Case Study
W.B. Mason transforms its SQL
Server-driven business with
Objective
Support rapid business growth with more
scalable, cost-eective infrastructure
for mission-critical Microsoft SQL
Server database
Approach
Modernise entire Microsoft environment
with HPE Superdome X Servers, HPE
3PAR StoreServ Storage, and HPE
Proactive Care Advanced Service
IT Matters
• Optimised CPU utilisation to improve SQL
Server performance and eiciently handle
business growth
• Accelerated inventory accounting process
from 24 – 36 hours to 8 hours
• Increased the number of batch requests
per second, speeding query requests
and reporting
Business Matters
• Enabled business to double in size on
existing infrastructure
• Assured timely order fulfillment to meet
customer expectations
• Increased workplace productivity by
enabling employees to perform their
jobs faster
HPE Superdome X
Oice products leader boosts workplace
productivity, unleashes business growth
Delivering legendary,
personalised customer service
The company’s slogan, “Who But W.B. Mason,”
is apt. Who else delivers the kind of personalised
service and customised solutions to meet
any imaginable oice products need that an
organisation might have? There’s only one
answer: W.B. Mason.
Founded by William Betts Mason in 1898, the
company has grown to become the largest
privately owned oice products dealer in the
United States. The key to this long history of
success is a passion for delivering outstanding
service and value. Customers get an assigned
sales person, an assigned customer service
rep, even an assigned driver who personally
brings each order into the customer´s facility.
Case study
W.B. Mason
Industry
Oice products
“HPE has beat all expectations of what we were looking to gain from
Superdome X and 3PAR.”
— Mike Yarosh, Director of IT Services, W.B. Mason
Page 2
To make sure its 750 trucks roll out every
morning with precisely the right orders, W.B.
Mason relies on a large Microsoft® SQL Server
database running Microsoft Dynamics AX
enterprise resource planning (ERP). Every
order, whether coming in through the web
or personally keyed in by sales reps, goes
through SQL Server. In fact, everything
needed to run the business—inventory,
supply chain, shipping, invoicing, financial
reporting, etc.—is managed in SQL Server.
To say it’s critical is an understatement.
Mike Yarosh, director of IT services at W.B.
Mason, remarks, “Any hiccup, any slow-down
in SQL Server and everyone feels it. If orders
aren’t processed on time, our drivers don’t
have anything to deliver. No one is happy.
Our job in IT is to never let that happen.”
To that end, W.B. Mason has long relied on
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) servers
and storage to run SQL Server. However, as
the company was growing 10 – 12% each year,
its traditional blade infrastructure struggled
to keep up. The company was purchasing new
servers nearly every year, each time requiring
a long, labor-intensive migration. Yet,
despite its most recent upgrade, CPUs
were consistently running at a dangerously
high 95% utilisation rate. Without taking fast
action, IT risked running out of compute
power before year-end—just prior to the
company’s busiest period in January.
Modernised infrastructure for
mission-critical SQL Server
Working with HPE, W.B. Mason embarked
on a dramatic infrastructure transformation
to enable IT to support its business growth.
To do this, the company required greater
scalability with increased performance and
high availability for its critical SQL Server
environment. W.B. Mason chose HPE
Superdome X running Microsoft Windows®
as the core platform for SQL Server and
Dynamics AX. The Superdome X is loaded
with four Superdome BL920s Gen9 server
blades configured as two electronically
isolated partitions, called nPars. No other
major x86 vendor offers this type of
electronic isolation, which enables W.B.
Mason to achieve extraordinarily high
reliability by linking the two nPars with
SQL Server clustering.
Case study
W.B. Mason
Industry
Oice products
Page 3
“Our focus is on having as much redundancy as
possible,” says Yarosh. “With a single instance
of SQL Server that’s constantly growing, we
have to make sure it’s available all the time.
The Superdome chassis is tried and true, and
clustered nPars provide the added assurance
of high availability we need. We know if
anything happens like a component failure
or OS problem, we can keep the business
up and running on Superdome X.”
