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Case Study
Aalborg Kommune builds new
data centres with the future
in mind
Objective
Achieve the flexibility and scalability
required to support the growing number
of systems demanded by users who rely
on Aalborg Kommune’s network
Approach
As a satisfied HPE customer, Aalborg
Kommune purchased an HPE solution
based on an existing agreement. They
saw no reason to change vendor
IT Matters
• Reduced the number of switches to be
monitored from 24 to 5, easing network
management
• Provided a resilient solution, enabling
IT to focus on meeting new user
demands
• Fully leveraged existing knowledge,
protecting investments
Business Matters
• Increased flexibility and scalability,
ensuring future user demands can
be met
• Delivered a simple to deploy solution,
enabling users to benefit from an
improved network response without
experiencing problems from downtime
• Allowed the expansion of
e-administration services, reducing
administrative costs and enabling new
business
HPE solution allows flexibility
and scalability for future expansion
An important government
body relies on an
HPE solution
The Danish municipality of Aalborg’s
cramped data centre had no room for
expansion to meet the growing demands
of its users. Three new state-of-the-art
data centres now provide the space and
scalability required. The data centre relies
on an easy to manage HPE solution for
flexibility and resilience, and for meeting
users’ future demands.
Challenge
Flexible data centre needed
“Managing our data centre network was
a challenge. It was designed 15 years ago,
before the internet, and not very flexible,”
says Peter Jakobsen, network systems
engineer, Aalborg Kommune. “If the users
had asked us to create a new system we
might have had to say no because we didn’t
have the space and the bandwidth.”
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Case study
Aalborg Kommune
“We have been using HPE for the last 15 years. We know it well. It’s a stable,
easy to manage, cost eicient solution that comes with a lifetime warranty.”
– Peter Jakobsen, network systems engineer, Aalborg Kommune
Industry
Government: State
and Local
Page 2
Jakobsen’s team supports 14,000 users
and their 7,500 PCs across 800 locations
in the 1,100 km2 municipality of Aalborg
in Denmark. With two networks – one for
administration and one for students – to
manage, Jakobsen was certain the old data
centre would not serve users’ needs into the
future: it had no room for expansion. “It was
diicult to install new equipment because of
the huge amount of cable,” notes Jakobsen.
“We needed a data centre to give us space
and where it would be easy to add and
remove equipment.”
Expanding e-administration capabilities
The administration of the municipal district
of Aalborg had become increasingly
dependent on IT services for carrying out
its duties. As e-administration capabilities
expanded, ensuring delivery of the systems
demanded by its seven independent
departments was becoming even more
crucial. “Everything is done electronically
today,” Jakobsen explains.
A crucial part of the IT infrastructure,
Aalborg Kommune’s network supports
more than 400 applications, ranging from
internal systems for supporting healthcare
for the elderly and handicapped to publicfacing, self-service applications for the
municipality’s 203,000 citizens.
Providing room for expansion
The municipal authorities recognised the
need for a new data centre to provide
enough headroom for expansion. The new
data centre needed to deliver security
and resilience, reduce power consumption
and simplify management of their vast
architecture.
They commissioned three new state-of-theart data centres to replace the cramped,
outmoded one located in a basement.
Jakobsen described the new facilities, “We
built one primary data centre with a lot of
space to allow for eventually extending
in the future, then a second data centre
in another building location 8 km away,
for redundancy, and a third data centre
elsewhere for backups.”
Solution
Scalability vital for future expansion
Today, the administration knows its two
networks and three data centres can cope
with the ever-increasing demand from its
users.
The network includes 50 stackable Aruba
3800 Series Switches and 4 modular HPE
8212 Series Switches, allowing Aalborg
Kommune to achieve the flexibility and
scalability vital for future expansion.
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Case study
Aalborg Kommune
Industry
Government: State
and Local
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Peter and his team deployed the Aruba
3800 switches, two per rack, as top-of-rack
switches. Two 10 Gb trunks provide uplift
to the HPE 8212 switches, which connect to
the core.
“We chose the Aruba 3800 switches for a
number of reasons: we needed a real stack
environment, it is a high density switch with
48 1 Gb ports and four 10 Gb ports, it has
dual power supply for redundancy and it has
a lifetime warranty,” explains Jakobsen
“The lifetime warranty is important to us. If
a device breaks and is no longer available,
HPE provides a similar device – a newer
version.”
