DataCore, the leader in Parallel-Powered
Software, Application-Adaptive
Data Infrastructure and Hyper-converged
Virtual SAN solutions, has announced that OSI Food Solutions (OSI)
has been successfully using DataCore's SANsymphony platform to support its
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system across Europe. DataCore adds needed
agility, resilience and performance to the company's demanding business
applications including Microsoft
Dynamics NAV (Navision), SQL databases, Citrix XenApp and VMware environments.
"As IT support for OSI, it is our job to provide other branches and offices
with plug-and-play solutions whenever they are required, so the systems need
total compatibility and ease of use, as many production sites do not have their
own IT staff. This is why we place great emphasis on reliable systems that are
easy to administer. DataCore SANsymphony definitely offers both and from a central
management pane," comments Wolfgang Allgäuer, IT manager for infrastructure
based at OSI Food Solutions Germany.
OSI has 17,000 employees located
in 60 sites across 25 different countries. Its core business is the production
of high-quality convenience meat products, such as meat patties, bacon, pizza
and hot dogs. OSI has many large familiar brand name customers including
McDonalds, Metro and Tescos, and access to a resilient "Navision" ERP system is
essential to facilitate just-in-time logistics.
Storage Solution for Europe-Wide Use
OSI Food Solutions Germany serves as both a
production site as well as a service provider to its European sister companies
within the OSI Group implementing a uniform IT infrastructure strategy across
Europe. Adoption of SANsymphony facilitates shared storage and increases
performance to its major business applications whilst also safeguarding and
optimising OSI's growing virtual environment. The central IT Department offers
procurement, implementation and support of IT infrastructure resting on three
pillars: VMware vSphere, Citrix XenApp and DataCore SANsymphony.
Hardware Goes, Software Stays
Given that DataCore's Software-Defined Storage
is totally hardware agnostic, OSI continues to reap the cost savings in
selection of any underlying hardware:
"The change to DataCore provided us with the
option of using lower-priced hardware, while at the same time achieving
functionality at enterprise level. We can easily integrate new technologies and
freely scale the environment. So the investment has paid off, particularly over
the long term," said Wolfgang Allgäuer.
Apart from the basic functions of
virtualization and synchronous mirroring with auto-failover, SANsymphony
integrates well-developed storage services, including auto-tiering, thin
provisioning, high-speed caching technology and high-level reporting and
analysis tools. OSI appreciates the reporting in particular, because it allows
any potential latency to be traced and eliminated and deals with spikes in data
mining all the way to the backend disk. Integration of VMware vCenter plug-ins
into the DataCore GUI has also proved useful as it allows virtual
server/storage partitions to be rapidly configured and effectively transferred
with a high degree of automation.
The company is planning to add and integrate
Flash/SSD memory in order to further increase overall performance. Whether this
will take place via external SSD arrays or corresponding PCIs Flash cards, the
Software-Defined Storage platform SANsymphony supports both variants and will
provide a major boost in performance in combination with DataCore's parallel
I/O technology that is included within the next SANsymphony update.
"We have been using DataCore SANsymphony for
years now and we are completely satisfied with it. It's an easy to manage
solution with a good price-to-performance ratio. The combination of DataCore
and VMware helps us implement a shared strategy despite the differing
requirements at our various international locations" concludes Wolfgang
Allgäuer.
A
copy of the full case study can be viewed here: https://www.datacore.com/testimonials/osi-international-foods-gmbh
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