The Denver Broncos implemented NetApp FAS2240 storage systems to enhance their IT infrastructure, allowing them to manage data more efficiently while maintaining access for critical operations like game-day applications and team communications. This solution has streamlined storage management, reduced costs, and improved data recovery, enabling the team to support new initiatives such as mobile applications for fans. The Broncos IT team emphasized that this technology enhances their ability to operate effectively without downtime, ensuring they can continue delivering a competitive experience for both players and fans.

1. Success Story
Efficient NetApp IT
Empowers Denver Broncos
to Invest in the Future
Another NetApp
solution delivered by:
Customer Profile High and the Paul D. Bowlen Memorial
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
The Denver Broncos are a professional Broncos Center at Dove Valley, a state-
Industry football team based in Denver, Colorado. of-the-art facility where the team trains.
Professional sports Owned by CEO Pat Bowlen and man- Day to day, the Broncos IT staff lever-
aged by the Denver Broncos Football ages technology and delivers IT services
The Challenge Club, the team is a member of the West that streamline operations, help the
Meet the growing enterprise- Division of the American Football Con- team maintain its competitive edge, and
level IT, storage, and operational ference (AFC) in the National Football foster a positive experience for fans.
demands of a midsize organiza- League (NFL). The Broncos play at
tion tasked with supporting a Activities such as negotiating trades
Sports Authority Field at Mile High and
winning football team. and securing draft picks depend on
have four players in the Pro Football Hall
management’s ongoing access to the
The Solution of Fame: John Elway, Floyd Little, Gary
organization’s Microsoft® Exchange
Deploy NetApp® FAS2240 Zimmerman, and Shannon Sharpe.
Server e-mail system. On game day,
storage systems in the primary The Challenge key applications that control the score-
and secondary data centers to Maintaining a competitive board and audio systems that players
provide asynchronous disaster football edge and coaches rely on must remain avail-
recovery for each site. The Denver Broncos are one of the able. New initiatives such as a mobile
most successful teams in NFL history, video application for fans demand a
Benefits
winning two Super Bowls and six AFC flexible, high-performance infrastructure
• Empowers IT organization with
Championships. With an intensely loyal that won’t let fans down.
efficient, streamlined storage
management fan base, the team has succeeded
To meet current operational needs
• Eliminates off-site tape stor- in selling out every home nonstrike
and carry the organization forward,
age, reduces capex and opex, regular-season game since 1970 and
the IT staff established that it needed
and accelerates recovery of growing its waiting list for season tick-
to upgrade the storage environment.
critical Broncos data ets to 32,000 fans.
“We’re a relatively small shop with
• Provides infrastructure to The Denver Broncos organization enterprise needs,” says Russ Trainor,
seamlessly scale from 50 depends on an advanced IT infrastruc- Denver Broncos vice president of Infor-
terabytes to 1 petabyte ture to operate both on and off the mation Technology. “We run opposing
field. The organization of approximately team videos at Dove Valley, deliver
300 employees operates out of offices digital playbooks via Apple iPads to our
at both Sports Authority Field at Mile team and coaches, and create a highly

2. “With a flexible, dynamic NetApp environment,
supporting innovative tools such as the Apple ®
iPad running the PlayerLync App with digital
®
playbooks, the entire Broncos organization can
better support the Broncos team in taking on the
opposition while we attract and retain fans for
years to come.”
Russ Trainor
Vice President of Information Technology, Denver Broncos Football Club
collaborative communication environ- plugging in cables, and setting up the robust APIs, and important technology
ment for a sizable game-day staff at the communication protocols for the sys- partnerships.
