Customer Success Story Holding runs well on highly available storage and fl exible data management from NetApp

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CUSTOMER PROFILE Austria, Southern Bavaria and Southeast THE HIGHLIGHTS GmbH is one of the largest Europe. Seven hundred servers running Industry private commercial enterprises in Austria, three different operating systems are used Automobile trade and one of Europe’s most successful for production data, testing and quality automobile trade companies. The company assurance. More than half of these servers The Challenge headquartered in Salzburg, is represented are virtualized using either VMware ESX Implementation of a powerful, highly in 18 European countries and in China. Its Server or logical partitions (LPARs) for IBM available storage infrastructure for portfolio includes not only the Porsche p-Series systems. thousands of users across Europe sports car but also the VW Group brands Cross 2 is the core application for the retail (VW, , Seat, Skoda, , The Solution business. It covers all retail trade processes and Bugatti). Porsche Holding is wholly NetApp Unifi ed Storage and MetroCluster and is considered “state-of-the-art“ owned by the Porsche and Piëch families. software in combination with fl exible throughout the industry. Like most of the The IT organization of Porsche Holding, and effi cient NetApp data management applications at Porsche, Cross 2 is based Porsche Informatik GmbH, is responsible on Oracle. The main wholesale application The Benefi ts for continuous IT operations of the holding includes spare parts for Central and Eastern • Cost benefi ts in operation, scalability company and serves as an application Europe, which Porsche Holding supplies for and licensing service provider for the company’s all the VW Group brands. New car orders to subsidiaries and the dealership network. • Wide range of options for storage the factories are also handled by a specifi c virtualization THE CHALLENGE integrated Porsche Informatik application. As soon as a dealer boots up his client in • High level of fl exibility in connectivity, High availability, fast data service and the morning, the system connects to the data recovery and quality assurance high fl exibility for the automobile trade central IT service in Salzburg. Scheduling a • Seamless scalability and upgrade If the description ‘complex’ applies to IT car service appointment, ordering spares, options environments, then it certainly does to the writing bills or setting up a purchase agree- central data centers of Porsche Holding in • Predictability and investment ment – all data streams come together in Salzburg and its surroundings. The business protection Salzburg, where they are processed, saved processes for the wholesale and retail trade and transferred back to the car dealer ready in automobiles and for the fi nancial services to print out. Numerous interfaces ensure of Porsche Bank-Insurance are refl ected the smooth fl ow of data in a system whose in an infrastructure that not only serves content changes constantly – and which is the subsidiaries but also the dealership itself updated every few months in its server network, with more than 7,000 users in and client versions. “Porsche Informatik software works according to the TDI principle: increase engine effi ciency with reduced use of resources. Performance is improved across the entire engine range. The same can be said of NetApp.”

Anton Spitzer Manager Infrastructure Services, Porsche Informatik GmbH

Faced with this intensive activity, a high level schedule over a period of six months. A The secondary site with an identical server of availability, rapid data service and great benchmark setup and best practices helped environment has been turned into a disaster fl exibility are what really matters in order with the actual implementation, such as the recovery site, with a two-stage protection to meet new challenges, such as country- integration of the databases virtualized with process made up of backup-to-disk and specifi c legal requirements, quickly and cost- IBM LPAR into the Snapshot routines of subsequent automated tape backup. A effectively. Porsche Informatik has redefi ned NetApp SnapManager. NetApp FAS6040 HA system serves as the answers to these challenges. secondary storage. The advantage: In the The concept of synchronous data mirroring event of a total failure of the primary site, THE SOLUTION between the two data centers was aban- operations can be taken over by the disaster NetApp Unifi ed Storage doned. Instead, to ensure business continuity, recovery site so that business continuity is for every eventuality Porsche Informatik has introduced a storage ensured. The key parameters for a new business scenario that on the one hand combines continuity solution were clearly outlined high availability and disaster recovery and BUSINESS BENEFITS and innovative proposals were expressly on the other hand makes data management Flexibility, simplifi cation, performance requested. Only one vendor questioned simpler and more fl exible. Since its beginnings in 1966, the IT infra- the prescribed scenario – data mirroring A NetApp FAS6080 HA storage system structure of Porsche Holding has evolved between the two sites – and presented with 68 terabytes of storage capacity has into a complex landscape. With NetApp alternatives. “NetApp’s concept appealed to been set up as a central pool for literally storage and data management, the company us immediately as we were able to achieve all application data, not only databases but now benefi ts from an entirely new level of more, with less effort and lower costs,” also fi le services, web applications, Lotus fl exibility, simplifi cation and performance. said Anton Spitzer, Manager Infrastructure Notes and an SAP environment for HR and “The complete storage environment can Services. “The former active-active mirroring fi nance. NetApp MetroCluster software of data was not effective for us. It involved a be managed by just two people without ensures system reliability at a distance: The any external assistance. As a comparison, lot of effort and in case of an emergency, the two systems are located in separate fi re fail-over to the data mirror had to be initiated we have a team of 75 for the overall infra- compartments at the primary site. Switched structure,” explains Spitzer. “Administration manually. With our decision for NetApp, we data paths between servers, hard disk units have not only introduced a new storage is simple using a single set of software, and and storage controllers ensure continuous was easy to learn during the migration. In architecture but also a new philosophy of availability. As part of this concept, half of the data management.” addition, there is free choice when con- HA storage system can be easily relocated necting to applications. We are no longer All the promises made by NetApp were met without interrupting productive operations – always obliged to use Fibre Channel. With and put into practice. In collaboration with a major advantage in view of the scheduled NetApp’s additional support of CIFS, iSCSI NetApp Star Partner Stemmer and NetApp, transfer of the infrastructure to a new data and NFS, we have more alternatives, so the system and structure were set up on center. that storage provisioning is quicker, ESX servers ESX servers DB servers DB servers

