Press Releases
Washington, D.C. Utility Chooses 3PAR
3PAR Streamlines Operations and Increases Reliability for D.C. Utility with Rapid Provisioning and Remote Copy
FREMONT, CA —October 3, 2006
3PAR®, the leading provider of Utility Storage, announced today that the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DCWASA), a regional authority serving both retail and wholesale customers, has selected 3PAR Utility Storage with 3PAR Remote Copy and Rapid Provisioning to store and remotely replicate all metering, billing and machine health data for its entire operation. DCWASA chose 3PAR Utility Storage for its unmatched simplicity and scalability.
"Without thinking about it, millions rely on us daily to provide economical and reliable service," said Joe Edwards, Team Lead Network Administrator at DCWASA. "With 3PAR, we now have that same peace of mind. It just works."
DCWASA is a multi-jurisdictional regional utility that provides drinking water, wastewater collection and treatment to more than 500,000 retail residential, commercial and governmental customers in the District of Columbia. In addition to storing customer data, the DCWASA IT infrastructure must monitor and track the state of the utility's entire distribution system, which consists of pumping stations and thousands of valves and hydrants along 1,300 miles of pipe.
In considering enterprise storage systems, DCWASA needed a storage environment easy enough for anyone on staff to administer, regardless of level of technical expertise. Prior to switching to 3PAR, provisioning storage to new servers had become a tedious task requiring hours of planning and provisioning. Of the wide range of vendors DCWASA considered, 3PAR was the only one that did not require either expensive consulting services or a painstaking and complex configuration process that would demand special administrative expertise.
"As with any utility, simplicity and efficiency are what enable DCWASA to deliver high, predictable levels of service," said Evaluator Group Senior Analyst Tom Trainer. "3PAR Utility Storage is the only storage platform available today that was designed from the ground up to specifically meet these needs."
DCWASA has been able to eliminate the complex planning and setup needed with the previous storage system by making use of 3PAR Rapid Provisioning, which automates the configuration process and distributes data across all the disks in the array. After implementing 3PAR Utility Storage to support Microsoft Windows, Oracle®, Domino and Microsoft Exchange databases, DCWASA now enjoys a simplified storage infrastructure, alleviating its administrative burden and reducing operational complexity.
"With 3PAR Rapid Provisioning, we can now meet storage requests so quickly that when database administrators put in a request for new storage, that request is completed before they can return to their desk," said Edwards.
3PAR also helps DCWASA offer more reliable service with 3PAR Remote Copy. DCWASA uses 3PAR Remote Copy in synchronous mode to ensure that mission-critical data is always consistent and current between the main production facility and the disaster recovery facility. Even when using synchronous replication over a distance of half a mile, 3PAR performance is still 30-40% faster than DCWASA's previous storage system. Periodic testing of the failover environment used to take an entire Saturday, but now takes only a few minutes with 3PAR.
DCWASA has also been able to streamline its SAN environment with 3PAR. The InServ array's large number of host port connections have eliminated the need for installing and administering additional SAN switches. In addition, DCWASA uses 3PAR Virtual Copy in conjunction with Nearline drives to capture multiple recovery points affordably, instantly and non-disruptively.
"As a public utility, DCWASA understands that simplicity and efficiency are the critical elements that allow the delivery of reliable and affordable services," said David Scott, President and CEO of 3PAR. "For data storage, there is no better platform than 3PAR's to support the needs of a utility."
About 3PAR
3PAR® (NYSE: 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. For more information, visit the 3PAR Website at: www.3PAR.com.
