Tuesday, November 13, 2007; Posted: 09:00 AM
Brookfield Homes is one of the 25 largest home builders and land developers in the country. Based in California, Brookfield Homes Southland Division generates revenue between $300 million and $500 million per year with 165 employees. In addition to Microsoft Exchange email services, the company relies heavily on two main business systems: FAST, a home-building specific accounting and construction production system; and On Base, an enterprise content management system that provides integrated document, business process and record management. Both use Microsoft SQL Server as their critical back-end database.
Brookfield Homes' Southland Division began working with EqualLogic during a project to archive its Exchange Server email for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. The company implemented Mimosa NearPoint for Exchange 2003 with a seven-terabyte PS300E array as the back-end storage to meet its email archiving needs. Immediately after implementing Mimosa and EqualLogic, Brookfield was able to reduce its Exchange storage by 25 percent, and it anticipates further reductions over time. Brookfield selected the PS Series SAN over a Network Appliance NAS device because EqualLogic SANs scale seamlessly by adding modular arrays and include a full suite of storage-management features in the purchase price.
"The EqualLogic SAN allows me to respond to business managers much more quickly, because I'm able to grow and adjust my storage and server infrastructure as needed, without disruption," said Chris Formes, IT manager at Brookfield Homes Southland. "EqualLogic has reduced the amount of time I have to spend managing hardware, which has given me more time for other projects. The simplicity and ease of the arrays brings us back to EqualLogic when we need more storage."
Since the initial deployment, Brookfield made the decision to connect all of its 32 servers, a third of which are now virtual machines, to the EqualLogic SAN, which was expanded with a 10.5-terabyte PS400E array. Brookfield IT provides scalable file services to internal users with a Windows Storage Server NAS device pointing to data on the EqualLogic SAN. The IT staff is in the process of transitioning 90 percent of its servers to four VMware(R) ESX Server hosts running on blades servers to consolidate their IT environment. For Brookfield Homes, their VMware(R) Infrastructure 3 and EqualLogic SAN deployment is reducing hardware, software, and administration costs while enabling better system availability. Brookfield is currently testing performance for its critical SQL Server applications, FAST and On Base, running in virtual machines attached to the EqualLogic SAN with the intention of moving these additional elements into production later this year.
EqualLogic's practice of providing new software features to its customers without additional license fees allowed Brookfield to add thin provisioning capabilities simply by downloading the latest PS Series Software release. With thin provisioning, Formes was quickly able to change an existing over-provisioned volume into a thin provisioned volume and, in the process, reclaim a terabyte of unused storage capacity.
Formes said, "It's nice to know that when EqualLogic comes out with new features, they are immediately available to me. I'm getting a tangible benefit from my support agreement, beyond the ability to call customer support when I have an issue. When I looked at other vendors, I found that some had hidden costs, like an extra $10,000 per array to do replication, which is crazy. With EqualLogic, turning on advanced storage management capabilities costs nothing extra."
About EqualLogic
EqualLogic(R) makes data storage systems that simplify the way enterprises of all sizes store and protect information. EqualLogic's award-winning PS Series storage area network (SAN) solutions provide sophisticated management capabilities that reduce the time and money IT staff spend on data storage. Since shipping its first product in June 2003, EqualLogic has added more than 3,200 customers in 30 countries. Based in Nashua, New Hampshire, EqualLogic has sales offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. For more information on EqualLogic, please visit http://www.equallogic.com.
EqualLogic is a registered trademark of EqualLogic, Inc. Other marks belong to their respective owners.
SOURCE: EqualLogic, Inc.
EqualLogic, Inc. Dylan Locsin, 603-249-7940 dlocsin@equallogic.com or Racepoint Group, Inc. Heather Ailara, 781-487-4650 equallogic@racepointgroup.com
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