Cost+Reduction+Now+-+Server+and+Storage+Consolidation+for+your+District


 * Presenter: || Kutlu Gulamber – Ardham.com AND Chris Renfro ||
 * Company: || Ardham ||
 * Email: || kutlu@ardham.com ||
 * Title: || Cost Reduction Now - Server and Storage Consolidation for your District ||
 * Audience: || All ||
 * Strand: || Leaders ||
 * Description: || Reduce Hardware Footprint, Save Energy, Reduce Maintenance Costs, Improve performance and compliance! SERVER AND STORAGE CONSOLIDATION Education users are demanding increasingly converged applications on the network. We are seeing a universal trend to centralize computing services and information storage, not only due to tightening budgets and shrinking support teams, but also because of the desire to provide the same sophistication level of service across all schools, near or remote. Data archival regulations of funding sources are becoming increasingly daunting. Many districts are finding themselves at a terrible disadvantage that they simply do not have the infrastructure to collect, own, manage, secure or audit the information generated. As information becomes more and more critical to the operations and funding, the need for some level of disaster recovery is becoming impossible to ignore. Empowerment to share information in every which format is becoming an absolute requirement. How do we take on this challenge with rapidly shrinking budgets? The following are the underlying design principals we have deployed in rising to the challenge: • Consolidate all information into a centralized information storage system that facilitates centralized security, control and management as well as a foundation for federal audit and archival requirements, • Consolidate servers and applications into a centralized virtual environment for more efficient utilization of expensive servers, easier management and maintenance, • Implement an information backup and archival system designed to protect critical business information for compliance and disaster recovery, • Implement an agency-wide survivable processing environment that assures optimum levels of service availability such as basic communications, access to financial and citizen data in the event of a service outage at the main data center or involving critical servers, and • Provide cost savings and improve maintainability with an overextended IT staff. ||
 * NETS: || Administrator NETS ||