The City of Charlotte’s data center was literally bursting at the seams. Server sprawl was consuming too much
space, power, and cooling, and threatening to spill hardware into adjoining conference rooms. New Century
Systems helped Charlotte reduce its hardware footprint and implement Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for
better information sharing and business agility.
New Century Systems (NCS) helps cure server sprawl for the
City of Charlotte with HP Converged Infrastructure and VDI
The City of Charlotte, NC is America’s 19th largest city, and the center of the nation’s sixth largest urban
region. Charlotte is home to about 750,000 people – an increase of more than 35% since 2000 – as well
as nearly 3,500 companies with revenues of $1 million or more.
NCS has been providing IT support to the City of Charlotte for well more than a decade. Headquartered in
the city since its inception in 1993, NCS enhances client performance through innovative and effective use
of the latest in IT. As an HP Public Sector Specialist Partner, NCS offers direct purchasing and competitive
pricing from HP backed by a talented staff with years of experience.
Public Sector
Specialist
Phone: 704.523.2515
Business Situation
The Solution
Dan Heller is the Data Center Manager for the City
of Charlotte. Before the new converged
infrastructure was put into place, each city
department had its own data center, including
utilities, police, and fire. The center supporting the
central offices had grown to comprise about 100
rack-mounted HP ProLiant servers, and it always
seemed to require more.
Facing this challenge, Heller and his team called on
NCS to develop and implement HP’s Converged
Infrastructure with desktop virtualization to reduce
data center volume and expenses, and eventually
allow for a much needed consolidation of city
departments and IT efficiency.
“Our data centers were filling up fast, and there
were more and more demands from internal users
for more processing capabilities,” Heller recalled.
“The energy bills were becoming a real money
sink. We were also running out of space to host
more equipment, sacrificing areas such as our
conference room.”
Fax: 704.248.0454
www.ncsinc.net
The HP Converged Infrastructure provides a
systematic approach that brings all server, storage,
and networking resources together into a common
pool that can be allocated dynamically to different
tasks rather than restricting each to a single user,
job, or application.
The Results
NCS helped Heller’s group specify an HP
Converged Infrastructure solution based on
Proliant blade servers, EVA and LeftHand Storage,
and Virtual Connect technology. Working closely
together, the two teams developed an architecture
that replaced most of the overstuffed data centers
with just 12 Blade chassis systems, each running
VMWare ESX and supporting 16 blades running 10
to 12 virtual machines a piece.
Affordability was key. “We ran a number of costcomparisons with other companies, and although
HP is rumored to be more expensive, that wasn’t
true for us,” Heller said. “Rick (NCS CEO) gets
the best deals with HP, and the support is good.
Between HP and NCS, we get the right resources
when we order new equipment, their teams are
always available, and they do the appropriate
knowledge-transfer.”
Charlotte’s updated Converged Infrastructure and
VDI project started in 2011 and is expected to be
complete by the end of 2012.
In late spring of 2012, the City deployed about 50
of a projected 400 HP Thin Client desktops, as
well as VMware and Citrix software. “We are about
30% virtualized now, and we want to reach 70
to 75%, and shrink machines, space, and power
consumption rather than grow it,” Heller reported.
Even with much work still remaining, the City is
receiving benefits in IT speed and agility. “Now we
can bring up a server in minutes by configuring a
new virtual machine,” Heller said. “That’s compared
to literally six weeks when we had to factor in
the time to quote, procure, receive, and install a
physical machine.”
“We get the right resources when we
order new equipment, their teams
are always available, and they do the
appropriate knowledge-transfer.”
- Dan Heller
Charlotte Data Center Manager
The Partnership
Heller likes working with the NCS team because
of their proven responsiveness. As one example,
NCS had previously relocated the City of
Charlotte’s entire data center to a new location
over a couple of weekends.
“Rick’s not a ‘nine-to-fiver.’ I can call him anytime
of the day and he’ll help me out. The entire
company is like that: we work with several of
their technical staff and they do the same,”
Heller said.
Working with NCS has also become easier for
the City of Charlotte and other governments
across the state. Following a model established
by Fairfax County, VA, Charlotte has adopted
a new project management model in which the
City can act as a contract manager for smaller
counties throughout North Carolina. This allows
hundreds of municipalities to take advantage of
the proven success of Charlotte’s relationship
with NCS, and attain the benefits of HP systems
with the convenience and value pricing available
to one of North Carolina’s largest and most
sophisticated public sector IT organizations.
About New Century Systems
Founded in 1993 by current president, Frederick (Rick) Denton, NCS has built a strong track record of enhancing
clients’ business performance through innovative uses of technology. Based in Charlotte, NC, NCS provides IT
solutions throughout the southeastern United States in vertical markets including government agencies, education,
financial institutions and more.
NCS’ successful partnerships with technology leaders including HP, VMware, and several others, as well as our years
of service expertise, provide the most up-to-date products and services to our customers. Whether you need to equip
your sales force with laptops, set-up your office with thin blade technology or install advanced servers and storage to
keep your operations running seamlessly, we can provide the right solution for you. Call to learn more:
704.523.2515
www.ncsinc.net