PQR delivers HP environment with ProActive support
Breda City Council was looking for a new future-proof storage environment. PQR advised on storage and backup solutions and made an offer based on HP 3PAR and HP ProActive Support. The City of Breda’s storage environment is now analyzed twice a year and failures are automatically reported. The environment is available 99.99% of the time and delivers the best performance without interruption.
About Municipality of Breda
With more than 180,000 inhabitants, Breda is the ninth largest municipality in the Netherlands. The area of Breda is relatively large: 129 km². The Municipality of Breda consists of the city of Breda and the surrounding villages of Bavel, Ulvenhout, Prinsenbeek, Teteringen and Effen. One of the tasks of the Municipality of Breda is to make information about the city accessible to administrators, citizens, entrepreneurs and the municipal departments. This may be information in the form of statistics or information as a result of targeted research. The Municipality of Breda employs 1,800 people. “For the Municipality of Breda, it is important that the storage environment is always available so that we can guarantee continuity to employees and residents.”
PQR as a consultant
Because manufacturer A may have a solution that provides a better fulfillment than manufacturer B or vice versa, the Municipality of Breda initially looked for a partner certified for multiple brands. The choice was PQR. Gerson Talla, Information Manager at Municipality of Breda: “We expect PQR to play an active role in continuously advising us on the best suited solutions for our organization, in line with our needs and the offerings on the market. The solution, per functionality, must also fit within our certification requirements. This is necessary to ensure that the environment is always up-to-date and available. For all these issues we have one fixed contact person at PQR.”
Not one storage solution for everything
Municipality of Breda wrote a tender in which they were very specific about their requirements regarding their storage environment. Talla: “Our view of storage is that there is not one storage solution for everything, but that a different solution should be selectable for each functionality. A VDI environment requires different performance and has different requirements than a storage environment for backup. A virtualized server farm requires different functionality from the storage environment. Therefore, we want to be flexible in the choice of our future solutions.”
Case study
PQR offered an HP storage solution based on HP 3PAR systems including HP ProActive Support. HP 3PAR systems are scalable and high-performance storage solutions. Designed specifically for virtualized and converged IT environments, HP ProActive Support provides remote IT support. This service takes full advantage of automation, providing proactive services and reports and reactive expert support to resolve problems quickly and effectively.
“This solution meets our needs,” explains Talla. “The storage environment is now approached proactively and the handling of failures is automated. Every six months, firmware analysis and preventive maintenance takes place. During this, the hardware and software components included in the contract are inventoried and checked. We then receive advice on the existing situation from our regular contact person and see whether the firmware is still adequate or whether an upgrade is needed. If the latter is the case, we receive advice on preventive replacement of the hardware and on ways to improve the configuration. Think of a new version of software that we would need to upgrade to in order to have a future-proof storage environment again. PQR offered the right solution.”
Always the best performance
The result is a storage environment that is available 99.99% of the time and delivers the best performance without interrupting business processes. “PQR implemented our new storage environment. Twice a year the environment is scrutinized and strategic consultation takes place based on these findings. This ensures that our environment always meets our requirements and wishes and is always accessible. With PQR and HP we succeed in guaranteeing continuity to employees and citizens of the Municipality of Breda. PQR supports and advises us in this process and can provide extensions for our existing solutions if necessary.”
Chosen technique
- HP 3PAR
- HP ProActive Support