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Press Releases
U.S. Census Bureau Revamps Distributed Research Environment With 3PAR Utility Storage
Reduced Cost and Increased Flexibility Key to Scaling Information Services
Fremont, CA, U.S. - December 15, 20043PAR®, the leading provider of Utility Storage, announced today the purchase and production deployment of the 3PAR InServ® Storage Server by the Center for Economic Studies, a division of the U.S. Census Bureau. By using Linux and 3PAR Utility Storage to create a flexible and cost-effective utility computing environment, the U.S. Census Bureau has extended access to greater economic and demographic data. In doing so, the Census Bureau has enabled better economic research by leading U.S. universities and institutions such as the National Bureau of Economic Research, and has significantly increased its ability to support researchers.
Constrained by an inflexible hardware infrastructure that consisted of proprietary servers and direct-attached storage, the Census Bureau could not scale its data warehouse to add valuable new data or additional remote users. Administration was a full-time job and sharing information among geographically distributed users was difficult. By selecting a modular Linux-based server solution and 3PAR Utility Storage, the Census Bureau has been able to scale its centralized data environment by 3 times—to 35 terabytes—simply and affordably. They have also been able to reduce storage administration by 95%, freeing valuable time. As a result, the Census Bureau's growing user base is able to access more data than ever, both reliably and quickly.
"Our users were stifled by an inflexible environment," said Darrin Stolba, Project Lead for the Bureau's Research Data Center upgrade. "We have extensive experience with numerous vendors and solutions, but nothing delivered the simplicity, scalability and flexibility we've gotten from the 3PAR system."
Taxing Problem
To support their research initiatives, Nobel prize-winning economists from universities and institutes across the United States, including the University of Chicago, The National Bureau of Economic Research, and University of California at Berkeley, access one-of-a-kind centralized census data sets via thin-client devices located at the Census Bureau's Research Data Centers. The Research Data Centers are secure facilities located across the nation, which are managed by the Census Bureau. As demand has grown for new subscriptions to access census data, the Census Bureau has tried to keep pace with the increasing service-level demands. While the Census Bureau had the data, it could not scale the related information services. Meanwhile, existing subscribers were limited to smaller information sets and unpredictable service levels. The cost of this infrastructure was ballooning as progressively more administrative time was consumed to support it.
Simple and Efficient Solution with 3PAR
The Census Bureau set out to deploy a new utility computing infrastructure that would allow it to scale easily and share data more effectively. This new infrastructure utilizes multiple Linux-based servers that are scaled centrally and modularly to match the deployment of new remote facilities. For its storage needs, the Census Bureau considered solutions from several leading vendors before choosing a 3PAR InServ S400 Storage Server. Since then, the system has been steadily and non-disruptively scaled up to 35 terabytes, all within a standard 19" cabinet.
With this new Utility Storage solution, the Census Bureau has been able to avoid costly traditional infrastructure purchases as well. The built-in volume management capabilities of the InServ Storage Server have saved the Bureau nearly $100,000 in host volume management software. By leveraging the abundant native host connectivity of the InServ Storage Server, the Bureau has also postponed the purchase of additional switching infrastructure. Lastly, 3PAR's support for open high-availability solutions has enabled the Bureau to eliminate proprietary and expensive multi-pathing alternatives.
The biggest savings, however, have come in administration. The Census Bureau simply could not afford to scale storage administration in step with increasing capacity or user base. With 3PAR, the Bureau has been able to scale 300% over its previous environment while simultaneously reducing administration by 95%. Storage management tasks that were performed manually are now automated. The time required for other tasks has been greatly reduced. For example, expanding a volume, which used to take 45 minutes, now takes only seconds with 3PAR. The overall storage administration burden is now less than 5% of an administrator's time.
The 3PAR InServ Storage Server was sold through SANZ, Inc., a storage solutions provider with broad storage knowledge and experience in Fortune 2000 and Federal Government accounts. "Utility Storage is a very important technology for government agencies," commented John Jenkins, Chairman and CEO of SANZ. "Agencies like the Census Bureau are being squeezed by user demands on one hand and limited resources on the other. 3PAR lets them do much more with less."
"3PAR continues to gain traction in the government sector," said David Scott, CEO of 3PAR. "Since opening our Washington D.C. office a year ago, we have seen tremendous growth. We can now count several major federal departments and agencies as Utility Storage customers."
About 3PAR
3PAR® (NYSE Arca: PAR) is the leading global provider of utility storage, a category of highly virtualized, tightly-clustered, and dynamically-tiered storage arrays built for utility computing. Organizations use utility computing to build cost-effective virtualized IT infrastructures for flexible workload consolidation. 3PAR Utility Storage gives customers an alternative to traditional arrays by delivering resilient infrastructure with increased agility at a lower total cost to meet their rapidly changing business needs. As a pioneer of thin provisioning — a green technology developed to address storage underutilization and inefficiencies — 3PAR offers products designed to minimize power consumption and promote environmental responsibility. With 3PAR, customers have reduced the costs of allocated storage capacity, administration, and SAN infrastructure while increasing adaptability and resiliency. 3PAR Utility Storage is built to meet the demands of open systems consolidation, integrated data lifecycle management, and performance-intensive applications.
