Storage Cat 08 3/10/08 17:07 Page 34
34 DIAMOND INSTRUMENTS
CUTTING EDGE
Open-E GmbH discusses the virtualisation of servers and storage for
DieWe Diamantwerkzeuge GmbH, one of the leading suppliers of
diamond instruments in Europe
Words: By Open-E GmbH
The Initial Situation time in worst-case scenarios – with due consideration of
The introduction of a new merchandise management system the total cost.
produced database performance problems which were • Scalability of the servers and storages
resolved in the short term by Direct Attached Storage (DAS) • Scalability of the bandwidth and I/Os for future enhanced
on an SCSI basis. However, corporate-wide deployments then requirements that have not yet been conceived
resulted in I/O performance problems. The data was backed • Reduction/elimination of downtime thanks to maintenance
up on various network drives, which produced a considerable • Hardware lifecycle management with
load on the network and the backup window became ever architecture consolidation
larger. There was no central backup system – which meant • Migration simplification should the systems have to be
that the requirements placed on archiving security, rapid transferred to other/newer hardware
disaster recovery and compliance could not be met. • Emergency and recovery concept for the IT systems based
The administration team was faced with an infrastructure at different sites
that had developed gradually over time and was very • VPN access concept for second company site
maintenance-intensive, as there was no uniform access to the and teleworker
servers, and the diversity of the server systems and • Reducing the network load and backup execution rate
architectures meant that collective resource and update • High availability of the software systems and
planning was either impossible or only possible with great server services
manual effort. “Our infrastructure has grown significantly • Maximum no-risk investment of the system
over the past few years and requirements are certainly not • Hardware consolidation
going to recede over the next few months,” stated Frank
Nehmer, Head of IT at DieWe. “That is why we have decided Implementation
to run in a solution in good time – one directed towards Firstly a test system for the storage domain was set up and
growth and scalability in all fields.” a visualisation server attached with XEN as the lab network.
The heightened requirements placed on storage space from The storage solution came in the form of the Open-E DSS
the database systems and documents (Office and graphics (Data Storage Server) – a complete IP and FC storage
files) produced considerable capacity problems within the operating system (FC Fibre Channel) providing NAS, iSCSI and
storage infrastructure. The customer also wanted greater FC functionality (target and initiator) in a single application
resilience from the entire IT system including server services, complete with straightforward operation and a high degree of
server hardware and storage solutions, in particular. resilience for companies of any size.
The Decision Storage
Attention was given to the following requirements in order to The storage server solution provides a rapid, dependable and
provide the customer with simplified IT systems scalable platform for IP storage permitting collective file
administration and the necessary functionalities: access, storage consolidation, backup and recovery. Another
• Simple, low-on-maintenance administration of storage and field of considerable relevance in today’s world is virtualisation
server hardware (Windows ADS, DHCP, DNS, file services, or replication – something covered by the Open-E DSS.
MSSQL databases) Since the operating system has been optimised for
• Raising the resilience of the whole system for operation environments with dedicated storage and company networks,
with little or no downtime – a maximum two-hour recovery the solution is especially suited for network environments with
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