Santa Lucía: One Step Ahead in the Implementation of Fully Flexible Data Centers Thanks to Scalent Technology
Santa Lucía Uses Scalent Software to Extend the Benefits of Virtualization to Services Running on Bare Metal Servers for Disaster Recovery Automation and Server Usage Optimization
PALO ALTO , Calif. January 12, 2009 – Scalent Systems, the leading provider of real-time management and automation software for large data centers, today announced that ErmesTel, a premier Spanish IT consulting and integration consulting company specialized in data center consolidation and virtualization has implemented an innovative project based on Scalent Systems software into Santa Lucia’s IT infrastructure.
Santa Lucía is one of the largest insurance and reinsurance companies in Spain. The company currently has two data centers: a main one (about 250 servers and 150 Tb of storage that serve 3,000 users) backed up by a secondary data center.
Santa Lucía invests in innovative technologies to deliver key business benefits. They were the first company in Spain to implement server virtualization technology in their data center in collaboration with ErmesTel in 2003. Now, with the aim of extending the benefits of virtualization to services that could not be migrated to virtual machines, Santa Lucia has implemented Scalent’s software with ErmesTel, adding flexibility to bare metal servers.
Santa Lucía has implemented Scalent’s software in its main and secondary data centers to automate and secure its disaster recovery process. Production images are replicated between sites through native Disk array synchronization features. In the secondary backup site, servers will primarily be used for development purposes. In case of total or partial site failure, the Scalent V/OE software will repurpose those same bare metal servers to start production services, in real time, automatically and without human intervention.
In addition to the massive reduction of RTO (Recovery Time Objective to return to operating state) and savings of hardware, processes put in place by ErmesTel, using Scalent software, allow a selective shutdown of servers during times of reduced activity. This results in significant savings in electricity consumption by servers and cooling system.
Santa Lucía’s decision to choose Scalent software is based on the revolutionary nature of its software that translates into numerous key benefits for the company. Amongst others, cost savings linked to the capability to re-use bare metal servers for multiples tasks: faster and more reliable disaster recovery (automation allowing easy and regular DR tests). In addition, Scalent allows S anta Lucía to easily deploy new services or to reallocate resources quickly, in a fully automated way, to specific services according to requirement. This dynamic allocation of servers, either physical or virtual, and their associated network and storage configuration is driven from a single console, without physical intervention, which frees up time for the system administrator and the IT team.
According to Diego Gonzalez, IT Systems Manager of S anta Lucía "Scalent brings significant competitive advantages to our company, as we can do more with less resources, offer more services with fewer servers, therefore, reducing hardware & software costs. Last but not least, it reduces energy consumption."
According to Pedro Tortosa, CEO of ErmesTel, “Data centers must become more flexible as companies need to adapt constantly to changes. Our aim is clearly to combine the best technologies available to bring flexibility across data centers while reducing cost. Combined with hypervisor technologies, the benefits offered by Scalent are such that it is an obvious choice for implementing fully flexible data centers.”
“Scalent enables organizations to stop pre-planning and worrying about tradeoffs between bare-metal and virtual, network redundancy and complexity,” said Benjamin Linder, CEO of Scalent Systems.
“Scalent users experience the power of ‘cloud computing’ in their own data centers, where they can set up any servers, any software, with any network and any storage access, with guaranteed failover, in real-time.”
About Scalent
Scalent Systems is the leading provider of Real-time Management and Automation software for virtual and physical infrastructure to data centers worldwide. Scalent’s software enables data centers to react to changing business needs by dynamically changing what servers are running and how those servers are connected to network and storage. The result is a real-time infrastructure, where data centers can transition between different configurations – or from dead bare metal to live connected servers – in five minutes or less, without physical intervention. Using Scalent software, companies have been able to implement cost-effective solutions while reducing server counts, simplifying manageability, and increasing reliability. Many of the Fortune 1000 companies rely on Scalent to support their success, having adopted the software as an integral part of their business continuity, QA test infrastructure automation, and IT operations. Scalent Systems is based in Palo Alto, with offices worldwide. Scalent’s software is available globally both direct and through partners and resellers. Learn more at http://www.scalent.com.
About ErmesTel
Ermestel is a 100% Spanish-owned systems integration company specializing in both hardware- and software-based virtualization projects. The company’s objective is to deliver complete end-to-end solutions with the highest service level in Spain. Ermestel leverages its broad technology portfolio to offer solutions such as server consolidation, business continuity, installation of multiple operating systems on the same physical server, testing and migration of applications, and other solutions associated with high availability and IT cost reduction. The company has delivered over 11 years of high-growth IT consulting to the market and has customer references across Spain, including more than 150 virtualization projects. For more details visit www.ermestel.com or call +34 91 744 05 77.