Case Study: Manitoba Hydro Gives Data Center a Power Boost

Manitoba Hydro is the province's major energy utility and the chief distributor of natural gas in the province. Manitoba Hydro is headquartered in the capital city of Winnipeg and provides electricity and natural gas to provincial residents and businesses. With satellite offices located throughout Manitoba and with over 5,000 employees, Manitoba Hydro is one of the largest electricity and natural gas utilities in Canada. With that level of responsibility, efficient management of Manitoba Hydro data centres is critical. Approximately 350 servers are located in three separate data centres in the Winnipeg area, several servers are housed in unmanned computer rooms around the city and the IT server support staff is often located in different buildings than the data centres. So, when there's a problem or a critical server goes down, time often becomes an issue – sometimes a nightmare. Manitoba Hydro used analog KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switches for local control of their servers. Remote control needs were handled through software tools. Unfortunately, this approach presented several limitations. For example, in cases where a remote server was unhealthy, software remote access tools were impossible or impractical. The result was critical downtime while someone was dispatched to the site.