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Founded in 1682, Norfolk is now the second-largest city in Virginia. With more than 242,000 residents and a rich seafaring history, Norfolk is the cultural, educational, business and medical center of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. Norfolk hosts the world’s largest naval base and is one of the busiest international ports on the East Coast of the United States. The City of Norfolk employs approximately 6,000 people—including the city IT department, which is responsible for storing and maintaining vast amounts of complex data generated and utilized in a dynamic 24x7 environment.

Facing a storage conundrum Over time, the City of Norfolk’s IT department found itself facing a storage conundrum. The city was experiencing exponential growth in data volumes, and the existing SAN was rapidly running out of space. Meanwhile, new data-intensive applications were set to roll out as part of the city’s ongoing efforts to improve the services they provide their citizens. In particular, the impending launch of new major public safety systems was poised to significantly inflate data volumes. The storage shortfall was further compounded by rapidly rising maintenance costs and by power and cooling limitations in the data center.

After carefully evaluating five competing solutions, the best option to address the city’s storage needs also turned out to be the most affordable: IBM XIV Storage System. Says Bob Stone, senior network engineer for the city, “We needed a system that was scalable and very easy to manage, but on a very limited budget. When we started looking at IBM XIV, it really seemed like it was either going to be the best thing since sliced bread for us, or a lot of smoke and mirrors. And all I know is what I saw—it was very easy to manage and provision. It’s been the best decision I’ve made for the city as a network engineer in the 22 years I’ve been here.”

IBM XIV puts the City of Norfolk on the path to IT transformation

OverviewThe needThe City of Norfolk needed to increase its storage capabilities to provide employees and citizens with rapid, reliable services, as well as to shift the IT focus to delivering better performance and supporting new services rather than managing storage.

The solutionThe city engaged in an IT transformation by integrating its storage infrastructure on a single IBM® XIV® Storage System, enabling automated processes, improving performance and security, and reducing energy consumption.

The benefitWith the IBM solution, the City of Norfolk improved storage performance by 40 percent, cut power consumption in half, and significantly reduced time spent on storage management, freeing up IT resources to focus on delivering new services.

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After migrating to XIV, storage performance immediately surged 40 percent. Power and cooling costs plunged 50 percent compared with the previous SAN. And the advanced grid architecture of XIV means higher resiliency and redundancy for critical data.

Smarter storage that supports services city-wide The XIV is the city’s central storage repository, supporting the city’s PeopleSoft system, financial system, computer-aided dispatch system for the police department, Microsoft® Exchange e-mail server, geographic information system (GIS), police records, document imaging system, public utilities database, billing system, and other applications—including a total of 80 virtual machines. Since the initial rollout of the solution in 2009, the capacity of the XIV has more than doubled, from 27 to 67 terabytes.

“One thing that’s not reducing in the city is our need for storage,” Stone says. “When we first bought the XIV, it was pretty much just for applications. But here it is just two years later, and we’re dumping everything on the XIV: police cruiser videos, neighborhood surveillance videos, e-mails and documents. We know that putting everything on the XIV is the right decision because we no longer have to manage storage. And as you add more disk it gets faster.”

The flexibility, scalability and speed of XIV has transformed Norfolk’s storage infrastructure into a more integrated, automated and secure environment for both the IT department and the various city personnel who rely on the solution for their daily activities. It has also opened up storage services to more departments more quickly. “It definitely has allowed us to be very flexible and reactive on a moment’s notice. We never had the ability to quickly spin up storage like we can with our XIV system,” says Stone.

Integrated• Implemented a storage solution from IBM to integrate with existing infrastructure • Consolidated storage needs from a wide variety of mission-critical applications and data-intensive systems onto one platform

Automated• Dramatically reduced storage maintenance requirements, freeing up IT resources for more high-value tasks • Automated processes for storing, tagging and archiving data while improving performance and reducing energy consumption

Protected• Improved the security and resilience of data storage with real-time notification capabilities • Boosted emergency UPS battery backup life from a few minutes to a full nine minutes

Transformed • Removed barriers to progress by accommodating new data-intensive initiatives for police and other departments • Benefitted operations across the city by improving storage performance by 40 percent

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New levels of security and resilience XIV has also led to security and disaster recovery improvements for the City of Norfolk. Because the XIV system uses 50 percent less energy than the previous SAN system, UPS batteries can now power the system for nine minutes, compared to just a few minutes, as was previously the case. And e-mail alerts let IT staff know in real time when someone has logged in or out or made changes to the system. The capability of XIV to preemptively recognize disk failure has been another benefit, because it provides sufficient advance notice if a replacement drive is needed. XIV also logs and time stamps every change to every piece of data to help ensure that the city is compliant with audit requirements. “It keeps an eye on itself,” says Stone.

Transforming IT into a driving force of city operations With the help of XIV, Norfolk’s IT department is transforming how it supports the city. Since XIV has freed up a significant amount of time for Stone and his staff, they can better focus on delivering quality services, such as improving mobile connectivity in police cruisers. The XIV system has also been architected to support important new initiatives for the Norfolk Police Department, like the police in-car video recording system and closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems. The city’s latest initiatives include a system that monitors for the sound of a gunshot in problem neighborhoods. Once detected, the system uses the 911 dispatch center to automatically alert the nearest patrol car for a rapid response.

These technologies generate large volumes of data with long retention periods, but Stone says the city’s storage infrastructure is up to the task. “It makes me really proud to know how the storage has benefited the police in terms of speed, performance and availability—to know that the information they need is always available to them and can get to the cars so quickly,” he says. “It’s one piece of the IT infrastructure that benefits the whole city.”

Solution Components: Hardware • IBM® XIV® Storage System

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For more informationTo learn more about smarter computing from IBM and how we can help you integrate, automate, protect and transform your IT, contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit ibm.com/smartercomputing

For more information about the City of Norfolk, visit www.norfolk.gov