Wholesale Electric: Houston, we have no problems
For over 60 years, Wholesale Electric has been an exemplary “country of opportunity” company, supplying a wide range of power supply products worldwide. But it was not always so. Back in 1949, the founders of the company could hardly even dream of such a development. We would like to tell you about one of the reasons for their success.
But first, a few words about the company itself. Wholesale Electric, based in Houston, USA, has a staff of 470 employees and is engaged in the retail and wholesale trade of everything that is needed for power supply. With the growth of fame outside of his native country, the company's business began to expand, and the portfolio was replenished with international orders. But along with the potential profit on the horizon, it seemed quite real difficulties. The most relevant was the storage of data. Wholesale Electric used dedicated physical servers with a storage system directly attached to them to run all of their critical applications. We all know that, according to popular wisdom, admins are divided into two types: those who do not yet make backups, and those who already do. However, in the system configuration existing at that time, the creation of a full backup was not possible. That is why, as information volumes grow, the company's specialists began to seriously worry about disaster recovery, IT management and data center efficiency. Looking ahead, we announce the end of the “drama”: a virtual environment based on VMware technologies has been deployed, providing centralized data storage in the Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN storage network. And now in order.
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The problems that made electric power specialists think about the eternal are rather trivial and sooner or later almost every successful business “catches up”. Document management became the cornerstone of the existing infrastructure. Just imagine how much “paperwork” requires only one project for the construction of a chemical plant. Extrapolate it for five years, which will last construction, then multiply by the number of people from different parts of the world who should have constant access to this documentation. Here, now you can imagine what the 19 physical servers of the company faced, each of which was connected to the storage system.
This system could hardly be called effective. No, she still coped with the tasks, but at what cost ... First, to maintain the round-the-clock operation of such a motley “zoo”, the company was forced to store literally a whole rack of spare parts: disks of various types, array controllers, power supplies, etc. . Secondly, because of all the same "heterogeneity", storage resources were used by 30-35 percent. And even though the authorities, as they say, “understood everything,” this situation did not suit anyone particularly. Thirdly, the equipment nomenclature introduced its contribution. If the next update of its own applications suddenly "put out" the server, then, right for the administrators of Wholesale Electric, frankly, not the best of times. Somewhere alongside, lurking and "fourth", which consists in a solution for disaster recovery. In principle, it was, but the predicted recovery time of 48 hours led technical director Bill Fife to virtualization.
I would like to write that “Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN was chosen without a single hesitation,” but that would be just another marketing tale. In reality, the first to be consulted by Wholesale Electric specialists were their colleagues from other companies. Yes, word of mouth in all its glory. It played an important role along with the company's own research: in the end, the choice was between Dell, EMC, HP and NetApp. And if you remember the name of this blog, you can easily guess who won in the end. Consider why.
The key point was the architecture of Fluid Data, which we once talked about, along with software stuffing from:
• Windows Server,
• VMware vSphere 4.1,
• VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
• Dell Compellent Data Progression,
• Dell Compellent Fast Track,
• Dell Compellent Data Instant Replay,
• Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay.
The initial idea is this: data in the storage system should not be kept static. On the contrary, they should “flow” depending on the frequency of circulation, criticality for the company, customized policies, phases of the moon, etc. The system itself can be described by a model of three layers: on the first, “fast layer”, there are all important data that should be accessed with maximum speed. The second “layer” is intended for less needed information, as well as for use as a “transshipment base” between the first and second layer. Finally, the third, “lower layer” is the “slowest”, designed for long-term storage of information. Personally, all of this reminds us of a cousin of the demon Maxwell, who sorts out the "energy" of information instead of molecules.
In practice, the following happened: Fiber Channel storage system with a capacity of three terabytes for level 1 and SATA drives with nine terabytes for level 3 storage. However, the whole "salt" lies in the nuances, namely, in the software designed for data management. For automatic analysis of the frequency of circulation and other factors that determine which “layer” is necessary to record this or that information, Dell Compellent Data Progression is responsible. In turn, the Fast Track allows you to “finish” the technology not at the volume level, but at the level of each disk. The essence of the approach lies in the dynamic physical location of the requested data on the external tracks of the hard. This allows you to increase access speed not only due to the fact that the reading head does not need to "rush" in search of recorded blocks. In general, data fragmentation becomes less, which means that when reading a disc, it will be necessary to make less revolutions, which ultimately leads to energy savings. In the context of Wholesale Electric, the data, the need for access to which often arises, as well as the data designated as critical for business, are at the first level, while the rest are automatically moved to the third without the intervention of IT staff. Now on the 3rd level is about 80% of company data. All this has increased the overall utilization of resources from 30-35% to 75%.
But no matter how well organized the storage system is, efforts will sink into oblivion, unless it is possible to quickly recover information in the event of an accident. For this purpose, Wholesale Electric uses Dell Compellent Data Instant Replay. This tool is designed to create local copies (snapshots of the file system) of all virtual machines; Copies are created once a day for non-critical volumes and every three hours for critical databases. In addition, volumes that the company has identified as critical are replicated in the storage network to individual disaster recovery capacities using the Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay tool.
What results can be summed up? Perhaps the most important thing will be what is the company's infrastructure today. According to Bill Fife, everyone won from this in his own way: finances benefited from reduced energy consumption, employees benefited from increased speed and stability. And of course, IT professionals won the most: they received not only an increase in power, but also a stable replicable system that can recover within tens of minutes. In other words, we can say that the IT department is in some way at last in a state of rest. Isn't this the most desirable state in the Universe?
