Red noses stay on at Comic Relief thanks to virtualisation

Comic Relief now needs a fifth less servers than its last appeal

Comic Relief is using VMware's virtualisation software and a Compellent storage area network (SAN) to ensure the fun doesn't stop when this year’s ‘Do Something Funny for Money’ Red Nose Day campaign kicks off on Friday.

The technology rollout has helped Comic Relief to cut server numbers by a fifth and reduce disk expenditure costs by 75 per cent, and also gain between 40 and 60 per cent of disk space lost to pre-allocation with traditional storage.

"We were running out of physical space in which to house our storage infrastructure and servers, so we needed a solution that delivered greater capacity with a reduced physical footprint,” said Comic Relief head of IT John Thompson.

Comic Relief also wanted to reduce the carbon footprint of its IT and storage resources.

"Adding more over-provisioned and under-utilised servers, which is advocated by the majority of storage solution providers, would only increase the amount of electricity required to cool and power our IT and storage resources," said Thompson.

Cutting the time and resources needed to manage IT infrastructure and storage was also another important feature of the system implemented by Comic Relief.

“Compellent’s SAN has been instrumental in reducing our IT capital and operational costs," said Thompson.