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Sun Technologies Deliver for Oregon Public Utility, MINET Solutions Accommodate Growth, Improve Service Delivery
Monmouth Independence Network (MINET) is a public utility that delivers voice, data and cable services to 3,500 customers in the cities of Monmouth and Independence, Oregon, using Sun technologies. Faced with the need to expand services while minimizing costs, providing for high performance and availability and scaling to support rapid growth, MINET looked to Sun for the servers, unified storage, flash memory, thin clients, and virtualization necessary to meet these business needs. MINET was no stranger to Sun technologies when it began its search for additional IT infrastructure, aided by Six Degrees Consulting. MINET chose to expand its infrastructure with additional Sun hardware and software. Along with a small footprint and low power requirements, Sun hardware delivers features such as chip multithreading (CMT), solid-state drives with flash memory, and virtualization with Logical Domains (LDoms). “We demand a lot of horsepower here, and I’m impressed with the performance of our Sun gear, certainly compared with competing vendors,” notes Phil Garrett, general manager at MINET. The company also chose to standardize on the Solaris 10 Operating System for its performance and built-in features such as bare metal recovery, the ZFS file system, and virtualization with Solaris Containers. In a mere 10 weeks, the equivalent of three full-time employees from MINET and Six Degrees Consulting implemented the new solution: Virtual PBX capabilities are provided by three Sun Fire X4150 servers that run the Mitel Unified IP Client for Sun Ray Software. Virtual desktops, managed by Sun Secure Global Desktop Software, run on virtual servers set up with Solaris Containers or LDoms. All virtual environments reside on a mix of 24 Sun Blade X6250 Server Modules and Sun Blade T6320 Server Modules, which are housed in a Sun Blade 6048 Chassis. All of the company’s services, including the new data backup offerings, rely on a multi-tiered, Open Storage solution. A Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server uses CMT to simultaneously process storage requests. One Sun StorageTek 6540 array serves as a redundant controller. Data that is often accessed by services is stored on one Sun Fire X4540 server. Data that is not often accessed resides on two Sun Storage J4500 arrays. Solaris ZFS gives IT personnel the ability to manage the various storage components as a single storage pool — and change components as needed without affecting availability. With the new IT infrastructure in place, administrators can set up virtual desktops in minutes using clones or golden images, which serve as template desktop environments. Customers can securely access their virtual desktops — running Windows, the Solaris OS, or Linux — from any browser (with optional SSL tunneling) using a Sun Ray thin client or a PC. The solution’s small footprint and energy requirements have also helped MINET save 25% annually on power, cooling, and space requirements. "By using Sun technologies, we’ve been able to realize a full 25% savings on power, cooling, and space requirements," says Garrett adding, “Our large power and cooling savings translates into more than just money savings. It also gives us more space that we can use to sell more services and generate additional revenue.” For example, MINET will soon offer video surveillance services and expand its service area to incorporate the state of Oregon. “Sun technologies deliver a lot of bang for the buck,” notes Garrett. “Through virtualization with Solaris Containers and LDoms, we can support a lot of services using a minimal amount of equipment. It’s fair to say that we will realize a complete return on investment in 12–36 months.” More Information
Flexible, Cost-Effective SOA with Sun GlassFish Enterprise Service Bus and Enterprise Server Sun x64 Servers Products and Services
Sun StorageTek 6540 Array
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By using Sun technologies, we’ve been able to realize a full 25% savings on power, cooling, and space requirements 
Sun Technologies Deliver for Oregon Public Utility, MINET
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