HPE 664644-B21 Product Data Sheet

Case Study

BIGLOBE constructs lower-cost,
high-density scalable storage

Objective

Support customer data requirements—
which have already exceeded 500 TB—
with a robust, scalable mail storage system
while significantly reducing the total cost
of storage (installation, operation, data
centre).

Approach

Choose a storage environment such as
object storage that takes advantage of
x86 architecture on a server with the
capability of loading a high-capacity HDD
in order to achieve cost-eectiveness,
good service quality, and reliable data
protection rather than choosing NAS or
SAN as storage solution.

IT Matters

• Achieved a low cost/2 PB high-capacity
storage environment running Scality
RING on a HPE ProLiant SL4540 Gen8
Server

• Deployed 88 TB (4 TB SATA×22) disk
capacity and 192 GB memory per single
HPE ProLiant SL4540 Server node

• Easily integrated existing Zimbra mail
application with Scality RING

• Substantially reduced operation and
maintenance cost with ProLiant SL4540
self-management capabilities

• On-site maintenance support within 4
hours is available 24 hours a day, 365
days a year with HPE Support Plus 24

Business Matters

• Overwhelming cost advantage in
comparison with generic 2U server

• Highly competitive mail service
infrastructure

• Scalability of storage capacity in excess
of tens of petabytes

• Ability to use object storage to store
archived logs and pictures

environment

HPE ProLiant SL4500 ensures mail storage
for 3 million BIGLOBE broadband users

As a leading Japanese internet
and cloud service provider,
BIGLOBE is migrating to a
more robust mail storage
system for their 3 million
broadband clients. BIGLOBE
chose HPE ProLiant SL4540
Gen8 Server powered by Intel®
Xeon® processor E5-2400
product family running the
Scality RING software package.

BIGLOBE takes on challenges
for growing mail data
requirements and costs

BIGLOBE is one of Japan’s leading ISPs.
NEC started PC communication service
PC-VAN in 1986, and 10 years later 3
dierent communication services were
merged to create BIGLOBE. BIGLOBE has
since expanded into cloud services and the
MVNO business. In 2014, BIGLOBE became
independent from NEC.

Currently, BIGLOBE is migrating its email
storage environment to an HPE ProLiant
SL4500 Scalable System solution in order to
meet the growing data requirements of its
300 million broadband users.

Case study

BIGLOBE

Industry

IT, ISP, cloud

“The HPE ProLiant SL4540 can reduce the cost by 2/3 in comparison with

conventional storage environments. When we forecasted for the next five
years after installation, we determined that the highest return on
investment would be obtained with the ProLiant SL4540.”

– Ryuichi Ishige, Manager of Cloud Services, BIGLOBE

Page 2

Ryuichi Ishige, Manager of Cloud Services,
said “From the start of our operations with
respect to mail infrastructure, we have
systematically used trial and error methods to
mitigate high cost in regards to growing data
requirements.”

In order to reduce costs for BIGLOBE’s mail
service infrastructure, several changeovers
were carried out. Initially, the original DNA
set up was transitioned to NAS realising a
50% cost savings. Secondarily, the move
to a virtualised server environment further
reduced the cost to about 1/10th of the
original system.

Mr. Ishige commented, “We are seeing a trend
towards a need for total data capacity larger
than 500 TB. The reason behind this growing
need is we believe there is a change in the
mail user mindset. Whereas before users
deleted read emails, now they archive them.”

While managing growing data demands, the
project team had to lower the cost of storage.
When attempting to solve this dilemma, the
proposal of object storage piqued Mr. Ishige’s
and his team’s interest.

“Object storage delivers a very simple
storage environment for x86 server clusters.
In addition, petabyte-class scalability is
available.” Mr. Ishige said.

In object storage, data is treated as an object
rather than a block or a file, giving it an ID
and metadata to be able to uniquely identify
data for its respective application. The
foremost feature of an object-based storage
device (OSD) is that it requires less metadata
than file systems to store and access files,
and reduces the overhead of managing file
metadata by storing the metadata with the
object.

Mr. Ishige stated, “We expect to reduce our
operation management load because of
object storage’s simple structure and flexibility
for ever-increasing data. Also, we can use a
generic x86 server. It significantly reduces the
installation cost when compared to dedicated
storage products.”

Since 2012, Mr. Ishige and his team have
conducted extensive research to deepen
their understanding of object storage. After
considering all their options, they chose to
install Scality RING software from US-based
Scality due to their patented object storage
technology. Scality software combined with
the HPE ProLiant SL4540 Gen8 Servers
running the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2400
product family provided a low-cost, high­performance platform.