HPE at the edge
At the network’s edge are more than
1,000 devices in 800 dierent buildings,
connected using HPE 2600 Series Switches
and HPE 3500 Series Switches. Aruba
5400 Series Switches connect 30 backbone
devices.
No reason to change
A satisfied HPE customer, Aalborg
Kommune purchased these devices based
on an existing agreement. Jakobsen felt no
reason to switch from HPE. “We have been
working with HPE products for the past
15 years. We needed to do this installation
quickly and working with products we
trusted and knew inside out really helped.
There was just no reason to start again with
a new vendor.” Network deployment took
just six weeks.
Jakobsen’s relationship with HPE is
exceptional. “We have helped beta-test HPE
ProCurve Manager (PCM) Plus for the past
5 years,” says Jakobsen. “I visited HPE in the
US and shared my ideas for PCM+. There
are many good ideas in PCM+: it delivers the
documentation for your topology – vital for
good network management.
“Some of my ideas are being moved to
HPE Intelligent Management Center (IMC)
because that is the future management
platform.”
A network to showcase
The contribution of Jakobsen and HPE
Services’ knowledge and experience to the
design of the network played a vital role in
achieving an extremely flexible network with
such a high level of resilience.
Jakobsen designed the network to preserve
itself and its components in the event of an
incident; HPE reviewed his ideas. “The whole
design creates redundancy, it is a showcase
of the right way to do it,” says Jakobsen.
Benefits
Enhanced flexibility
The Aruba 3800 switches not only have
the flexibility of a stackable form factor,
they have 10 Gb expandability to support
bandwidth-intensive applications, providing
investment protection for future needs.
“The flexibility we have is a huge benefit,”
advises Jakobsen. “We now have a system
that can cope with future demands and can
create new systems demanded by the users.
“It is much more flexible when you have to
add more equipment: we no longer have to
pull new cables because they are already
installed in the racks. You just have to
add the new equipment, put the network
connections into the network switches and it
just runs the way it should.
“When you have 10 Gb links it is easier
to add extra VLANs and now we have
the option to use 10 Gb everywhere – a
huge dierence to the 1 Gb links we had
previously. The 10 Gb fibre is key to making
our network design work. Currently we
have 450 km of fibre installed across our
municipality.”
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Case study
Aalborg Kommune
Industry
Government: State
and Local
Customer at a glance
Hardware
• 50 x Aruba 3800 Series Switches
• 4 x HPE 8212 Series Switches
Software
• HPE ProCurve Manager Plus
• HPE Intelligent Management Center
HPE services
• HPE Proactive Care Service
“It is great to work with equipment that is not only easy to
work with, but that you can trust and rely on.”
– Peter Jakobsen, network systems engineer, Aalborg Kommune
Easier to monitor and manage
It is now easier to find your way around the
network, improving network monitoring
significantly. “The way it is structured now,
monitoring is easier,” adds Jakobsen. All
the racks are designed the same so it’s
much easier to find your way around. All
the devices have a unique naming structure
and unique address, and all the ports on the
switches are designed for a specific purpose
– so you know where things are.”
Even when a stackable switch is operated
with other units, there is only ever a single
management interface for the network
administrator to deal with. This simplifies
the setup and operation of the network.
“You only have to manage 1 switch for each
stack, meaning I only have to manage 5
switches instead of the 24 I would have had
to manage previously.”
Increased recognition
The leading-edge nature of Aalborg
Kommune’s project has generated a great
deal of interest amongst other Nordic
municipalities. “We had a visit from a
municipality in Norway,” says Jakobsen.
“They were so impressed they took some
ideas back with them to implement in their
own data centre.”
The network’s users have been impressed
too – by what they haven’t seen rather than
by what they have. “I believe I have gained
new recognition with our users – they have
been very surprised,” Jakobsen explains.
“We have moved the complete infrastructure
from one address to another in a short time
and the users were surprised because they
didn’t have any problems with downtime.”
Ready for the future
Jakobsen is now looking forward to the
future with confidence. “The system is more
responsive for the users and we now have a
system that can cope with future demands:
now that we have the space and the
bandwidth we need, we have the ability to
create the new systems that the users want,”
concludes Jakobsen.
Learn more at
hpe.com/networking
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© 2013, 2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without
notice. The only warranties for Hewlett Packard Enterprise products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements
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be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. .
4AA4-6402EEW, July 2016, Rev. 1
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