Hay Group Standardizes on Fujitsu ETERNUS SAN to Centralize Global Storage Environment

Market Wire, October, 2007

Fujitsu Canada, Inc. today announced that Hay Group has deployed a Fujitsu ETERNUS(R)4000 storage area network (SAN) system to centralized its storage environment and replace up to 250 direct-connect storage servers. With Fujitsu ETERNUS storage, Hay Group, a global human resources management consulting firm with 88 offices in 47 countries and more than 7,000 clients, has simplified storage management and reduced its IT footprint in the data center and office space by 66 percent resulting in substantial cost and energy savings. The company cited 100 percent availability, high performance, ease of management, and excellent Fujitsu support as key attributes of the deployment.

Prior to the Fujitsu ETERNUS storage solution, Hay Group relied exclusively on direct-connect physical storage servers. Each server had to be requisitioned, approved, purchased, delivered, installed and configured by Hay Group staff -- a laborious, costly and constant process. With the ETERNUS SAN, massive amounts of additional storage can easily be added in just a few minutes -- and at infrequent intervals -- by Fujitsu staff. The SAN, which is already slated for expansion from its current 4 TB of storage capacity to 12 TB, currently stores 47 virtual servers in half a standard rack, reducing the data center footprint for storage by 66 percent. Hay Group plans to add up to 200 more servers in the near future. By centralizing storage with the SAN, Hay Group is able to remove hardware from its offices, freeing this real estate for incoming-generating business activities.

"With so many offices around the world and so much data to store, it became imperative that we centralize and simplify the process," said Bob Butler, director of information technology at Hay Group. "Virtualizing our existing servers using VMWare was the logical approach, but using the Fujitsu ETERNUS SAN was key to a successful deployment. The ETERNUS4000 is extremely easy to manage remotely, and storage resources can be dynamically reallocated. Fujitsu offers better performance, better service, more tools, and a better price than the competition."

"Fujitsu has been proactive about maintaining his ETERNUS system, which automatically 'phones homes' to Fujitsu Support if anomalies are detected," said Butler. "I don't have to worry about whether or not my staff is capable of dealing with problems because Fujitsu takes care of it. And the proof is 100 percent uptime since going into production."

Butler also praised the 4 Gbps high performance Fibre Channel drives and the redundant pathways, which have improved the responsiveness of the individual applications accessing the data on the SAN. Users have reported a 100 percent improvement in the speed of their applications since the move to ETERNUS storage.

"Hay Group is a model of how organizations can use an ETERNUS storage solution to centralize and simplify storage management, reduce hardware infrastructure requirements, and reduce space and power costs," said Dave Egan, senior vice president of storage at Fujitsu Computer Systems. "The question most organizations should ask isn't if they need an ETERNUS SAN. It's when they want to begin scaling their businesses more cost-effectively."

Fujitsu ETERNUS8000 and ETERNUS4000 Core Product Features

Built-in Disk Data Encryption Minimizes Risk

ETERNUS8000 and ETERNUS4000 can automatically store data using 128-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), minimizing the risk to a business of illegal or inappropriate data access when a disk is removed from an ETERNUS storage system.

MAID for a "Green" Infrastructure

ETERNUS8000 and ETERNUS4000 feature an Eco-mode that reduces power consumption and extends the life of disk drives. Using MAID (Massive Arrays of Inactive Disks) technology, Eco-mode stops drive spindle rotation when disks are not being accessed. Fujitsu includes information lifecycle management (ILM)-ready tiered storage, including MAID, at no extra cost.

Replication over Distance for Greater Efficiency and Disaster Recovery

Remote Advanced Copy functionality allows data to be replicated between multiple ETERNUS storage systems during business operation without increasing the load on servers. Both synchronous and asynchronous replication methods are supported, so replicated volumes can be located on a geographically separated ETERNUS storage system without sacrificing access performance on the production servers in the primary center.

iSCSI Connectivity for Lower-Cost Data Transfer

The addition of iSCSI host interfaces to ETERNUS enables lower-cost, high-performance LAN-WAN-LAN connections. ETERNUS provides IPsec (Security Architecture for Internet Protocol) on iSCSI to encrypt data transmitted across the LAN/WAN network. This feature enables organizations to use lower-cost IP circuits to build cost-effective disaster recovery systems with data-protection mechanisms.

RAID6 for Business Continuity

RAID6 ensures continued operation and protects data in the event of two simultaneous disk drive failures in a RAID group. ETERNUS8000 and ETERNUS4000 also support a range of RAID configurations including RAID1, RAID1 0, and RAID5.