SCC delivered a solution of Core IT Services Database and general-purpose VMware server platform using Synergy BL460 Gen10 and ProLiant DL Gen10. SCC used a Service Oriented approach for the solution design to understand the business needs and outcomes first and then map the characteristics of the University's platform for resilience, performance and availability to design in the functional elements to meet and exceed those University's requirements.
With the introduction of HPE Synergy a deeper understanding of the network design was required to map the consolidation of cabling and VLAN functions. Additional design assistance was required from HPE experts for this.
UoB set out the initial test plan and collaborated with SCC on the final version for both functional and non-functional tests, key to acceptance was continuity of service for host and network failure – moving workloads to surviving local nodes and full-service fail-over for a data centre outage.
The solution also included HPE Complete Care support as part of a Greenlake as a Service model. This service is designed to help improve the stability and operation of converged infrastructure platforms such as HPE Synergy, to achieve better business outcomes. This was pivotal to the implementation as the many components of the complex converged and virtualised environment needed to work effectively together. This approach reduces support issues and calls that arise from platform and multi-vendor integration issues.
The HPE Complete Care service was a critical part of the solution having been specifically selected to support devices in this environment, providing the enhanced support to cover servers, operating systems, hypervisors, storage, storage area networks (SANs), and networks. In addition, the Complete Care service also provides regular proactive scans of the environment and quarterly incident reporting to help identify problem trends, prevent repeat configuration problems and identify and resolve issues sooner.
The Greenlake as a Service wrap allows the customers to extend and expand their service with a “change order” avoiding the need to Tender, and reduce the Capex burden, topping up the service as and when required. SCC used a Strategic Account Management approach to providing value add support, which leveraged the following strategic advantages such as holding the highest partnership with Tier 1 vendors. Being vendor agnostic, SCC were able to better assess UoB’s requirements against the most appropriate technology solutions.
With its Operational Account Management, SCC provided regular engagement and communication including scheduled service review meetings, customer updates for new technology and sector developments, and other requirements.
Unlike Public Cloud as a Service models, UoB also avoided expensive Egress charges, as the service is delivered On-prem in their data centre, and there were no penalties for terminating on the contract at the end of the pre-agreed term, thus avoiding Vendor lock-in.
SCC worked with SCCB to perform analysis on the current server and storage at the Bournville and Fordrough campus. The analysis captured real-time data from the current storage and servers over a few weeks. From this data SCC were able to size the new storage and server infrastructure accurately.
SCC worked with SCCB to generate a solution to replace primary block storage and file storage currently hosted on the NetApp storage arrays in both data centres with new NetApp storage. The aging HPE blades and servers were replaced in both locations with new DL ProLiant servers. Additional technologies were deployed from a mix of vendors including HPE and Cisco.
The NetApp servers were designed to have as much redundancy built in as possible to avoid single-point-of-failures. These included dual CPU, dual power, multiple network cards, RAID 1 boot disks for the Hypervisor and remote management interface. The servers implemented use the latest Intel CPUs for faster processing, also providing support for higher memory capacities, protecting the assets by providing future scalability.
The NetApp design allowed for replicated data between sites supporting business continuity within Recovery Point Objectives and Recovery Time Objectives requirements. In addition, the NetApp allows for online upgrades, increasing availability and provides multiple Snapshots of the data to mitigate against ransomware attacks.
SCC provided five years support from the vendors, with SCC providing a support desk to co-ordinate the vendor calls. On the NetApp storage, we provide parts and engineers to site on a four hour Service Level Agreement. The HPE compute comes with a four hour response and the Cisco is an eight hour fix.
SCC has worked closely with SCCB on several projects over recent years, using the experience gained on these projects, we included resource to provide Technical Project Governance along-side the SCC and SCCB technical IT teams. This ensured the project was successful and completed within the agreed timescales and to the correct quality and deliverables.