DH2i Enables City of Aurora, Colorado to Enhance Performance and Ensure Reliability of Citywide Services, While Reducing Costs by Over 70%


Eliminates Restrictive Microsoft SQL Server Deployment Model and Cuts Licensing Costs In Half - Dramatically Increases Performance and Application Availability; Ensures SLA Compliance



FORT COLLINS, Colo. - DH2i™ Company, the leading provider of server application virtualization solutions, today announced that the City of Aurora, the 3(rd) largest populous city in the state of Colorado, has enhanced the performance and ensured the reliability of citywide services, while reducing costs by over 70%, with DH2i's DxConsole™ software.  By leveraging DxConsole features such as InstanceMobility™, prioritized failover and dynamic load balancing the City of Aurora has eliminated Microsoft's restrictive SQL Server deployment model and cut licensing costs in half, while dramatically increasing performance and application availability, as well as ensuring service level agreement (SLA) compliance.



The City of Aurora's IT organization supports all city departments, including but not limited to: city management, police, fire, safety, 911, and parks and recreation.  It does so via two true datacenters that currently support the IT requirements of the city's 3,000 plus employees, as well as maintains 24x7 access to its public website for its over 350,000 residents, and others that wish to visit.  Its datacenters support standard city management applications, such as computer aided dispatch, geography information systems, water and facilities management, police records management, building permits, tax and licensing, golf and recreation registration, financial and payroll system, storage and management, etc...



The City of Aurora's datacenters supported a storage area network (SAN) that was thin provisioned and oversubscribed.  In 2005, Microsoft SQL Server sprawl was reaching unmanageable proportions.  The IT team turned to a relatively new technology, VMware to begin to address the ensuing problems, virtualizing about 80% of its servers.  It also turned to PolyServe to address the severe SQL Server sprawl issue.  Until recently...



"Unfortunately, while our datacenters continued to grow, and as we were adding and refreshing infrastructure and applications, PolyServe was end-of-lifed," said Danny Santee, Enterprise Systems Architect, Information Technology, City of Aurora.  "That meant all product updates and support would be eliminated." He continued, "A very helpful HP Support Manager actually recommended we check-out a relative newcomer to the space, DH2i, as its co-founders were two of the senior members of the PolyServe development team.  He further suggested that he believed that the DH2i solution offered an even more robust solution for SQL Server management, overcoming the previous shortcomings of the PolyServe technology."



After exploratory calls, the City of Aurora IT organization initiated a DH2i "try before you buy" program, for a 30 day evaluation.  After a successful testing period, it went live initially supporting its fleet systems (i.e., responsible for city cars and trucks inventory, maintenance and repair records).



"We were very happy with the licensing model - happy that we could run multiple instances," said Santee.  "For SQL Server 2012, due to our purchase window of SQL Server 2008 R2 with SA, we were able to grandfather-in socket purchases - in other words, all sockets would receive a free upgrade.  This was a huge win as our goal is always to save our citizens money and spend our budget wisely."



Santee continued, "The licensing costs for SQL Server on VMware were crazy!   Enterprise Edition was four times as much per CPU, even though we really only functionally needed Standard Edition.  And, while so many still have the silo mentality - 'if you are doing it for your VMware, then do it for all your databases' - we must spend our citizens money wisely, so this model just didn't fit for us.  Today, not only are we saving money with DxConsole, our DBAs are significantly more productive, our systems more highly available and performance has been dramatically improved."



"The cost of using a VMware-based solution including hardware, Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition together with software support would have cost the City of Aurora roughly three quarters of a million dollars.  The cost of the DxConsole-based solution was less than 25% of what would have otherwise been spent," said Don Boxley, Co-Founder and CEO, DH2i.  "In addition to saving the City of Aurora a tremendous amount of money, they have been able to virtually eliminate the time needed to 'fight fires' and rededicate it to activities that support and enhance the services provided to the city departments and citizens of the City of Aurora."



City of Aurora Benefits Summary



    -  Overcame Restrictive Microsoft SQL Server Deployment Model - DxConsole's    InstanceMobility™ feature removed the rigid binding of one instance to one server; instances can now be moved more quickly, safely and reliably.

    -  Affordable and Reliable High Availability (HA) - With prioritized failover and other advanced features, DxConsole ensures that individual instance SLAs are always met with the highest levels of availability (HA), without the need for expensive hardware or Enterprise SQL Server licensing.

    -  Increased Performance - DxConsole enables dynamic, automatic and seamless load balancing of SQL Server instances to servers with the lightest workloads, and therefore capable of delivering the fastest performance.

    -  Cost Reductions of Over 70% - Microsoft SQL Server sprawl was eliminated, servers are now fully optimized, licensing costs were virtually cut in half, and labor intensive "fire fighting" eradicated.



For further information, please read the City of Aurora Case Study.



About DH2i



DH2i™ Company is the leading provider of server application virtualization solutions.  Its flagship software, DxConsole™ for Microsoft SQL Server, provides a unified operational model that orchestrates SQL Server management and high availability (HA) across heterogeneous physical and virtual infrastructure. DxConsole combines individual instance mobility and policy-based monitoring to intelligently automate IT operations and maintain required performance and availability SLAs while lowering overall costs by more than 50%.  For further information, please visit the DH2i website, call: 970-295-4505 or +44 20 3318 9204, or email: info@dh2i.com.



© DH2i Company 2013. DH2i, DxConsole, DxTransfer and InstanceMobility are trademarks of DH2i Company. All other brand or product names contained in this press release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.



PR Contact:

Nicole Gorman

Corporate Communications

DH2i Company

M: 508-397-0131

nicole.gorman@dh2i.com



SOURCE 

DH2i Company



Web Site: http://www.dh2i.com






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