Press Release : April 25, 2012

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AMD Selects HP for Cloud Data Center

Standardizing with HP helps AMD reduce its data-center footprint by more than 50 percent

Topics:Strategic Focus: Cloud, Strategic Focus: Software, Technology and Innovation, Converged Infrastructure

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- HP today announced that AMD (NYSE: AMD) has improved business efficiency and streamlined operations by consolidating its worldwide data centers and standardizing on HP Networking solutions.
AMD’s innovative computing and graphics technologies run a wide range of computing devices – such as personal computers, game consoles and servers – all of which power internet and business operations spanning cloud computing and virtualization environments throughout the world.

With 18 data centers worldwide, AMD recognized the need to consolidate its infrastructure to optimize resources as well as improve power and cooling efficiency. AMD conducted a comprehensive testing and review process of solutions from multiple networking vendors before choosing HP. The HP 12500 Switch Series and HP 5820 Switch Series will be used in AMD’s newest private cloud data center, where the company makes heavy use of virtualization and cluster technologies.

“We were experiencing suboptimal business operations due to infrastructure sprawl,” said Farid Dana, director, IT, Global Infrastructure Services, AMD. “HP Networking’s open, standards-based architecture offered us the flexibility to easily integrate solutions and expand our infrastructure while leveraging existing investments.”

Additionally, AMD deployed HP server solutions, including HP ProLiant BL465c G7 servers with AMD Opteron 6200 Series processors, to help improve the compute power of its internal engineering cloud, which performs up to 40 million engineering simulations per month. The HP server platform supports AMD’s virtualized environment as well as the company’s business applications and services.

Implementing HP Networking and server technologies helped AMD reduce its data-center footprint by more than 50 percent while increasing network capacity and improving performance. AMD plans to upgrade other sites with HP Networking hardware in the near future.

• AMD also engaged HP Critical Facilities Services (CFS) to build a new data center. HP CFS provides consulting, design and assurance services for building new or retrofitting legacy data centers. Working with HP CFS, AMD designed the data center from the ground up to meet changing business requirements with lower facilities capital and operating costs.
• More information about HP Networking solutions is available at www.hp.com/networking.

HP’s premier client event, HP Discover, takes place June 4-7 in Las Vegas.

International Law Firm Enhances Virtualization Performance With Brocade VDX Data Center Switches

International Law Firm Enhances Virtualization Performance With Brocade VDX Data Center Switches

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Watson, Farley & Williams to Tackle Data Growth and Reduce Server Footprint Through a Brocade Data Center Networking Solution

LONDON -- (Marketwire) -- 04/24/2012 -- To address IT challenges resulting from business growth and international expansion, Watson, Farley & Williams has turned to Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) to deliver a high-performance data center networking solution based on Brocade^® VDX® 6720 Data Center Switches. Deployed at the law firm's London headquarters, the new infrastructure delivers 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) performance and underpins the firm's virtualized data center strategy.

Watson, Farley & Williams employs 630 staff located across 13 worldwide offices that provide a wide range of legal services in various industry sectors such as finance and investment, maritime, energy, natural resources, transport, property and technology. The firm has seen a strong rate of growth over the past three years and has, on average, opened one new office every 18 months since 2006. The new data center network deployment will provide the performance and resilience needed to support higher traffic and daily data volumes, but will also give Watson, Farley & Williams the long-term flexibility and capacity it needs as the business expands.

Richard Latham, the firm's IT manager, explains, "Every three years, we replace our storage to add more capacity given we are supporting more users and more locations. During this particular cycle, all three elements were upgraded -- storage, servers and the network -- in order to improve the performance of our virtualized data center."

Watson, Farley & Williams' virtualization programme has reduced its hardware footprint and saved cost with five physical IBM servers installed -- and associated Net App fabric-attached storage -- running 88 virtual servers using VMware vSphere. However, the law firm was finding that the 1 GbE links between servers and associated storage were reaching their capacity.

Watson, Farley & Williams network analyst Graham Kirk says, "A solution could have been to trunk four Gigabit Ethernet connections together to solve this, but we wanted to avoid this by going straight for 10 Gigabit Ethernet, which means we don't have to address the server/storage network equipment for the next three years, which is our typical refresh cycle."

The importance of this is considerable as the infrastructure is common to all IT services provided to the firm's staff both locally and internationally. This includes Watson, Farley & Williams' e-mail solution, electronic document management, office applications, knowledge management and CRM systems, time recording and practice management software.

Data growth in the business has been vast. Latham says, "Our data vault is now about 44 terabytes of which a huge proportion is e-mail, which is the lifeblood of any law firm given documents are sent to and from clients all the time. We use a multilayered, clustered solution, which is mirrored offsite to ensure availability, the knock-on effect being servers and their storage need to be high-performing."

The firm deployed two Brocade VDX 6720 switches for resiliency. Kirk explains, "We did a side-by-side comparison with [a competitor] and the Brocade VDX 6720 switches won hands-down given they deliver far better price/performance benefits and are much easier to install. We estimate time savings of 30 to 40 percent on the whole project of six weeks."

Latham concludes, "We are obsessed with removing risk. If the core server/storage infrastructure in London had become unavailable, then all 630 staff worldwide would be impacted in some way. The [Brocade VDX] upgrade could have been a risk, but it simply wasn't, which is a credit to Brocade."

Marcus Jewell, country manager UK/Ireland at Brocade, stated, "The Brocade VDX 6720 Data Center Switches have solved Watson, Farley & Williams' storage network performance issues with the virtualized servers now responding much better. The firm's requirements have been met and the feedback we have received is that the installation has practically been an 'install and forget' process -- a perfect outcome given law firms can't tolerate any systems downtime."

About Brocade Data Center Networking SolutionsNetwork architects are now looking for ways to build more powerful, flatter networks that can support higher traffic loads and increased east-to-west traffic in virtualized environments, all while avoiding network congestion. Collapsing network layers also reduces complexity, which lowers overhead costs and reduces risk. This type of design, however, requires high-density, high-bandwidth network components that deliver full wire-speed connectivity. With its Ethernet fabric technology and the industry's most powerful routers for enterprise data centers, Brocade can help organizations build flatter, simpler networks today -- and at measurably lower cost than the competition.

For more information, please visit www.brocade.com.

About Brocade

Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) networking solutions help the world's leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)