News & Update: Grimshaw choose Datanet to host HP Zmini

International architect practice, Grimshaw, choose Datanet at ARK for the home of their new cloud workstation project.

Datanet News

Date:

9 May 2022

Summary:

International architect practice, Grimshaw, choose Datanet at ARK for the home of their new cloud workstation project.

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Grimshaw choose Datanet to host HP Zmini

International architecture practice, Grimshaw, choose Datanet at ARK for the home of their new cloud workstation project, providing desktop compute for their architects using HP Zmini, delivered from our new data centre at ARK, Farnborough.

Grimshaw and the HP Zmini story. Part 1:

Before the pandemic, yet spurred on by the pandemic, Danny Gillmore, Director of Information Technology, at Grimshaw embarked on a project to provide several hundred Grimshaw architects with powerful workstations hosted in the cloud.

These workstations would take the form of the new HP Zmini workstation hosted by Datanet in our new ARK data centre. Come forward some three years and Danny’s vision has become a reality.

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“We chose Datanet because we have worked with them before and we have always found them very helpful and accommodating. Their ethos aligns with Grimshaw and we love their new data centre, the big racks and abundant choice of bandwidth providers lends itself to the HP Zmini deployment.”

Danny Gillmore, Director of Information Technology, Grimshaw Architects

Grimshaw and the HP Zmini. Part 2:

The HP Zminis have arrived safely and are installed across 5 racks, another great days work for the Grimshaw IT team…. A period of testing will now commence in preparation for the cut over to going live for some 200 architects.

So over the last couple of weeks the Grimshaw team have been imaging the Zminis in preparation for shipping to our new data centre at ARK. The bespoke shelves and brackets have arrived from HP and it is now time for the Zminis to go to their new home at ARK as the final preparations are readied for them to go live.

Grimshaw and the HP Zmini. Part 3.

The HP Zminis have arrived safely and are installed across 5 racks, another great days work for the Grimshaw IT team. A period of testing will now commence in preparation for the cut over to going live for some 200 architects.

What will the new HP Zmini in the cloud solution look like?

Grimshaw is taking 5 racks and deploying some 200 HP Zmini across the racks together with switches and firewalls. Seamus Conway, IT Manager, provided Datanet with the network layout diagram you see on the right.

Seamus has opted for a structured cabling solution with Aruba switches and a pair of HA Firewalls, all based on dual resilient 10Gb connectivity out to the Internet.

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HP Zmini preparation

Zawaad spent a week at Datanet preparing and imaging the HP Zmini in advance of the deployment to the Datanet racks at ARK. Datanet has been very accommodating and helped me get these 200 Zminis prepared and ready for deployment. I am sure Datanet will be very helpful to me in looking after the Minis for the long term.

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