HPE helps University of Bristol graduate to next level of IT performance for staff and students
JULY 9, 2019 • NEWS ADVISORY
IN THIS ARTICLE
- Cristie Data and HPE deliver a hybrid storage solution converging storage, data protection and disaster recovery into a single offering
- HPE Nimble Storage solution reduces time and resources required for maintenance and problem solving, and eliminates the downtime on systems
- University of Bristol move their entire production estate to run on HPE Nimble Storage
University of Bristol meets growing user needs with HPE Nimble Storage
London, UK – July 09, 2019 – Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) today unveiled how it is enabling the University of Bristol (UoB) to meet the complex demands of the users of its IT systems, delivering further flexibility and a more robust infrastructure to staff and students alike.
Delivered to the UoB by Cristie Data, an iomart company and HPE Gold Hybrid IT partner, the top-10 ranked UK university1 has been able to increase its overall performance, agility and confidence in its storage platform, reducing the time and resources required for maintenance and problem solving, and eliminating the downtime on systems.
Moving away from legacy storage platforms that were causing issues with performance, UoB originally purchased HPE Nimble Storage from Cristie Data in 2014, and has been gradually working together to move the entire production estate to run on HPE Nimble Storage.
The University was looking for a new type of storage solution to tackle two core problems: rising IT costs, and the increasingly high and complex demands of the users of its system. As such, the UoB team felt a hybrid storage solution was needed – with a reputation for being faster and easier to manage than hard-disk-only systems. HPE Nimble Storage met these needs, converging storage, data protection and disaster recovery into a single offering, while allowing the IT team to adapt quickly to the changing needs of its staff and students.
“At the time, Nimble Storage as a technology offering was quite a leap for us,” said Harvey Ditchfield, Storage & Databases Team Manager at the University of Bristol. “We’d been having problems with scaling our existing storage to meet growing needs – and Cristie Data, along with Nimble Storage, were in a position to help us change quickly in line with our business needs. The change was astonishing. The flexibility and capacity we had once HPE Nimble Storage was installed was incredible, particularly regarding how we could completely reposition ourselves in such a short timeframe.”
The core benefits identified by the UoB centre around two main elements. The first is the reduction, and almost complete elimination, of any down-time when upgrades or repairs are necessary. There is a seamless ability to upgrade, increase capacity, or assess performance, without any interruption to service for end users. The second is in solving a pain point of any IT team – reducing the time and resources needed for basic maintenance and problem-solving. Thanks to HPE Nimble Storage, the UoB team now has more time to tackle additional value-add workloads and demands and the technology has been key to freeing up capacity by taking care of more mundane tasks.
“Projects such as the HPE Nimble Storage implementation at the University of Bristol underpin – and prove – our belief in our channel partners as a key driver of business success,” said Mark Armstrong, UK&I Vice President, Channels and Alliances, HPE. “Cristie Data, through using HPE technology, has been able to help the University increase its overall performance, agility and confidence in its storage platform, ultimately giving them the ability to help staff and students to perform to the best of their abilities.”
“We worked with the university to identify pain points with existing technology and to build a new solution that provided scalability for future growth predictions.” said Ryan Smith, Sales Director at Cristie Data. “The Nimble Storage platform from HPE gave a balance of cost and performance, whilst allowing ease of visibility of data capacity and throughput metrics with the HPE InfoSight platform. This enables us to be much more consultative in our regular account reviews, providing immediate feedback on existing workloads and helping to model the effect of new projects on the platform.”
HPE InfoSight, is an AI solution designed specifically to remove the burden of infrastructure management. Using cloud-based machine learning to provide global insights into the status and health of infrastructure, all in one location, HPE InfoSight predicts and prevents problems across the infrastructure stack and ensures optimal performance and efficient resource use. As part of HPE’s Infosight portfolio, HPE Nimble Storage uses flash storage and predictive analytics to guarantee 99.9999% availability2, delivering the best all-flash capacity per TB in the industry – and future-proofing design for value today and tomorrow.
About Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is a global technology leader focused on developing intelligent solutions that allow customers to capture, analyze and act upon data seamlessly from edge to cloud. HPE enables customers to accelerate business outcomes by driving new business models, creating new customer and employee experiences, and increasing operational efficiency today and into the future.
1 http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/june/qs-rankings.html
2 https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/Getdocument.aspx?docname=a00018503ENW
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Ella Hulbert, HPE
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