Sainsbury's consolidate data centres nationwide

Sainsbury's has chosen Aperture Technologies to provide its data centre management solution, which it hopes will give the supermarket chain a better overall view of its data centre technology.

The grocer will use Aperture's VISTA 500 software, stating that the plan was to visualise its resources for everyday management, in order to consolidate space and maximise energy efficiency.

Sainsbury's said that it wanted to eventually consolidate its data centres, and to do this it would deploy Aperture VISTA in all of its central data centres and depot computer rooms.

The chain also said that the deployment would also improve accessibility of data. Before the implementation, users needed to make enquiries through central administrators to gain information. With VISTA it was possible to allow web based access for an unlimited number of users, depending on access rights.

"We expect Vista 500 to help us by providing better access to configuration records when we are planning changes in our data centres," said Malcolm Ireland, IT production operations manager at Sainsbury's.

"We want to maintain a pictorial plan for new installs, changes and removals, with easy access to this information for all who need it."

"It will also help us to identify the best place to position equipment to make the best use of our space, cabling infrastructure and cooling."

The Aperture VISTA software is designed to help organisations visually manage the physical environment of the data centre and help organisations with use and capacity planning.