-- Continuity of Operations (COOP): Based on a White House mandate
requiring that every agency have a COOP strategy, N+1 failover was a
key requirement of the evaluation. By removing a live Egenera blade,
technicians forced a failure and documented that all applications
migrated automatically to the backup resource in just a few minutes.
Egenera also enables MHS to provide COOP for every Military Treatment
Facility (MTF) application without sacrificing cost and consolidation
goals. While the previous architecture required a backup for every
primary machine -- doubling server count -- Egenera consolidates
multiple backup machines onto a single blade.
-- Security: Egenera was the only system evaluated to meet the
requirements of the DoD Information Technology Security Certification
and Accreditation Process (DITSCAP), a comprehensive assessment of both
technical and non-technical security features. DITSCAP examines the
physical, personnel, administrative, information, information systems
and communications attributes of an IT platform. Based on its DITSCAP
results, the Egenera BladeFrame received formal accreditation from
the DoD.
-- Savings: In response to an MHS initiative to reduce operational costs
and increase utilization of resources, while ensuring the highest
quality of care for our nation's service men and women, lowering
operational expenses was a priority. Based on a detailed report
prepared by a third-party retained to provide an independent economic
analysis of the deployments, Egenera's data center virtualization
technology, modular form factor, and centralized management has
produced the following savings.
- 32 percent in overall operating expenses
- 80 percent in electricity usage
- 75 percent in floor space
- 34 percent in onsite contractors
- 62 percent in CPUs
-- Consolidation: Each MTF runs a growing set of mission-critical
applications. In the prior legacy environment, every application
ran on a dedicated rack-mount server in a classic "silo"
configuration. By running VMWare on the Egenera® BladeFrame®
ES system, MHS has consolidated five applications previously running
on independent machines onto a single Egenera Processing Blade™
(pBlade™) module.
-- Simplicity: The incumbent rack-mount systems -- and blade offerings
evaluated from other vendors -- contained dozens of cables, each a
failure point. Alternatively, the Egenera system requires as few as
eight connections, greatly simplifying field management and improving
reliability while lowering costs.
The worldwide MTF deployment is managed for MHS by Apptis, Inc. The Apptis
team leverages Egenera® PAN Manager™ software, Egenera® CIO™
software and hardware from Xceedium, an Egenera Alliance member and
DITSCAP-compliant provider of secure remote access and touch-free support
for
non-blade components, to provide 7x24x365 production operations and
maintenance services.
About Egenera Inc.
Egenera is a global leader in delivering data center virtualization
solutions that reduce costs and complexity for enterprises and public
sector agencies worldwide. The Egenera® BladeFrame® system virtualizes
the data center with an innovative server architecture specifically
designed to reduce complexity and enable IT to respond rapidly to business
requirements. Market-leading enterprises around the world trust Egenera to
run their most critical applications and achieve higher resource
utilization, faster application time to market and lower total cost of
ownership. Headquartered in Marlboro, Mass. Egenera has offices worldwide.
For more information visit www.egenera.com, call 508-858-2600 or send email
to info@egenera.com.
Egenera and Egenera stylized logos are trademarks or registered trademarks
of Egenera Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other
product names, service marks and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks
of their respective owners.
Contact Information: Press Contact: Gillian Farquhar Egenera Inc. 508-858-3262 gfarquhar@egenera.com