Ports of Auckland Embarks on Storage Virtualization with DataCore Software to Keep Business Processes Flowing Smoothly and Reduce IT Costs

New Zealand’s leading port company achieves worry-free business continuity, better performance, hardware independence, and seamless maintenance with SANsymphony™ software

AUCKLAND, New Zealand & FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--DataCore Software, the industry’s premier provider of storage virtualization software, today announced that Ports of Auckland, New Zealand’s leading port company, employs DataCore SANsymphony™ storage virtualization software to create a dynamic and resilient virtual storage infrastructure that cost-effectively supports the company’s server virtualization environment and its business model. A full case study is available on DataCore’s website: Ports of Auckland Case Study.

“Looking forward, it’s good knowing that SANsymphony’s advanced storage virtualization features stay in place even as the hardware underneath changes. There’s none of the throw away we’ve experienced in the past when the functional intelligence was buried in the devices.”

“With DataCore, we have seen the benefits first-hand of improved uptime and being able to do operational maintenance without affecting our business,” said Craig Beetlestone, lead systems engineer at Ports of Auckland. “This gives us peace of mind. We’re also getting better utilization out of our storage hardware, and need less of it to achieve greater performance. With DataCore in place, our performance has been nothing short of phenomenal.”

“Looking forward, it’s good knowing that SANsymphony’s advanced storage virtualization features stay in place even as the hardware underneath changes. There’s none of the throw away we’ve experienced in the past when the functional intelligence was buried in the devices.”

Shipping and Logistics Demand High Availability 24/7 Operations

Ports of Auckland provides a broad range of cargo handling and logistics services which need to operate day and night to serve New Zealand’s vital international trade and shipping needs. The server infrastructure at Ports of Auckland is extensively virtualized, but its aging Storage Area Network (SAN) was disrupting IT processing at critical hours. Downtime for physical equipment maintenance as well as expansions and upgrades prevented them from attaining the high availability demanded by a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week port operation. By deploying DataCore™ SANsymphony, the IT team is now able to keep applications running while switching out equipment with just a few minutes’ notice.

“The ports have to efficiently ship, distribute and manage the extreme volume of cargo and materials each day; this makes it critical that their systems and networks are reliable and available at all times. Furthermore, they have discovered that the expertise required to upgrade and adopt cutting-edge IT systems is a considerable challenge,” said Peter Thompson, managing director of APAC at DataCore Software. “By leveraging DataCore’s storage virtualization software and moving to a shared pool of storage, Ports of Auckland has realized greater efficiency and business continuity as well as the ability to quickly react to new and expanding workloads placed on its systems.”

Hardware Choices Become Secondary with VMware and DataCore

Ports of Auckland was an early adopter of server virtualization and today 95 percent of its server infrastructure is virtualized. But it was running into the problem that many companies with virtualized environments encounter: its rigid SAN could not keep up with the variable demands required of a highly-virtualized environment.

The IT team sought the flexibility and superior manageability they had already achieved through their server virtualization efforts. They turned to DataCore to make the disks at both its primary and secondary sites look like one virtualized SAN to the VMware farm.

DataCore helped them reduce both capital expenditure and operational costs. It also fit in nicely into their Windows environment. The SANsymphony storage virtualization software runs on a pair of IBM x3650 servers in front of Xiotech Storage Blades.

“No-Panic” Business Continuity, Seamless Maintenance, Faster Performance, and Better Asset Utilization

Because SANsymphony synchronously mirrors the storage at both sites and automatically routes I/O requests to the appropriate hardware regardless of where it is, the Ports of Auckland’s IT staff no longer has to worry about site outages. In addition, just as server virtualization improves CPU utilization, SANsymphony storage virtualization improves disk space utilization through thin provisioning. They now create new virtual disks from the storage pool in a matter of seconds, and the software only takes up the space actually being written to.

The new storage infrastructure delivers several benefits for Ports of Auckland: including what Beetlestone describes as “no-panic” business continuity and seamless maintenance, better performance, improved storage utilization and long term cost savings.

Perhaps the biggest benefit Ports of Auckland has seen from deploying DataCore SANsymphony storage virtualization software is the confidence it gives the company and the IT team that they are now in control of the company’s infrastructure. “One of the things that drew me personally to SANsymphony was that it is software,” continued Beetlestone. “With SANsymphony, we buy it once. We own it. And we can swap out the box that it runs on at will as well as the underlying disks. That’s a big bonus. It can easily save us $100,000 or more when we go to the next generation of hardware.”

About Ports of Auckland

Ports of Auckland is New Zealand’s leading port company, serving the country’s vital international trade with a broad range of cargo handling and logistics services on a 24/7 basis. Ports of Auckland is responsible for running two maritime ports and an inland port in the Auckland region. In 2010, the ports handled cargo equivalent to 13 percent of the country’s total GDP, twice as much as any other New Zealand port. Its east-coast Auckland seaport accounts for 37 percent of New Zealand’s total container trade. Ports of Auckland connects New Zealand’s importers and exporters with more than 165 international ports in nearly 70 countries. Visit www.poal.co.nz/about_us.

About DataCore Software

DataCore Software is the industry’s premier provider of storage virtualization software. Its software-as infrastructure platform solves the big problem stalling virtualization initiatives by eliminating the storage-related barriers that make virtualization too difficult and too expensive. For additional information, visit the DataCore website at www.datacore.com or call [phone].

DataCore, the DataCore logo and SANsymphony are trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.