Wood & Grieve Engineers refreshes storage for business growth

The Perth-based company wants to expand operations in Melbourne, Sydney

Wood & Grieve Engineers IT manager Tom Campbell-Clause.

Wood & Grieve Engineers IT manager Tom Campbell-Clause.

Perth-based engineering consulting firm Wood & Grieve Engineers (WGE) is looking to expand its east coast operations in Australia, following a storage array refresh in January 2014.

The company services the land development, property and building industries.

WGE IT manager Tom Campbell-Clause told Computerworld Australia that its old HP LeftHand storage area network (SAN) was reaching end of life. In October 2013, he evaluated a Nimble CS220 storage array.

The company’s IT partner, Portal IT, helped deploy the array in the Perth office. All of WGE’s virtual machines were moved over to the storage array in January.

“I was impressed with the solution and I liked the idea of it being supported remotely. They [Nimble] would know about problems before I did,” said Campbell-Clause.

The LeftHand SAN has been re-deployed in the company’s Melbourne office as a disaster recovery backup.

“I want to look at getting a Nimble appliance into Melbourne over the next year so we can replicate systems from Perth. This will enable us to continue operating in the event of a disaster.”

Campbell-Clause said it wants to grow operations in Melbourne and Sydney because the East Coast market is “much bigger.”

It currently employs 80 staff in Melbourne and 30 staff in Sydney.

“Land development is where the growth is going to come from. As the business grows, our data requirements will also grow,” he said.

In anticipation of this data growth, Campbell-Clause is now looking at Windows Azure cloud for archiving. However, it will continue to store very large CAD design files on the storage array.

“We use very large files so local storage is the only option for us. I just can’t see that cloud computing is going to be fast enough for us as yet,” he explained.

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU, or take part in the Computerworld conversation on LinkedIn: Computerworld Australia

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.

Tags storagenimble storageWood & Grieve Engineers

More about HPMantra GroupNSW Rural Fire ServiceWood & Grieve Engineers

Show Comments
[]