stadium. Our IT and storage demands tem,” says Trainor. “PEAK Resources
for both performance and capacity are provides superior technical skills and The NetApp solution supports the orga-
continually growing.” excellent customer service.” nization’s new PlayerLync application,
which provides digital video playback,
High performance, efficiency, and high The NetApp platform runs on the Data playbook, and communication features
availability were top criteria for the new ONTAP® 8 architecture operating in to Broncos coaches, players, and
storage solution, along with the flexibil- 7-Mode and stores more than 50 tera- the player personnel department as
ity to accommodate 10GbE connectiv- bytes of data, with the ability to seam- they prepare for the next game. The
ity when the time was right. The IT team lessly scale to a capacity of just under Broncos’ NetApp environment also
wanted to step up its backup, restore, 1 petabyte. NetApp deduplication helps supports the organization’s Microsoft
and disaster recovery capabilities. Inte- optimize the storage environment by Great Plains accounting software and
gration with existing Microsoft, Cisco®, reducing storage requirements by up to the ThirdLight digital media manage-
VMware®, and other technologies was 20 to 25%. “The NetApp FAS2240 sys- ment server, which enables internal
imperative. In addition, the new storage tem offers us the efficiency and manage- employees, media, and sponsors to
solution had to provide ample room to ability we need today, plus the flexibility retrieve Broncos event photographs, its
grow for years into the future. and scalability to support delivery of new, Citrix farm servers, remote-user servers
diverse IT services as Denver Broncos and file shares, an event management
The Solution needs change,” says Chris Newman, IT application, security systems, various
Supporting players, coaches, staff, architect for the Denver Broncos. application servers, and more.
and fans
The Broncos IT team deployed NetApp The NetApp solution will soon support The IT team uses NetApp OnCommand
FAS2240 storage systems in the club’s the Broncos’ Microsoft Exchange Server management software to efficiently
primary data center at Sports Authority 2010 environment and currently sup- control NetApp storage systems as a
Field at Mile High and its secondary ports the team’s Microsoft SQL Server® single pool of resources across the SAN
data center at Dove Valley. PEAK 2008 environments, which are fully virtu- environment. OnCommand Balance,
Resources, Inc., a technology solutions alized on VMware vSphere® along with which will be installed shortly, will help
provider based in Denver, Colorado, 95% of the organization’s infrastructure. the staff perform activities such as moni-
and participant in the NetApp Partner The Broncos Club recently upgraded its toring and optimizing the performance of
Program for Resellers, assisted the Den- wired and wireless network infrastruc- virtual servers. OnCommand Protection
ver Broncos with designing, deploying, ture at the stadium and training facility Manager, NetApp SnapMirror® technol-
and implementing best practices for the with Cisco Nexus® and 3750 series ogy, and NetApp SnapVault® technology
NetApp solution. “We worked closely switches, Cisco 3500 and 3600 series help protect Broncos administrative staff
with PEAK Resources, from designing access points, and Cisco 5508 and 2504 and football team data through replica-
the platform to disk configurations, controllers. NetApp integrates with these tion between data centers over the wire.
technologies via OnCommand® plug-ins,

3. Sports Authority Field Data Center Dove Valley Data Center
Network:
Cisco Nexus 7010 Series Switches
Stadium Applications: Cisco 3750 Series Switches
Team HQ’s Applications:
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007/2010
PlayerLync
Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008
Microsoft Great Plains
ThirdLight Digital Media Management Server
Microsoft SQL 2005/2008
Citrix Farm Servers
VMware vSphere 5 VMware vSphere 5
NetApp SnapManager for Microsoft Exchange
NetApp SnapManager for SQL Server
NetApp Deduplication
NetApp OnCommand Unified Manager
NetApp Virtual Storage Console
NetApp FAS2240 NetApp SnapMirror NetApp FAS2240
Running on NetApp Data NetApp Snapshot Running on NetApp Data
ONTAP 8 operating in 7-Mode NetApp SnapRestore ONTAP 8 operating in 7-Mode
NetApp SnapVault
Figure 1) Denver Broncos deployed NetApp FAS2240 storage systems in the primary and secondary data centers running Data ONTAP 8 operating in
7-Mode and stores more than 50 terabytes of data. The NetApp solution supports the new PlayerLync application, the organization’s Microsoft Great
Plains accounting software, and the ThirdLight digital media management server.
Snapshot™ and SnapRestore® technol- “Whether our accounting team is man- Early adoption and ongoing
ogy, the Virtual Storage Console, and aging financial data or Broncos players innovation
SnapManager for Microsoft Exchange are viewing videos in our training facility The flexible, secure NetApp storage
and Microsoft SQL Server protect on their iPads, they can keep doing environment and advanced storage
data locally. what they’re doing.” management capabilities continue to
support Broncos technology initiatives.
