TelecityGroup selects Dot Hill for clustered virtual desktop infrastructure

TelecityGroup has selected Dot Hill's AssuredSANTM Pro 5000 Series hybrid array with RealStorTM real-time autonomic tiering to support a clustered virtual desktop infrastructure in several of its new European facilities. TelecityGroup is incorporating the AssuredSAN Pro 5000 Series into its clustered Microsoft Server 2012 R2 virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) at its new data centres across Europe, including Warsaw, Sofia and Istanbul.

The AssuredSAN Pro 5000 is the first hybrid array to offer real-time data migration, allowing companies such as TelecityGroup to gain the most cost effective and efficient use of flash and SSD technology in their IT deployments. The AssuredSAN Pro 5000 with RealStor operates in response to the dynamic nature of modern data centre workloads by moving ‘hot’ data into high-performance flash storage in real-time while moving less active data onto more cost effective HDDs, helping to ensure that service providers can more easily meet demanding service level agreements.

TelecityGroup is the leading provider of carrier-neutral data centres in Europe, operating highly-connected facilities in key cities. These data centres are the places in which the separate networks that make up the internet meet and where bandwidth-intensive applications, content and information are hosted. As such, they are the key network hubs, or enabling environments, of the European digital economy. TelecityGroup’s customers take advantage of the highly-connected facilities to operate, store, share, distribute and access digital media, IT applications and information effectively and efficiently.

"We selected the AssuredSAN Pro 5000 based on some excellent customer references, our evaluation of its performance, and its ease of use," said Paul Bishop, CIO, TelecityGroup. “We are expanding our customer capacity in key European locations by building new data centres and expanding existing facilities, ensuring we have the capacity to support our clients’ growth.”

The AssuredSAN Pro 5000 Series offers distinct advantages over storage systems that use SSDs in a read cache configuration. With RealStor autonomic tiering, “hot” data is moved into the SSD tier to enable consistently fast access. This contrasts with most read cache implementations that rely on a simplistic algorithm to optimise read performance and lack intelligence to migrate cold data to more cost effective storage tiers. Dot Hill’s RealStor software detects priorities within the data set and delivers faster I/O immediately.

“Our AssuredSAN Pro 5000 Series features seriously smart RealStor software that responds to dynamically changing data without human intervention or policy settings” said Warren Reid, director of marketing EMEA, Dot Hill. “RealStor software takes tiered storage in a hybrid array to a new level — beyond other tiered storage systems that rely on off-hours batch migration, and into a new era of autonomic, real-time tiering.”