HPE BD178BAE Product Data Sheet

Objective
Logistics service provider TRANSPOREON Group is a growing company. Its data centre requires easy-to-manage, scalable IT resources
Approach
HPE 3PAR Storage in the data centres and development department at TRANSPOREON Group ensures a high-performance, transaction-oriented provision of transportation services
Case Study
TRANSPOREON Group increases eiciency by optimising storage
HPE 3PAR oers flexibility and optimum load balancing across storage media max
IT Matters
• High availability
• Automatic load balancing to ensure optimum distribution of storage
Business Matters
• Excellent value for money
• Service available everywhere
• Fewer IT sta required in data centre thanks to automatic load balancing
Challenge
High-performance platform for logistics services
Founded in 2000, Transporeon Group, an SME from Ulm, Germany, links manufacturers, retailers and wholesalers with logistics service providers through its TRANSPOREON platform for transportation management, TICONTRACT platform for e-sourcing, procurement and freight bill auditing and its MERCAREON platform for retail specific dock scheduling. These three platforms currently link over 1000 shippers, 55000 carriers and 100000 users in over 80 countries. Users rely on the web-based Software as a Service (SaaS) to process tenders and award contracts, post time slots for the loading and unloading of goods and also to track their shipments. Billing for contracted services is performed on a transaction basis.
In view of this, system performance and IT infrastructure reliability are business critical, which is why Paul Lendrates, infrastructure development manager at Transporeon Group, opted for 3PAR Storage from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). He purchased the first three systems three years ago and was so happy that he has now purchased an additional three 3PARs. “What particularly impressed me was the innovation of the HPE storage systems, particularly the all-flash arrays; however, the value for money is there too of course,” he adds. Other advantages for Lendrates include the scalability and performance of the HPE systems. The performance reliability that Lendrates enjoys when using proprietary Transporeon hardware was one reason behind the decision to move away from the use of computing power from the cloud.
Case study
Transporeon Group
Industry
IT (logistics)
Customer at a glance
Application
Transporeon runs three platforms on which business can book transportation services, which are billed on a transactional basis. A fail-safe platform is therefore business critical.
Hardware
• 3x HPE 3PAR 7200c with 96x SSD All-Flash, each with 400 GB for cloud developers
HPE services
• HPE Proactive Care Support
When using cloud computing power, although it was possible to also include service definitions in contracts, there was ultimately no way of knowing which applications were running on the same infrastructure simultaneously. For development of the company, it was important to Lendrates to personally have control over how long the dierent queries took.
Solution
Automatic balancing a major plus
For Lendrates, one of the most important technological advantages that swung the decision for the HPE solution was the auto-tiering automatic storage allocation: “We don’t have to do it manually. We install SSDs and slower storage disks and the system takes over performance distribution.” Not having to do this manually, Lendrates adds, saves him half a headcount in the data centre. The data volume to be stored is between 150 and 200 terabytes. Should storage requirements increase, 3PAR is very easy to extend.
A further advantage, and integral to the success of the IT service provider’s business model, is the oered service contracts. Lendrates: “Should an incident occur, it is guaranteed to be resolved within six hours.” TRANSPOREON Group also uses predictive care; the system automatically monitors error messages, analyses which parts could have failed and initiates appropriate action. For infrastructure manager Lendrates, this automation of repairs thanks to predictive care oers the decisive advantage that he no longer has to worry about component monitoring: “It’s a great product,” he enthuses, “because it means that we don’t have to invest as much time and money into monitoring”. Lendrates’ second investment in 3PAR was also prompted by its excellent value for money. Added to that is the fact that HPE is represented worldwide, which fits well with the expansion plans of the Ulm-based company that was founded just 16 years ago.
Benefit
Flexibility helps to secure company growth
“The bottom line is that the solution oers us the flexibility to grow faster,” Lendrates continues. The simple scalability of the 3PARs was another reason behind Lendrates’ decision to purchase three new systems: “I set up a new shelf with more drives,” he explains, “and in a little over an hour, a further 24 drives are up and running!”
On account of the high reliability and maintenance contracts, there is no need to design the hardware with a particularly large (and capital draining) buer to meet future growth requirements. As Lendrates explains, “Our IT sizing includes planning for one year.” His confidence in HPE is so great that he has now decided on a single vendor strategy. This holds a number of advantages for him. Firstly, he no longer has to train his data centre team on dierent systems. And the systems they do manage can be understood in greater depth and the knowledge transferred internally. “We also only have to deal with one type of software on our management platforms,” he continues. He will shortly be able to address the issue of high availability across both data centres. To date, this has only been possible within one data centre. It currently takes 15 minutes to switch to the second data centre. High availability is another topic that Lendrates is of course also discussing with HPE: “With HPE, it’s very easy as the fail-over strategies are exemplary,” he adds.
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© Copyright 2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for Hewlett Packard Enterprise products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Hewlett Packard Enterprise shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
4AA6-7611EEW, September 2016
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