‘Set It and Forget It’ is How Dutch Municipality Den Bosch Calls Its New All-Flash Storage System

Den Bosch Reflects on a Decade of Modern Data Storage

Ten years ago, Den Bosch—a Dutch municipality with 2,500 employees serving a community of 160,740 inhabitants—concluded its data storage system was no longer fit for purpose. The city began a tender process for a modern solution. It got a bid from Netherlands-based data specialists at AnyLinQ who worked in collaboration with Huawei. Back then, Den Bosch were keen to learn more about its relationship with the global technology provider. Fast-forward to today, the municipality is reaping the benefits of its decision to adopt Huawei’s OceanStor Dorado 5000 data storage solution, backed by AnyLinQ’s expertise and support.

A Space-consuming, Energy-hungry Legacy Storage System

Tjeerd de Jong, the municipality’s ICT Specialist responsible for storage and backup, recalled: “We had an enormous storage environment. I think it occupied about twenty 19-inch racks in total. It was also very expensive to run, so we needed a more cost-effective solution with a smaller physical footprint.”

In addition, there were concerns around whether the aging storage environment would be able to keep pace with the municipality’s growing and diverse data demands, encompassing a range of areas from storing and accessing residents' personal information to driving license administration. Generating and analysing reports on municipal data to inform decision-making and policy development further added to the strain.

Beyond these challenges Den Bosch wanted to simplify its O&M (Operations & Maintenance), which was complicated by multiple storage devices. Ensuring high reliability was another critical goal; the new solution had to guarantee zero data loss and zero impact on host services.

A Space-saving, Energy-efficient Solution

AnyLinQ proposed a Huawei OceanStor Dorado 5000 all-flash storage system, which proved to be the ideal solution to Den Bosch’s needs. The next-generation system enables high availability and utilisation. It offers huge storage capacity and fast data access. Consequently, Den Bosch now enjoys 100% reliability, 13% better performance, and 40% higher O&M efficiency.

The system’s reliability is achieved through a four-level approach to data integrity and availability. This approach includes hardware redundancy, ensuring that multiple hardware components can take over if one fails. It also provides robust data protection by utilising techniques like RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) to prevent data loss. Software and system mechanisms provide resilience, maintaining continuous operation even during failures. In the event of a major incident, integrated backup and recovery solutions can restore data and services.

Non-disruptive system upgrades allow for seamless operations. Additionally, the system upholds fair trials by making sure that all information is available, accurate, and unaltered, maintaining the integrity of any judicial proceedings.

The improved performance is due to FlashLink algorithms, which optimise how data is stored and accessed on flash storage systems. This ground-breaking technology achieves stable performance, low latency, and high IOPS (input/output operations per second), helping staff process and manage cases more efficiently.

The system’s increased O&M efficiency is made possible by its full-mesh A-A (active-active) architecture, a network design where all nodes (servers and storage devices) are interconnected. This setup assures that if one node fails, others can take over without interruption. Load balancing distributes data and workloads evenly across all nodes, preventing bottlenecks and improving performance. Another feature of this architecture is its scalability; new nodes can be easily added without requiring significant reconfiguration.

A Long-standing, Successful Collaboration

Looking back on the ten-year history with AnyLinQ and Huawei, Tjeerd de Jong remarked: “The collaboration has proven to be a success. As an example, AnyLinQ offered to review our backup solution and showed it could be much more cost-effective and efficient. I could not have foreseen this would grow into such a long and successful collaboration. Huawei’s technology not only met our requirements but has exceeded our expectations. It’s basically ‘set it and forget it’.”

A technical expert from AnyLinQ noted: "Our strategic approach to managing data efficiently, combined with Huawei’s future-proof, advanced technology, has proven to be the perfect partnership. Den Bosch’s requirements aligned with our combined strengths, and we are proud of what we have achieved on their behalf.”

Echoing this sentiment, a product specialist at Huawei added: “OceanStor Dorado 5000's compact design and advanced energy management features significantly reduce physical footprint and power consumption, enabling Den Bosch to run its services more sustainably.”