Efficient Netapp IT Empowers Denver Broncos to Invest in the Future
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Success Story Efficient NetApp IT Empowers Denver Broncos to Invest in the Future Another NetApp solution delivered by: Customer Profile High and the Paul D. Bowlen Memorial KEY HIGHLIGHTS The Denver Broncos are a professional Broncos Center at Dove Valley, a state- Industry football team based in Denver, Colorado. of-the-art facility where the team trains. Professional sports Owned by CEO Pat Bowlen and man- Day to day, the Broncos IT staff lever- aged by the Denver Broncos Football ages technology and delivers IT services The Challenge Club, the team is a member of the West that streamline operations, help the Meet the growing enterprise- Division of the American Football Con- team maintain its competitive edge, and level IT, storage, and operational ference (AFC) in the National Football foster a positive experience for fans. demands of a midsize organiza- League (NFL). The Broncos play at Activities such as negotiating trades tion tasked with supporting a Sports Authority Field at Mile High and and securing draft picks depend on winning football team. have four players in the Pro Football Hall management’s ongoing access to the of Fame: John Elway, Floyd Little, Gary The Solution organization’s Microsoft® Exchange ® Zimmerman, and Shannon Sharpe. Deploy NetApp FAS2240 Server e-mail system. On game day, storage systems in the primary The Challenge key applications that control the score- and secondary data centers to Maintaining a competitive board and audio systems that players provide asynchronous disaster football edge and coaches rely on must remain avail- recovery for each site. The Denver Broncos are one of the able. New initiatives such as a mobile video application for fans demand a Benefits most successful teams in NFL history, flexible, high-performance infrastructure • Empowers IT organization with winning two Super Bowls and six AFC that won’t let fans down. efficient, streamlined storage Championships. With an intensely loyal fan base, the team has succeeded management To meet current operational needs in selling out every home nonstrike • Eliminates off-site tape stor- and carry the organization forward, regular-season game since 1970 and age, reduces capex and opex, the IT staff established that it needed growing its waiting list for season tick- and accelerates recovery of to upgrade the storage environment. ets to 32,000 fans. critical Broncos data “We’re a relatively small shop with • Provides infrastructure to The Denver Broncos organization enterprise needs,” says Russ Trainor, seamlessly scale from 50 depends on an advanced IT infrastruc- Denver Broncos vice president of Infor- terabytes to 1 petabyte ture to operate both on and off the mation Technology. “We run opposing field. The organization of approximately team videos at Dove Valley, deliver 300 employees operates out of offices digital playbooks via Apple iPads to our at both Sports Authority Field at Mile team and coaches, and create a highly “With a flexible, dynamic NetApp environment, supporting innovative tools such as the Apple® iPad® running the PlayerLync App with digital playbooks, the entire Broncos organization can better support the Broncos team in taking on the opposition while we attract and retain fans for years to come.” Russ Trainor Vice President of Information Technology, Denver Broncos Football Club collaborative communication environ- plugging in cables, and setting up the robust APIs, and important technology ment for a sizable game-day staff at the communication protocols for the sys- partnerships. stadium. Our IT and storage demands tem,” says Trainor. “PEAK Resources for both performance and capacity are provides superior technical skills and The NetApp solution supports the orga- continually growing.” excellent customer service.” nization’s new PlayerLync application, which provides digital video playback, High performance, efficiency, and high The NetApp platform runs on the Data playbook, and communication features availability were top criteria for the new ONTAP® 8 architecture operating in to Broncos coaches, players, and storage solution, along with the flexibil- 7-Mode and stores more than 50 tera- the player personnel department as ity to accommodate 10GbE connectiv- bytes of data, with the ability to seam- they prepare for the next game. The ity when the time was right. The IT team lessly scale to a capacity of just under Broncos’ NetApp environment also wanted to step up its backup, restore, 1 petabyte. NetApp deduplication helps supports the organization’s Microsoft and disaster recovery capabilities. Inte- optimize the storage environment by Great Plains accounting software and gration with existing Microsoft, Cisco®, reducing storage requirements by up to