ARUBA J9576A Product Data Sheet

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.”

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 eicient 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
diicult 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.