Sunnyvale, Calif.-February 17,
2009-NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced that Nixon
Peabody LLP, one of the largest multipractice law firms in the
United States, has improved its virtualization infrastructure,
enhanced its disaster recovery capabilities, and increased
operational efficiencies in its data center operations by unifying
its storage and network on NetApp® and Cisco Ethernet
solutions.
Nixon Peabody has offices in 19 cities
throughout the world with more than 825 attorneys collaborating in
21 major practice areas. As a law firm, Nixon Peabody is faced with
management and cost of ownership challenges surrounding a growing
volume of electronic data. To meet these needs, the firm
transitioned from its previous Fibre Channel infrastructure to a
10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) infrastructure that uses NetApp FAS
storage and Cisco Catalyst switching solutions.
"We needed a better way to manage our data,"
said Peter Allen, director of IT Operations at Nixon Peabody.
"NetApp and Cisco provided us with a solution that better positions
the firm to meet our clients' evolving needs. The combination of
NetApp and Cisco helped us deliver on a number of operational goals
such as ease of management, flexibility, scalability, business
continuity, and disaster recovery."
Nixon Peabody deployed a NetApp FAS6040
storage system along with two Cisco Catalyst 6509 Ethernet switches
in its primary data center using 10GbE interconnects. The dual
Cisco Catalyst 6509 switches operate in a Virtual Switching System
(VSS) cluster and help provide continuous operation of the firm's
network, storage, and virtual environment in the event of a
failure. The firm's staff is now able to perform maintenance
activities without any scheduled downtime, providing the highest
level of system availability to its attorneys and clients.
Furthermore, by deploying a 10GbE infrastructure along with VMware,
Nixon Peabody was able to deploy 210 production virtual servers on
just 15 physical servers. As a result of this virtualization
project, which utilizes Cisco and NetApp as the core
infrastructure, Nixon Peabody has decreased its data center power
consumption by approximately 30%, supporting the firm's Legally
Green initiative and lowering operational costs. Additionally,
Nixon Peabody greatly benefited from NetApp's multiprotocol support
delivered from a single, unified storage system architecture for
added flexibility.
"Moving to our Ethernet infrastructure has
really helped us take full advantage of our virtualized server
environment," continued Allen. "With the Ethernet network
infrastructure we now have in place, we are getting so much more
performance and scalability out of our VMware® server
environment. This also enabled us to cost effectively build out our
disaster recovery strategy. Going into this deployment, we were
confident that Cisco and NetApp were going to deliver to us the
most efficient and flexible storage and networking solution out
there, and we have not been disappointed."
Ethernet Unification Center of
Excellence
As further testament to NetApp and Cisco's commitment to network
virtualization, the two companies have worked together to develop
an Ethernet Unification Center of Excellence on NetApp's campus in
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina that features Ethernet-based
protocols running on a Cisco 10GbE backbone. Customers who want to
witness real-time demonstrations of Cisco and NetApp unified
network and storage architectures and learn Ethernet storage best
practices can visit the NetApp center of excellence, which opened
in November 2008. NetApp and Cisco have also worked together to
provide similar demonstrations at Cisco's Data Center Network
Application Lab (DNA Lab) in San Jose, CA.
"Our relationship with NetApp is a natural
fit as both companies aim to deliver products that help customers
streamline and enhance their data centers," said Walt Blomquist,
vice president in Cisco's Campus Switching Systems business unit.
"With our leadership in Ethernet networking and NetApp's leadership
in Ethernet storage, customers can benefit from the best of both
worlds. Furthermore, NetApp's center of excellence provides
customers with an invaluable tool to learn more about how they can
incorporate Ethernet technology into their data centers today."
"Customers like Nixon Peabody are a great
example of how the synergies between NetApp and Cisco deliver
Ethernet storage and networking solutions that reduce costs and
power use, and boost manageability in the data center," said
Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing for NetApp.
"The center of excellence is only further proof of this and is a
breakthrough for customers, enabling them to get an up close and
personal look at the power of a converged data center and the
benefits it affords."
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Press Contact:
Ryan Lowry
NetApp
(408) 822-7544
ryanl@netapp.com