Ski Resort Saves $50K Annually with Modernized Data Center
Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR), a year-round vacation destination in the heart of Park City, Utah, is increasing its operational efficiency and enhance its guest experience through modernizing the resort’s IT infrastructure with end-to-end Dell solutions.
Consistently ranked as a top-five resort by the readers of SKI and Transworld Snowboarding magazines, PCMR offers skiing and snowboarding in the winter and hiking and mountain biking in the summer on over 3,300 acres of unspoiled terrain in the Wasatch Mountains. PCMR relies heavily on technology to provide the best experience for its guests, whether they are requesting information, booking vacations, paying for their trip, renting equipment, or finding their way to the ski lifts or other attractions.
To consistently deliver great services for staff and guests, increase operational efficiency and ensure that critical IT services are constantly available, PCMR relies on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) powered by Dell and VMware technologies. The infrastructure runs on seven virtualized Dell PowerEdge M710 and M620 blade servers.
Approximately 75 Dell Wyse thin clients running VMware View give staff anytime, anywhere access to the applications they need via the VDI. Tablet devices are connected to the VDI solution that enables guests to quickly and effortlessly rent ski equipment at rental stations and allows staff to check guests’ ski passes on the slopes.
Since implementing its end-to-end Dell environment, the resort is experiencing significant cost and energy benefits. Since implementation, PCMR is saving $50,000 per year with its virtualized Dell PowerEdge servers compared to traditional server infrastructure and $20,000 per year on energy with Dell Wyse zero clients. As a result, PCMR is delivering year-over-year energy savings and continually reducing its carbon footprint.
To keep I/O intensive applications running and support its VDI environment, the resort migrated to a Dell Compellent SAN, connected to its virtualized Dell blade server environment with Dell Networking MXL blade switches. PCMR’s significant improvement in storage utilization is a product of Dell Compellent automated tiering. This enables the resort to make the most of its storage resources by pushing less frequently accessed data to less expensive storage and thereby reallocating the cost savings to other IT resources.
To ensure that critical IT services are always available, PCMR utilizes Dell Compellent Copilot support, which provides instant access to trained Compellent engineers. PCMR has peace of mind that its Compellent environment is working properly at all times.
PCMR also takes advantage of Dell SonicWALL to adhere to PCI standards to protect sensitive customer data and meet its stringent security requirements. The Dell SonicWALL NSA 4600 firewalls provide significant room for growth, with 16 interfaces, and WAN load balancing unlike the resort’s previous Cisco ASA 5500 series firewalls.
Consistently ranked as a top-five resort by the readers of SKI and Transworld Snowboarding magazines, PCMR offers skiing and snowboarding in the winter and hiking and mountain biking in the summer on over 3,300 acres of unspoiled terrain in the Wasatch Mountains. PCMR relies heavily on technology to provide the best experience for its guests, whether they are requesting information, booking vacations, paying for their trip, renting equipment, or finding their way to the ski lifts or other attractions.
To consistently deliver great services for staff and guests, increase operational efficiency and ensure that critical IT services are constantly available, PCMR relies on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) powered by Dell and VMware technologies. The infrastructure runs on seven virtualized Dell PowerEdge M710 and M620 blade servers.
Approximately 75 Dell Wyse thin clients running VMware View give staff anytime, anywhere access to the applications they need via the VDI. Tablet devices are connected to the VDI solution that enables guests to quickly and effortlessly rent ski equipment at rental stations and allows staff to check guests’ ski passes on the slopes.
Since implementing its end-to-end Dell environment, the resort is experiencing significant cost and energy benefits. Since implementation, PCMR is saving $50,000 per year with its virtualized Dell PowerEdge servers compared to traditional server infrastructure and $20,000 per year on energy with Dell Wyse zero clients. As a result, PCMR is delivering year-over-year energy savings and continually reducing its carbon footprint.
To keep I/O intensive applications running and support its VDI environment, the resort migrated to a Dell Compellent SAN, connected to its virtualized Dell blade server environment with Dell Networking MXL blade switches. PCMR’s significant improvement in storage utilization is a product of Dell Compellent automated tiering. This enables the resort to make the most of its storage resources by pushing less frequently accessed data to less expensive storage and thereby reallocating the cost savings to other IT resources.
To ensure that critical IT services are always available, PCMR utilizes Dell Compellent Copilot support, which provides instant access to trained Compellent engineers. PCMR has peace of mind that its Compellent environment is working properly at all times.
PCMR also takes advantage of Dell SonicWALL to adhere to PCI standards to protect sensitive customer data and meet its stringent security requirements. The Dell SonicWALL NSA 4600 firewalls provide significant room for growth, with 16 interfaces, and WAN load balancing unlike the resort’s previous Cisco ASA 5500 series firewalls.