W.B. Mason also deployed HPE 3PAR StoreServ
Storage with all-flash drives to further enhance
performance and scalability while gaining sixnines data availability. The HPE infrastructure
is protected by HPE Proactive Care Advanced
Service that provides W.B. Mason with an
assigned HPE Account Support Manager
(ASM) for personalised technical and
operational advice to prevent problems and
quickly resolve issues should they occur. This
allows the company to focus on running the
business and serving customers rather than
maintaining technology infrastructure.
Achieves a whole new
level of scalability
With Superdome X, W.B. Mason now has a
platform for SQL Server that will scale at pace
with the business—and then some. Today,
the company has optimal CPU utilisation to
handle business growth for the foreseeable
future. And when the time comes for further
expansion, the company can simply plug in
additional capacity to its existing
Superdome X chassis.
Mike Hewins, database administrator with
W.B. Mason, notes, “With the Superdome X
configuration we currently have, we could easily
double the size of our business. If we start to
hit a wall, all we have to do is add a couple
more server blades to the chassis and we can
double again. There’s no need to go through
a major platform migration every time we
grow. The Superdome X is actually scalable,
which our previous environment was not.”
Performance boost enables
greater workplace productivity
Performance has also improved since
W.B. Mason modernised its SQL Server
infrastructure with Superdome X. As a result,
key business processes complete faster,
enabling the entire workplace to be
more productive.
Hewins provides a prime example: “Every
weekend there’s a scheduled process that
recalculates our inventory. Before, that
process took 24 – 36 hours. Now it’s finishing
in under eight hours. That’s a three to four
times improvement that has a huge impact on
order fulfillment and making sure our trucks
get out the door on time Monday morning.”
Yarosh points out that one of the most
important measures is simply how employees
feel about the way applications perform. For
example, IT conducted a user experience
survey before moving to Superdome X, and
across the board people responded that their
applications were slow. After the migration,
users were asked again without being told the
infrastructure had changed, and the universal
response was that everything ran faster.
Case study
W.B. Mason
Industry
Oice products
Customer at a glance
Application
• Microsoft SQL Server running missioncritical Microsoft Dynamics AX enterprise
resource planning system driving all
critical business processes from
order processing to shipping
Hardware
• HPE Integrity Superdome X
• HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage
Software
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009
Services
• HPE Proactive Care Advanced Service
“With the Superdome X configuration we currently have, we
could easily double the size of our business. If we start to hit
a wall, all we have to do is add a couple more server blades
to the chassis and we can double again. There’s no need to
go through a major platform migration every time we grow.
The Superdome X is actually scalable, which our previous
environment was not.”
– Mike Hewins, Database Administrator, W.B. Mason
“User experience is hard to quantify, but it’s
something that upper management looks at
very closely,” he says. “Regardless of whether
a purchase order is generated in one second
or three seconds, what management cares
most about is that the purchasing agents can
do their jobs faster. That’s a big deal because
it means higher productivity, which helps
improve our bottom line.”
Hewins adds that HPE 3PAR storage also
contributes to increased performance: “We
see 30,000 – 40,000 batch requests per
second hitting the 3PAR, which is a great
improvement over our previous storage.”
Enabling business growth
with no IT limitations
By modernising its SQL Server environment
with HPE Superdome X and 3PAR, W.B. Mason
has demonstrated the dramatic impact IT has
on a business. Simply put, when IT performs
better, employees can be more productive,
business processes run faster, and delivery
trucks head out to customers on time. Most
important, with Superdome X and 3PAR,
W.B. Mason can continue to grow its
business knowing IT will be able to
support this growth with no limitations.
Yarosh concludes, “So often in IT we are
playing catch-up with the business. This
solution from HPE has turned that scenario
around. It’s absolutely fantastic to now be
able to go to the business and say we have
a solution that will last many, many years,
and provide the ability to grow even beyond
what you’re currently planning. HPE has beat
all expectations of what we were looking
to gain from Superdome X and 3PAR.
We’re very excited about what it holds
for the future of W.B. Mason.”
Learn more at
hpe.com/info/superdomex
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© 2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The
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Windows and Windows Server are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
4AA6-6711EEW, July 2016
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