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NASA Selects VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platform for Its Enterprise Application Competency Center [Professional Services Close - Up](Professional Services Close - Up Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) In an initiative to drive more efficiency and flexibility from IT, NASA reported that it has implemented the Vblock Infrastructure Platform from VCE as the foundation of its new back-up and recovery solution for its NASA Enterprise Application Competency Center (NEACC) of which SAP is the flagship application in this environment. NASA said that this solution transforms the group's disaster recovery process from a tape-and-truck model to a virtualized solution where information can be recovered at the push of a button. This new IT solution, based on VCE converged infrastructure technology, is designed to save NASA significant time and money while ensuring business critical information remains available whenever it is needed. NASA, with 18,000 employees, has strict government standards for keeping, storing, accessing and recovering information. The group reported that its previous disaster recovery system for its NEACC suite of applications included backing up crucial information from its Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) NASA Datacenter location to tape, making multiple copies of the tapes for added protection, and then manually transporting those tapes to a secure outsourced location, a process that could take up to four days to complete. In the event that the back-up data was needed, NASA personnel would fly to the secondary location to activate the system and then manage the system from that site. With the new VCE solution, which includes EMC Recover Point and VMware Site Recovery Manager software, NASA noted that its critical information is now replicated and mirrored online eliminating the expensive and time-consuming method of tape back-up. Now NASA has a push-button failover capability from its primary location to the disaster recovery location meaning the primary production environment is never more than a few minutes out of sync from its peer at the disaster recovery location. Also, because the virtualized solution can be managed remotely, NASA can lower its recovery time of crucial data from days to hours. NASA Enterprise Application Competency Center (NEACC), hosting its Vblock solution at Kennedy Space Center, said it is planning to further consolidate its IT infrastructure and take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing. Neil Rodgers NEACC Manager and Deputy CIO at Marshall Space Flight Center, said, "In today's environment, we don't have the luxury of four days to gain access to any of our systems or critical information. We needed a new way to ensure if our systems went down for any reason, that we had an agile and lightning-quick recovery process. The VCE solution is flexible enough to allow us to simply access our systems but also robust enough to expand as our needs grow." VCE, a Virtual Computing Environment Company formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, accelerates the adoption of converged infrastructure and cloud-based computing models that decreases the cost of IT while improving time to market for customers. VCE, through the Vblock platform, delivers an integrated IT offering with vendor accountability. More Information: www.vce.com ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) (c) 2011 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |