Delta NV
Cost-effective SAN solution
Infrastructure
- 2 x Hitachi Freedom StorageTM Thunder 9570VTM
- Hitachi Dynamic Link ManagerTM
- Brocade® Silkworm® 3200 and 3800 switches
- Hitachi TrueCopyTM
- FalconStor® NAS Gateway
“In short, with Hitachi Data Systems, storage capacity has more than doubled without a proportionate increase in the total cost of ownership.”
Hans de Moor
Head of IT Services
Delta NV
Hitachi Data Systems delivers the foundation for long-life storage for Delta NV to make the transition to a distributed UNIX environment”, explains Hans de Moor, Head of IT Services at Delta NV.
“At the same time, requirements to access diverse data within the organization increased significantly. Internally, customer data needed to be stored and analysed in order to increase customer retention. Externally, the government had forced us to exchange data with other network organisations and suppliers which created a need for additional capacity. Finally, our development teams were demanding additional capacity in order to facilitate the necessary changes to a variety of administrative, billing and measuring systems. It was clear, therefore, that we had to take rapid action in order to guarantee the continuity and quality of our business activities.”
Maximum availability
Central to Delta NV’s supplier selection process,was the proven ability to deliver an extremely stable storage solution that could cope with rapid growth as well as provide a reduction in the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).Of the many suppliers considered, Hitachi Data Systems and its implementation partner, i3 Solutions, most closely matched these requirements. “Apart from storage, Hitachi Data Systems offered backup facilities. The constant access to data is an important differentiator to Delta since, as a result of deregulation, customers have increased freedom of choice. Because of this, high levels of service and maximum system availability are essential to commercial success,” explains Hans de Moor.
From its inception Delta NV supplied gas and water via its own network to the province of Zeeland and South-west Brabant in the Netherlands. As a result of utility privatisations and the deregulation of the energy market, there has been a considerable expansion in the range of services the organisation has to offer. Apart from electricity, gas and water, Delta NV now also supplies cable, Internet and media services to businesses and individual customers.
Changing requirements
Within the organisation, as well as in the external environment, Delta NV discovered that changes were required: “A number of situations happened simultaneously which required rapid and focused action. Our mainframe had reached the end of its life and we wanted Extra capacity a commercial necessity for Delta NV efficiency Delta NV faced storage challenges when the energy market in the Netherlands was deregulated. In order to ensure business success in this new environment,Delta NV needed adequate data storage facilities and constant access to accurate customer data. Furthermore, the unbundling of network and delivery tasks was making administration processes and billing services considerably more complex. As a result the existing systems were adapted, placing increasing pressure on the capacity of the network. The basic storage environment could not cope with these developments.This led Delta NV to search for a reliable, stable and constantly available storage environment that could be easily managed.
Long distance connection
The primary production site for the new storage facility is Delta NV’s head office in Middelburg. This site is connected by means of an optical fibre network to the secondary site in Goes, some 50 kilometres away. The new storage environment at the main site was constructed within six weeks. The secondary environment was, due to unexpected circumstances, begun in Middelburg before being transferred to Goes in a single day. A unique element of the Hitachi Data Systems solution was its ability to duplicate data synchronously over the 51 km distance between sites.
A single point of contact
for total support “The solution from Hitachi Data Systems ties in with our strategic choice to include as few different components as possible within our storage infrastructure. Our preference has been, and continues to be, to have a singlepoint of contact for total support.We also want to limit the variety of components used because of the potential integration and communication risks. In view of their functionality and the cost-efficiency of the solution, the combination of Hitachi Data Systems and i3 Solutions was clearly the best choice for us”, says Hans de Moor. Rapid disaster recover capability Delta NV’s new storage environment, is based on the Thunder 9570V Series which combines both SAN and NAS technology and offers excellent scalability and flexibility.
As well as providing the urgently needed expansion in storage capacity and throughput, the new storage environment also provides highly robust backup and recovery processes using Hitachi TrueCopy.“We now have a stable basis for coping with various emergency scenarios should we encounter major disruptions or disasters”, explains Hans de Moor. Delta NV has now evolved rapidly from a single SAN to a centrally controlled redundant SAN environment with plenty of room for expansion.“This was important because the trends in data growth are set to continue. For example, during the last four to five years we’ve experienced an average data growth of 37%. In the last year alone, the amount of data stored grew from 1.3 TB to 6 TB.With our Hitachi Data Systems-based storage environment we can easily handle this growth, and the availability and stability of the system is guaranteed. In short, with our Hitachi Data Systems solution our storage capacity has more than doubled without a proportionate increase in the total cost of ownership”, concludes Hans de Moor.
Hitachi Data Systems’ SAN increases capacity
Hitachi Data Systems, together with its partner i3 Solutions, implemented a redundant SAN environment with two Hitachi Freedom Thunder 9570V systems linked by two Brocade 3200 and two Brocade 3800 switches, all based on 2Gb technology, to provide the increased capacity required. In addition Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager was installed for load balancing and path failover.
Synchronous duplication of the storage environment is over a distance of 51 km.All business-critical data is duplicated via the SAN, without using channel extenders, a first for Europe in terms of distance. i3 Solutions installed and certified extender fabrics on the switch allowing this distance to be successfully bridged. Not having to create any channel extenders had a positive effect on the final TCO. Also, by using the FalconStor NAS Gateway,Delta NV can store SAN and NAS related data on the same “open”, robust and highly available Thunder 9570V.
“In the event of the failure of one of the sites,we can ensure that business-critical systems are up and running again within just four hours. This illustrates the enormous success that we’ve achieved at the storage level with our new Hitachi Data Systems infrastructure.”
Hans de Moor
Head of IT Services
Delta NV
