SEC Chooses Scalent to Enable Multi-Use of Disaster Recovery Assets

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has chosen Scalent System's virtual operating environment (V/OE) software for use in its disaster recovery (DR) sites. Scalent V/OE will enable the SEC to transition servers and associated network and storage connectivity between virtualized test use and "bare-metal" production use in real-time, dramatically improving efficiency and asset utilization while maintaining reliability and reducing overall costs. Scalent Systems, is a provider of real-time management and automation software for large data centers. The SEC, like many of today's data center owners, faced escalating costs, security, and reaction-time challenges resulting in a lack of IT agility in the face of rapidly changing operational demands. The SEC was facing immense expenditure to maintain both system test capabilities (QA Test infrastructure) and system backup capabilities (standby server infrastructure) because the physical and virtual machines, network, and storage connectivity couldn't be rapidly shifted between tasks. If the SEC had followed the existing data center model, they would have had to maintain massive, unused DR asset capacity, while at the same time incurring additional costs to create sufficient test capacity.

Instead, the SEC chose Scalent V/OE software. Scalent's software is unique in that it enables data center operations owners to rapidly move full images and connectivity, across virtual or physical infrastructure, x86 or SPARC-based. Scalent V/OE can change entire systems of servers and associated topologies all without physical intervention. "The SEC demands absolute reliability, so trading off between having infrastructure available for DR or test machines wouldn't be an option. What's unique is that by implementing Scalent software, the SEC can maintain the same reliability with greater efficiency, by enabling real-time repurposing of a single physical infrastructure," said George Crump, principal analyst, Storage Switzerland, in a press release.