the ThirdLight digital media manage- VMware®, and other technologies was 20 to 25%. “The NetApp FAS2240 sys- ment server, which enables internal imperative. In addition, the new storage tem offers us the efficiency and manage- employees, media, and sponsors to solution had to provide ample room to ability we need today, plus the flexibility retrieve Broncos event photographs, its grow for years into the future. and scalability to support delivery of new, Citrix farm servers, remote-user servers diverse IT services as Denver Broncos and file shares, an event management The Solution needs change,” says Chris Newman, IT application, security systems, various Supporting players, coaches, staff, architect for the Denver Broncos. application servers, and more. and fans The Broncos IT team deployed NetApp The NetApp solution will soon support The IT team uses NetApp OnCommand FAS2240 storage systems in the club’s the Broncos’ Microsoft Exchange Server management software to efficiently primary data center at Sports Authority 2010 environment and currently sup- control NetApp storage systems as a Field at Mile High and its secondary ports the team’s Microsoft SQL Server® single pool of resources across the SAN data center at Dove Valley. PEAK 2008 environments, which are fully virtu- environment. OnCommand Balance, Resources, Inc., a technology solutions alized on VMware vSphere® along with which will be installed shortly, will help provider based in Denver, Colorado, 95% of the organization’s infrastructure. the staff perform activities such as moni- and participant in the NetApp Partner The Broncos Club recently upgraded its toring and optimizing the performance of Program for Resellers, assisted the Den- wired and wireless network infrastruc- virtual servers. OnCommand Protection ver Broncos with designing, deploying, ture at the stadium and training facility Manager, NetApp SnapMirror® technol- and implementing best practices for the with Cisco Nexus® and 3750 series ogy, and NetApp SnapVault® technology NetApp solution. “We worked closely switches, Cisco 3500 and 3600 series help protect Broncos administrative staff with PEAK Resources, from designing access points, and Cisco 5508 and 2504 and football team data through replica- the platform to disk configurations, controllers. NetApp integrates with these tion between data centers over the wire. technologies via OnCommand® plug-ins, Sports Authority Field Data Center Dove Valley Data Center Network: Cisco Nexus 7010 Series Switches Stadium Applications: Cisco 3750 Series Switches Team HQ’s Applications: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007/2010 PlayerLync Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Microsoft Great Plains ThirdLight Digital Media Management Server Microsoft SQL 2005/2008 Citrix Farm Servers VMware vSphere 5VMware vSphere 5 NetApp SnapManager for Microsoft Exchange NetApp SnapManager for SQL Server NetApp Deduplication NetApp OnCommand Unified Manager NetApp Virtual Storage Console NetApp FAS2240 NetApp SnapMirror NetApp FAS2240 Running on NetApp Data NetApp Snapshot Running on NetApp Data ONTAP 8 operating in 7-Mode NetApp SnapRestore ONTAP 8 operating in 7-Mode NetApp SnapVault Figure 1) Denver Broncos deployed NetApp FAS2240 storage systems in the primary and secondary data centers running Data ONTAP 8 operating in 7-Mode and stores more than 50 terabytes of data. The NetApp solution supports the new PlayerLync application, the organization’s Microsoft Great Plains accounting software, and the ThirdLight digital media management server. Snapshot™ and SnapRestore® technol- “Whether our accounting team is man- Early adoption and ongoing ogy, the Virtual Storage Console, and aging financial data or Broncos players innovation SnapManager for Microsoft Exchange are viewing videos in our training facility The flexible, secure NetApp storage and Microsoft SQL Server protect on their iPads, they can keep doing environment and advanced storage data locally. what they’re doing.” management capabilities continue to support Broncos technology initiatives. Protecting invaluable Broncos data Business Benefits For example, Broncos IT and video Doing things better and faster in IT NetApp backup and recovery solutions staff members recently collaborated to NetApp OnCommand management help protect critical team and organi- deploy Apple iPads to more than 130 software and a highly flexible data infra- zational assets with 90 days of local mobile players, coaches, managers, structure enable the IT team to quickly backups ready for quick restoration and and support staff. The iPad-accessible and effectively manage and modify the remote, replicated data for recovery in data resides on virtual servers running storage environment to accommodate the event of a disaster. The staff rep- on NetApp. Via WiFi, the Broncos team data