Automaker Will Be More Competitive with Faster Performance and Higher Availability

Microsoft SQL Server Customer Solution Case Study

Tests of SQL Server 2012 Enterprise showed that the solution will provide the high-availability and disaster- recovery capabilities required for the company’s mission-critical financial services and production applications.

BMW Group is one of the most successful manufacturers of automobiles and motorcycles in the world. As it prepares to move to a private cloud infrastructure, the company wanted to ensure high availability and performance for its mission-critical applications. The firm tested a new Microsoft high-availability solution, which the company expects will provide the 100 percent uptime it needs. As a result, BMW Group will be more competitive. Also, the solution will improve automation and customer satisfaction, and it will help the company save money on storage costs.

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published March 2012 Business Needs In late 2010, the automaker chose to manufacturers. The firm also BMW Group, headquartered in Munich, upgrade to a new database anticipates higher performance and Germany, is one of the most successful management solution in order to cost savings. manufacturers of automobiles and achieve higher availability. motorcycles in the world. In addition to Will Provide 100 Percent Uptime for producing vehicles under its own brand, Solution Critical Applications BMW Group also owns and produces Although it looked at Oracle and other Tests of SQL Server 2012 Enterprise the MINI brand of cars and is the parent vendors, choosing Microsoft was easy showed that the solution will provide company of luxury auto maker Rolls- for BMW Group, because Microsoft the high-availability and disaster- Royce. technology had proven to be reliable recovery capabilities required for the for the company in the past. company’s mission-critical financial BMW Group maintains a large, growing services and production applications. IT infrastructure that supports hundreds The company specifically wanted to of mission-critical business applications, test the high-availability features in As a result, the company is expecting many of which are based on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise, focusing 100 percent uptime for its applications, SQL Server 2008 R2 data management on SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn, which and anticipates no application software. The company currently has 70 customers can use to query data in timeouts when it performs upgrades terabytes of data in its databases and is database replicas and perform backup on the databases. experiencing a growth in data of 30 operations from the replicas. percent annually. AlwaysOn also provides readable Will Help BMW Become More database mirroring, with replicas Competitive These databases support customer- offering read-only access for backup By providing more highly available facing e-commerce applications and reporting. mission-critical business applications, containing customers’ transaction and the company can compete better with other financial data. The firm also AlwaysOn also includes availability other automakers. For example, the supports many applications used in groups, which supports failover for organization’s business units must automobile manufacturing plants multiple user databases. An availability produce a certain number of new around the world. These applications group supports a set of primary vehicles each year, and SQL Server are used by thousands of production databases and up to four sets of 2012 will provide the highly available workers each day. For BMW Group to secondary databases. infrastructure needed to support those stay competitive and continue growing, In October 2011, the company, goals. it is absolutely essential that these working with Microsoft Services applications are highly available. consultants, conducted lab tests to see Will Improve Performance and Save if SQL Server 2012 would work in the Money For instance, legal requirements company’s private cloud. The The company also hopes to realize stipulate that if customer-facing performance tests compared SQL improved performance once it financial services applications are down Server 2008 R2 database mirroring upgrades to SQL Server 2012. In its for more than three days in a specific with SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn tests using the same hardware and region, the company could lose its availability groups. The tests also storage, the firm saw 102 transactions license to provide financial services in compared SQL Server 2008 R2 and per second (TPS) using SQL Server that area. In the firm’s manufacturing SQL Server 2012 on storage area 2012, compared with 98 TPS using SQL plants, downtime means cars aren’t network (SAN) systems versus lower- Server 2008 R2. The input/output being produced, which makes sales cost network-attached storage (NAS) performance was clearly faster using goals challenging. systems. availability groups in SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn. Assuring high uptime was especially Benefits important because the company wants Once it implements the Microsoft The company’s tests also indicated to implement a private cloud solution, the company expects that it that an NAS system performs as well infrastructure late in 2012. will ensure 100 percent uptime for its as a comparable SAN solution, which critical applications, leading to a better will contribute to cost savings while ability to compete with other providing equal or better performance

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published March 2012 once BMW implements SQL Server 2012.

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published March 2012