious time performing daily maintenance on its existing storage solution, wireless network, and outdated phone system.

After a sudden and severe drop in the performance of their primary applications pushed storage capacity to the limit, the county desperately needed a complete overhaul of its data center.

Solution:

To follow their procurement guidelines, the county government needed to conduct a thorough and fair vetting process of various OEMs’ solutions. Our solution architects aligned with multiple trusted partners to deliver a best-in-class solution on time and under budget.

SHI and HPE Nimble Storage offered a storage assessment to evaluate the customer’s current storage infrastructure and provide a projection of their future data consumption. To address their server storage, networking, and wireless setup, SHI enlisted the help of Cisco and Meraki. Together, we offered several options that could handle projected fluctuations in the county’s network bandwidth.

Having reviewed various proofs of concept over the course of nine months, the county was confident in the technologies SHI presented as well as our vendor-neutral approach. The awarded contract included:

• Cisco Unified Computing Systems (UCS), power supplies, and accessory kits.
• Meraki cloud security appliances, Enterprise software licenses, and dual-band antennas.
• HPE Nimble Storage adaptive flash hard drives featuring 210TB capacity.

Outcome:

The county’s newly modernized storage and network infrastructure injected much-needed agility and reliability into their primary applications, freeing IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives. SHI’s vendor-neutral approach empowered the county to design, deploy, and support these solutions with ease.