T0300 - Storage Area Network Replacement

Tender description

Trinity House currently utilises two HP LeftHand Multi-site Storage Area Network (SAN) systems to provide storage to our virtualised VMware infrastructure. The SANs connect to our vSphere hosts via iSCSI over our Cisco network switches. The SANs are hosted at the Trinity House sites in Harwich and London. The LeftHand SANs have provided a reliable service, but there has always been a long-held belief that we often suffered in terms of performance, potentially though the iSCSI communication. It is also considered that there is potential to use the additional functionality built-in to SAN technology, particularly in terms of tiering and the benefits of using SSDs and flash. The ability to easily scale-up available storage without having to periodically invest in large amounts of capital expenditure is also required.