Home Building Co. Uses EqualLogic

NASHUA, N.H. -- EqualLogic, a leading provider of high-performance iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, today announced that Brookfield Homes Southland, one of America’s premier home builders, is consolidating its IT environment with EqualLogic PS Series storage arrays and VMware Infrastructure 3. By migrating data from direct attached storage to the EqualLogic SAN and converting physical servers to virtual machines using VMware® ESX Server, Brookfield Homes estimates savings will exceed $60,000 in hardware purchase costs alone.

Brookfield Homes is one of the 25 largest home builders and land developers in the country. Based in California, Brookfield Homes Southland Division generates revenue between $300 million and $500 million per year with 165 employees. In addition to Microsoft Exchange email services, the company relies heavily on two main business systems: FAST, a home-building specific accounting and construction production system; and On Base, an enterprise content management system that provides integrated document, business process and record management. Both use Microsoft SQL Server as their critical back-end database.

Brookfield Homes’ Southland Division began working with EqualLogic during a project to archive its Exchange Server email for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. The company implemented Mimosa NearPoint for Exchange 2003 with a seven-terabyte PS300E array as the back-end storage to meet its email archiving needs. Immediately after implementing Mimosa and EqualLogic, Brookfield was able to reduce its Exchange storage by 25 percent, and it anticipates further reductions over time. Brookfield selected the PS Series SAN over a Network Appliance NAS device because EqualLogic SANs scale seamlessly by adding modular arrays and include a full suite of storage-management features in the purchase price.

“The EqualLogic SAN allows me to respond to business managers much more quickly, because I’m able to grow and adjust my storage and server infrastructure as needed, without disruption,” said Chris Formes, IT manager at Brookfield Homes Southland. “EqualLogic has reduced the amount of time I have to spend managing hardware, which has given me more time for other projects. The simplicity and ease of the arrays brings us back to EqualLogic when we need more storage.”

EqualLogic Inc.