Case Studies > Tennessee Community Enhances Public Safety Using STRATUS® EVERRUN® ENTERPRISE for Always-On Applications

Tennessee Community Enhances Public Safety Using STRATUS® EVERRUN® ENTERPRISE for Always-On Applications

Customer Company Size

Mid-size Company

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

STRATUS® EVERRUN® ENTERPRISE

Tech Stack

Virtualization
Fault-tolerant software
x86 servers

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Middleware, SDKs & Libraries

Applicable Industries

Security & Public Safety

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Remote Control

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

The City of Lebanon is located in Wilson County, Tennessee, approximately 25 miles east of downtown Nashville. It serves as the county seat and is a growing residential and business community with a population of more than 28,600 based on the 2013 census. The city experiences a daily influx of over 100,000 people. The Lebanon Police Department’s Communications Division is responsible for 24/7/365 dispatch of routine and emergency calls to police, fire, animal control, and public works. In addition to dispatching an average of 5,700 calls each month, the agency also enters and maintains National Crime Information Center (NCIC) records such as missing persons, wanted persons, stolen vehicles, weapons, license plates, and other items containing an identification number. The Communication Division relies on critical applications to conduct daily business, track incidents, and respond quickly and effectively to emergency situations.

The Challenge

For years, the Lebanon Police Department's aging physical server infrastructure lacked the redundancy needed to perform routine support and updates while maintaining operational continuity. Without regular maintenance, the servers would inevitably go down, forcing dispatchers to resort to a paper-based solution while the systems were restored. When dispatchers received a call, they would write down all the required information and dispatch responders without the help of automation. Once the servers were back online, the handwritten dispatch information would have to be entered into the system manually. This outdated approach slowed down processes and response times, even in life-and-death emergency situations where every second counts. The department decided to change and implemented a continuous availability solution to keep critical applications up and running all the time.

The Solution

The Lebanon Police Department upgraded its computing infrastructure to run all applications, including its emergency CAD, traffic reporting, police use of force, and document and record management systems, on virtualized industry-standard x86 servers in its on-site data center. Server virtualization reduces costs, improves agility, and optimizes hardware utilization, but it also provides a single point of failure for multiple applications, making continuous availability crucial. After consulting with a nearby municipality that was successfully using a Stratus solution, the agency decided to run its virtualized applications on Stratus everRun Enterprise, a fault-tolerant downtime prevention software that ensures business continuity and data integrity by keeping Windows applications up and running with mainframe-like availability—without requiring application modifications. With everRun, the agency’s applications live on two physical machines. If one machine fails, the application continues to run on the other machine with no interruptions or data loss. If a component fails, it’s simply replaced with the healthy component from the second system. The I/O is automatically mirrored to the redundant server and memory check-pointing ensures all in-flight transactions, as well as data in memory and cache, are preserved. Built-in application monitoring provides complete performance visibility, letting the agency know when an application or device is down and restarts it instantly to minimize impact. For added peace of mind, Stratus’ support center constantly monitors the virtualized environment and automatically sends system-level notifications should a fault occur.

Operational Impact

Stratus everRun Enterprise has helped the Lebanon Police Department improve efficiency by operating a stable, reliable, and always-on virtualized application environment.
The agency has experienced no unplanned downtime since implementing server virtualization.
The solution’s built-in redundancy enables IT personnel to take down a server for routine maintenance and keep all of the other virtual machines running—without interrupting agency operations.
By keeping systems up and running all the time, everRun Enterprise allows agency personnel to optimize response times in emergency situations and to better protect and serve the Lebanon community day in and day out.

Quantitative Benefit