[Case Study] County Eliminates Downtime and Data Loss with InfraStruXure Solution
“With the InfraStruXure installation, I was able to centralize all the servers, giving me the advantage of security, power protection, fire protection, and ease of maintenance.”
Chris Jones
IT Coordinator
County of Kershaw
Camden, SC
“The County of Kershaw, South Carolina, provides governmental services to over 58,000 residents in the Midlands area of South Carolina. Our centralized data center supports everything from tax collection to emergency management. Any time the system is down our revenues are affected: taxpayers can’t pay bills and employees can’t be paid. More importantly, downtime of the E-911 Computer Aided Dispatch systems means Police/Fire/EMS response could be delayed.
“The IT department has one employee – me – and I wear many hats, from maintenance to budgeting and future planning. Facing a down economy and budget cuts, I needed to upgrade the IT infrastructure on limited resources. Our servers were spread out all over the place and in different buildings, many with just a small UPS battery backup. They did not have a generator backup and were not fire protected. Some were placed right under sprinkler heads. Others were in common employee areas and employees actually used them as a terminal.
“Being familiar with APC by Schneider Electric from a previous job, I turned to their engineers to help me design a data center to bring everything into one room with security and environmental control. I needed a solution to house our rack-mounted servers and some tower servers with battery backup and cooling capability, while allowing for future growth.
“APC designed a 16kW InfraStruXure Solution with NetBotz monitoring, InRow SC cooling, and NetShelter SX rack. The InRow cooling made the solution unique: it contains all the heat and expels it from the room without needing a separate cooling unit.
“With the InfraStruXure installation, I was able to centralize all the servers, giving me the advantage of security, power protection, fire protection, and ease of maintenance. Our data and hardware are better protected, and maintenance will be easier because it is in one central location. I won’t have to drive out to remote locations to check on servers so there is also a cost savings in travel and fuel expenses.
“Financially justifying the purchase was a simple cost/benefit analysis. Our servers were spread out and unprotected, exposing the County to possible loss of data, security issues, hardware failures and the subsequent liabilities.
“InfraStruXure has afforded the County better protection of our servers in the long run, enabling me to monitor them easily and ensure uptime so the County can better serve our citizens. I don’t have to worry as much any more.”