Fly Virtualizing means growing up! Grandmother
But first, a few words about the company itself. Wholesale Electric, based in Houston, USA, has a staff of 470 employees and is engaged in the retail and wholesale trade of everything that is needed for power supply. With the growth of fame outside of his native country, the company's business began to expand, and the portfolio was replenished with international orders. But along with the potential profit on the horizon, it seemed quite real difficulties. The most relevant was the storage of data. Wholesale Electric used dedicated physical servers with a storage system directly attached to them to run all of their critical applications. We all know that, according to popular wisdom, admins are divided into two types: those who do not yet make backups, and those who already do. However, in the system configuration existing at that time, the creation of a full backup was not possible. That is why, as information volumes grow, the company's specialists began to seriously worry about disaster recovery, IT management and data center efficiency. Looking ahead, we announce the end of the “drama”: a virtual environment based on VMware technologies has been deployed, providing centralized data storage in the Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN storage network. And now in order.Do it once ...
')
The problems that made electric power specialists think about the eternal are rather trivial and sooner or later almost every successful business “catches up”. Document management became the cornerstone of the existing infrastructure. Just imagine how much “paperwork” requires only one project for the construction of a chemical plant. Extrapolate it for five years, which will last construction, then multiply by the number of people from different parts of the world who should have constant access to this documentation. Here, now you can imagine what the 19 physical servers of the company faced, each of which was connected to the storage system.
This system could hardly be called effective. No, she still coped with the tasks, but at what cost ... First, to maintain the round-the-clock operation of such a motley “zoo”, the company was forced to store literally a whole rack of spare parts: disks of various types, array controllers, power supplies, etc. . Secondly, because of all the same "heterogeneity", storage resources were used by 30-35 percent. And even though the authorities, as they say, “understood everything,” this situation did not suit anyone particularly. Thirdly, the equipment nomenclature introduced its contribution. If the next update of its own applications suddenly "put out" the server, then, right for the administrators of Wholesale Electric, frankly, not the best of times. Somewhere alongside, lurking and "fourth", which consists in a solution for disaster recovery. In principle, it was, but the predicted recovery time of 48 hours led technical director Bill Fife to virtualization.
Do two ...
I would like to write that “Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN was chosen without a single hesitation,” but that would be just another marketing tale. In reality, the first to be consulted by Wholesale Electric specialists were their colleagues from other companies. Yes, word of mouth in all its glory. It played an important role along with the company's own research: in the end, the choice was between Dell, EMC, HP and NetApp. And if you remember the name of this blog, you can easily guess who won in the end. Consider why.The key point was the architecture of Fluid Data, which we once talked about, along with software stuffing from:
• Windows Server,
• VMware vSphere 4.1,
• VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
• Dell Compellent Data Progression,
• Dell Compellent Fast Track,
• Dell Compellent Data Instant Replay,
• Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay.
The initial idea is this: data in the storage system should not be kept static. On the contrary, they should “flow” depending on the frequency of circulation, criticality for the company, customized policies, phases of the moon, etc. The system itself can be described by a model of three layers: on the first, “fast layer”, there are all important data that should be accessed with maximum speed. The second “layer” is intended for less needed information, as well as for use as a “transshipment base” between the first and second layer. Finally, the third, “lower layer” is the “slowest”, designed for long-term storage of information. Personally, all of this reminds us of a cousin of the demon Maxwell, who sorts out the "energy" of information instead of molecules.
In practice, the following happened: Fiber Channel storage system with a capacity of three terabytes for level 1 and SATA drives with nine terabytes for level 3 storage. However, the whole "salt" lies in the nuances, namely, in the software designed for data management. For automatic analysis of the frequency of circulation and other factors that determine which “layer” is necessary to record this or that information, Dell Compellent Data Progression is responsible. In turn, the Fast Track allows you to “finish” the technology not at the volume level, but at the level of each disk. The essence of the approach lies in the dynamic physical location of the requested data on the external tracks of the hard. This allows you to increase access speed not only due to the fact that the reading head does not need to "rush" in search of recorded blocks. In general, data fragmentation becomes less, which means that when reading a disc, it will be necessary to make less revolutions, which ultimately leads to energy savings. In the context of Wholesale Electric, the data, the need for access to which often arises, as well as the data designated as critical for business, are at the first level, while the rest are automatically moved to the third without the intervention of IT staff. Now on the 3rd level is about 80% of company data. All this has increased the overall utilization of resources from 30-35% to 75%.
But no matter how well organized the storage system is, efforts will sink into oblivion, unless it is possible to quickly recover information in the event of an accident. For this purpose, Wholesale Electric uses Dell Compellent Data Instant Replay. This tool is designed to create local copies (snapshots of the file system) of all virtual machines; Copies are created once a day for non-critical volumes and every three hours for critical databases. In addition, volumes that the company has identified as critical are replicated in the storage network to individual disaster recovery capacities using the Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay tool.
In the dry residue
What results can be summed up? Perhaps the most important thing will be what is the company's infrastructure today. According to Bill Fife, everyone won from this in his own way: finances benefited from reduced energy consumption, employees benefited from increased speed and stability. And of course, IT professionals won the most: they received not only an increase in power, but also a stable replicable system that can recover within tens of minutes. In other words, we can say that the IT department is in some way at last in a state of rest. Isn't this the most desirable state in the Universe?Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/168337/
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