INDUSTRY WATCH
OUR LENOVO THINKAGILE VX CLUSTER IS ALWAYS ON AND HAS NEVER FAILED . THAT LEVEL OF RELIABILITY IS VITAL FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICES .
Niue is an island in the South Pacific , located 604 kilometers northeast of Tonga . It is a self-governing state , with its own parliament , the Niue Legislative Assembly , and a government comprising 22 departments .
Why Lenovo ? Reliable technology for a harsh environment
The Niue government worked with Aiscorp to evaluate solutions from several vendors before selecting Lenovo .
In 2020 , the Manatua One Polynesia Fiber Cable provided Niue with high-speed Internet access for the first time replacing a 4 megabit satellite link with gigabit fiber connectivity . This presented a huge opportunity to reimagine government services and drive Digital Transformation at every level of Niue society .
Decision makers saw Lenovo as an industry leader and recognized that the Lenovo ThinkAgile VX hyperconverged infrastructure was a good fit for its Microsoft applications providing both compute and storage resources in a single cluster that is easy to manage and scale thanks to VMware vSAN virtualization technology .
To take full advantage of the Manatua cable , Niue needed to take the next step in its IT transformation journey . Over the previous decade , the government had worked with Aiscorp , its trusted technology partner , to centralize its IT infrastructure , consolidating all 22 departments on to a single platform but this hardware had now reached end of life .
Together with Aiscorp , the government set out a strategy to upgrade to a new infrastructure that would be robust enough to operate reliably in a challenging climate : 40 40 ° C heat , 40 % humidity , salty air , frequent power outages during storms and no air conditioning .
The key differentiator was the robustness and maintainability of the Lenovo ThinkAgile VX solution , which could run reliably in Niue ’ s climate , and be installed and managed without a large technical team .
One island , one platform
Due to the limited capacity of flights to Niue during the pandemic , the new infrastructure was transported from New Zealand to the island by boat . The Aiscorp team in New Zealand ensured that all the equipment was shipped with detailed documentation and instructions to enable a team on the island to install it themselves , without any on-site support from technical experts .
The project would also need to overcome significant logistical challenges : the nearest large country to Niue is New Zealand , which is over 2,400 kilometers away , and flights were limited due to the COVID pandemic .
Brett Collier , CEO , Telecom Niue said : “ Things that are taken for granted in other countries can be major challenges here . We ’ re fortunate that our government had the foresight to see the opportunity and was prepared to take an innovative approach .”
Today , the Lenovo ThinkAgile VX platform serves as the main IT infrastructure for all 22 government departments , plus Niue ’ s primary and secondary schools , and its bank . All major applications run in VMware virtual machines on the cluster , and users access them via Lenovo thin client terminals and laptops .
Meanwhile , Aiscorp has helped to repurpose much of the previous generation hardware as a Disaster Recovery platform and donated the rest to the island ’ s
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