Business Benefits Protecting invaluable Broncos data
For example, Broncos IT and video
Doing things better and faster in IT NetApp backup and recovery solutions staff members recently collaborated to
NetApp OnCommand management help protect critical team and organi- deploy Apple iPads to more than 130
software and a highly flexible data infra- zational assets with 90 days of local mobile players, coaches, managers,
structure enable the IT team to quickly backups ready for quick restoration and and support staff. The iPad-accessible
and effectively manage and modify the remote, replicated data for recovery in data resides on virtual servers running
storage environment to accommodate the event of a disaster. The staff rep- on NetApp. Via WiFi, the Broncos team
data growth and changing Broncos licates data between the stadium and can view clips of plays and opponent
requirements. Also important, the staff training facility 20 miles away, eliminat- game footage within hours of a game or
can make even extensive changes to ing the need for physical storage space practice, whether in the locker room or
the environment without disrupting criti- and tape backups while reducing the training facility or at home.
cal day-to-day Broncos operations. risks of a disaster.
The Apple iPads can also access col-
“With our previous storage solution, “We no longer have to call the off-site laboration and itinerary tools, as well
we were very restricted in our data tape storage company and spend as a digital playbook that is always
management, making it difficult even valuable time and money waiting to current via the PlayerLync application.
to grow CIFS share volumes,” says recover lost data,” says Trainor. “We The online playbook eliminates the cost
Newman. “NetApp allows us to manage just log into the NetApp OnCommand and complexity of producing 500-page
our data far more intelligently. We can management console and in minutes hard-copy playbooks that required
resize Microsoft SQL Server volumes can retrieve the requested files or manual updates and reprinting several
on the fly, doubling the space while data, which reduces capex and opex times per week. The online playbook
the virtual servers continue to run and and helps us better serve the Broncos stored on NetApp storage also gives
employees continue to access impor- staff.” With a comprehensive, reliable players more time to review plays
tant application data.” business continuity plan, the Broncos before and after games.
can protect vital training, medical staff,
Smarter, streamlined storage manage- video team, media relations, advertis- The IT staff has a clear understanding
ment translates into a highly responsive ing, financial, and other operations. of their vital impact on operational
IT organization. “We can simply do They also secure critical, confidential efficiency and, most important, Broncos
things better and faster with NetApp, data such as player medical records, team success. “We’re both early adopt-
and with no impact to the Broncos staff playbooks, staff salaries, and corporate ers of new technology and effective at
in costly downtime,” notes Newman. e-mails related to trade negotiations.

4. “We can simply do things better and faster with
NetApp, and with no impact to the Broncos staff
in costly downtime. Whether our accounting team
is managing financial data or Broncos players are
viewing videos on their iPads in our training facility,
they can keep doing what they’re doing.”
Chris Newman
IT Architect, Denver Broncos Football Club
leveraging proven technologies,” says
SOLUTION COMPONENTS
Trainor. “With a flexible, dynamic NetApp
environment supporting innovative tools NetApp Products Third-Party Products
such as Apple iPads running PlayerLync NetApp FAS2240 storage systems VMware vSphere
with digitized playbooks and video, the
Data ONTAP 8 operating in 7-Mode Cisco Nexus 7010 series switches
entire Broncos organization can better
support the Broncos team in taking OnCommand Unified Manager Cisco 3750 series switches
on the opposition while we attract and Snapshot and SnapRestore Cisco 2504, 5508 wireless controllers
retain fans for years to come.” technology Cisco 3500 and 3600 series access
SnapManager for Microsoft points
Exchange and SQL Server Microsoft Great Plains
Virtual Storage Console ThirdLight
SnapMirror Citrix
SnapVault PlayerLync
Deduplication
Partner
Protocols Peak Resources
CIFS www.peakresources.com
iSCSI Environment
Fibre Channel Applications: Microsoft Exchange
2007, 2010
Database: Microsoft SQL Server
2005, 2008
Server platform: Microsoft Server
2003, 2008
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