Application Application TSM servers TSM servers server 1 server 2

FCP GbE Tape backup MetroCluster SnapMirror NDMP

NetApp FAS6080 NetApp FAS6080 NetApp FAS6040 Tape backup

Primary site Disaster recovery site

Figure 1) NetApp unifi ed storage as the central data platform at Porsche Informatik: high availability, high performance and business continuity.

simpler, and more cost effective. And other operations. FlexClone software is used for IBM TSM will also be reduced, as tape applications such as the fi le services can be to produce virtual copies of data sets for backup has been reduced by 50%. consolidated as well.” testing and quality assurance, without any initial use of storage capacity. Exporting Thanks to NetApp Operations Manager, the With its consolidation on NetApp systems, the database is no longer a necessity. storage administrators have a more detailed Porsche Informatik can apply NetApp Interactions between the data for testing/ insight into storage capacity utilization. solutions for data protection to all appli- quality assurance and the productive data Porsche Holding charges its dealers a cations. NetApp Snapshot technology are avoided with the aid of MultiStore, monthly fl at rate for use of the service, provides fast, automatic Snapshots of a another NetApp virtualization solution. This is including disk space. Internal inquiries are data set and forms the basis for reliable a critical point for Porsche Informatik, as data charged to cost centers according to activity backup, replication, quality assurance in integrity of hundreds of databases has to be and storage consumption. Prices can now the database environment, restore and data guaranteed. be calculated more precisely on the basis of recovery within a fraction of time. The online usage data. supply chain of Porsche Holding is critical Improved Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) to the company. Snapshot technology in The simpler and more fl exible infrastructure Other advantages include improved cost conjunction with the fail-safe and robust set up with NetApp Unifi ed Storage and transparency and realistic expansion nature of the FAS systems guarantees the NetApp data management also impacts planning. Anton Spitzer expects the storage rapid resumption of operations after any costs. The total operating costs (or TCO) of requirements of most applications to double interruption. the storage environment are considerably over a period of 24 months. With NetApp, lower than before. Factors such as storage upgrades during ongoing operations are The difference between NetApp Unifi ed effi ciency by virtualization and deduplication, a routine task, involving neither advance Storage and the former storage is clear the appropriate use of FC or SATA disks, planning nor downtime. for the 100-plus software developers at fl exible automation instead of elaborate Porsche Informatik: The speed of the Positive customer response scripts and, last but not least, costs relating As the “servant of many masters”, Porsche data service is as impressive as the rapid to capacity exploitation and usage, all provision of storage capacity for the Informatik also has to satisfy many require- contribute to this. Deduplication is success- ments. “We can provide and adapt our application development associated with fully applied to the fi le services at Porsche dealer management, billing, wholesale, service and our range of solutions for the Informatik. With 2 terabytes of fi les from retail and wholesale trades and for fi nancial communications and centralized archiving. Offi ce and application development, over The background is that NetApp FlexVol services with less effort than before, because 20% of storage capacity has been saved. the overall complexity of the infrastructure software virtualizes data storage. Hard disks There are further savings resulting from appear as pure storage capacity, with the has been signifi cantly reduced,” says Anton software licensing with NetApp, which is not Spitzer. “The simpler an infrastructure is, the result that capacity can be assigned and dependent on quantity. The license costs redistributed as required without interrupting more manageable and stable it is. NetApp “With our decision for NetApp, we have not only introduced a new storage architecture but also a new philosophy of data management.”

Anton Spitzer Manager Infrastructure Services, Porsche Informatik GmbH

helps us to set up the most cost-effective SOLUTION COMPONENTS solutions for our customers and to simplify the management for our operators. In the NetApp Environment end everybody wins. The fact that we are FAS6080 HA System (primary) Informix on the right path is also demonstrated by FAS6040 HA System (backup) Microsoft SQL Server the thoroughly positive feedback from our NetApp MetroCluster Software Oracle internal and external customers.” NetApp SnapManager for Oracle SAP The managers at Porsche Informatik expect NetApp SnapMirror Lotus Notes that it will be possible to solve any type NetApp FlexVol File services of problem more quickly with the new NetApp FlexClone IBM Tivoli Storage Manager storage infrastructure and to handle outages NetApp Snapshot Microsoft Windows Server better. Considerably improved options for NetApp Operations Manager SuSe Linux administration, evaluation and reporting will NetApp MultiStore IBM AIX LPAR contribute to this equally, along with reduced NetApp File Storage Resource Manager VMware ESX complexity at simultaneously high levels of Protocols Partner availability. FC Stemmer, A business of BT iSCSI www.stemmer.de “Porsche Informatik software works CIFS according to the TDI principle: increase NFS engine effi ciency with reduced use of NDMP resources. Performance is improved across the entire engine range. The same can be said of NetApp,” summarizes Anton Spitzer.

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