Objective
Creating a futureproof IT
infrastructure to provide 24/7
access to business-critical systems
Approach
Compared a variety of concepts from
dierent IT suppliers. Decision made
to install an integrated solution from
HPE comprising a storage system,
a tape library and switches
Case Study
Futureproofing
Montana’s data centre
Fashion retailer implements an integrated
solution from HPE
IT Matters
• Futureproof, scalable IT infrastructure
• Faster backups with LTO-6 tapes
• Simpler backup process as there is
no longer a virtual library
• Integrated HPE solution makes
the entire IT environment easier
to manage
Business Matters
• The HPE 3PAR StoreServ system’s
four nodes ensure high availability
of all business-critical applications
and databases
• Excellent planning by Concat
ensured a smooth migration
to the new environment with
just 12 hours downtime
Montana has completely
modernised the IT
infrastructure in its data
centre: the Betty Barclay
Group’s service company
now uses an integrated
solution from HPE to
ensure that its various
departments have access
to business-critical
applications and data
around the clock, and
will continue to do so
in the future.
Challenge
24/7 availability for
business-critical applications
Montana is the Betty Barclay Group’s
internal service company. The Group
currently employs over 1,000 people, some
500 of whom work at its headquarters in
Nußloch, Germany. It includes the brands
Betty Barclay, Vera Mont, Gil Bret, Saint
Jaques and Cartoon, which are sold in
over 60 countries around the world.
Due to the Group’s strong growth over
recent years, the demands on its IT
infrastructure have risen rapidly. Its data
volumes have increased significantly,
in no small part due to the accounting
department’s introduction of the SAP
Finance (FI) and Controlling (CO) modules.
Case study
Montana GmbH
& Co. KG
“The single-manufacturer strategy really made sense for us – if we have
any problems, we have a single contact at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
The testing period showed us that the performance of the new solution
would be suicient for us and that it would be very easy to manage.
Other solutions we investigated proved to be much more complex
and time-consuming.”
– Karl-Robert Friedrich, IT/ORG manager, Montana
Industry
Fashion, retail
Page 2
A total of 15 dierent databases – all of
them Microsoft® SQL databases – are
stored on the central IT system in Nußloch.
These databases are used for a variety of
dierent programs, such as the Product Data
Management (PDM) system by Koppermann
Computersysteme. Montana also uses an
ERP system designed specifically for the
fashion industry – INTEX Fashion ERP – and
the Hiltes Software ERP system to manage
the Group’s retail activities in Europe. All of
its shops are connected to the system via
their POS solutions.
In addition, the company operates a number
of other systems to manage areas such as
customs duties, mobile order entries, human
resources planning, wages and salaries. The
central SAN (storage area network) system
currently has a capacity of 123 TB.
As well as the ever-increasing data volumes,
demands on system availability are also
increasing. “In principle, our systems have
to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, 365 days a year,” explains Karl-Robert
Friedrich, IT/ORG manager at Montana.
“This is because we work with partners in
China who need access to both our PDM
system and INTEX Fashion ERP system
during their working hours. Our logistics
partner here in Germany also works in
shifts around the clock. And we have a
high volume of data to process overnight –
sometimes in batch jobs.”
In the past, Montana used an HPE
EVA storage system for its complex IT
environment. Data was backed up to an
HPE tape library with LTO-4 tapes using
HPE Data Protector software. However,
this environment was beginning to show
its age. Support for it had expired, the
capacity was at its limits, and the company
was beginning to experience availability
and performance bottlenecks.
“The entire environment was simply no
longer suicient to meet our requirements,
we had to modernise it in order to ensure
that the company could continue to grow,”
says Friedrich.
Case study
Montana GmbH
& Co. KG
Industry
Fashion, retail
Page 3
Together with its long-term IT service
provider Concat, Montana began
determining its requirements for its
new data centre infrastructure in terms
of performance, scalability for future
expansion and ease of management.
“Our IT systems are becoming more and
more complex, so the new IT infrastructure
had to be easy for our administrators to
manage,” explains Friedrich.
Solution
Complete solution from a single provider
Its catalogue of requirements finalised,
Montana began searching for a new solution.
Despite the positive experiences it had had
with its previous complete Hewlett Packard
Enterprise environment, the company was
still open to new providers. “But in the
end, Concat and HPE was the option that
really stood out,” remembers the IT/ORG
manager. “Firstly, the single-manufacturer
strategy made sense for us – if we have
any problems, we have a single contact
at HPE. Plus the price-performance ratio
was very good. We also knew that both the
performance of the new solution would be
suicient for us and that it would be very
easy to manage as Concat provided us with
a test version of the HPE 3PAR StoreServ
storage system to trial for three weeks.
Other solutions we investigated proved to be
much more complex and time-consuming.”
The company eventually settled on an
HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7400c system with
four nodes. The benefit of this is that if
one node fails, the others continue to run
without any loss of data. It also installed an
HPE StoreEver MSL6480 Tape Library with
six LTO-6 drives and 80 cartridge slots and
replaced its switches as part of the project.
In place of the old Fibre Channel switches
with a transfer rate of 4 GB/s, the company
now has two HPE StoreFabric SN6500B
switches running at 16 GB/s. So the network
infrastructure is well-prepared to handle
future growth.
Before they could actually get the new
infrastructure up and running, however,
Montana’s IT team had to work closely
with Concat to get everything prepared.
The company wanted to ensure that the
systems would only be down for a maximum
of 12 hours over a weekend so that the
business could continue running as normal.
“The experts at Concat provided excellent
support throughout every phase of the
project, actively tackling our problems
and requests. They also kept precisely
to the schedule we devised so that
downtime was kept to a minimum. It took
just 12 hours to transfer all of the data over,
and we’ve been using the new HPE 3PAR
StoreServ system ever since. It went really
smoothly,” praises Friedrich.
Case study
Montana GmbH
& Co. KG
Industry
Fashion, retail
Customer at a glance
Application
SAP Finance (FI) and Controlling (CO)
Koppermann TEX-DEFINE
INTEX Fashion ERP
HILTES 4000 Retail
Hardware
• 1 x HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7400c with
four nodes
• 1 x HPE StoreEver MSL6480 Tape
Library with 80 cartridge slots and
six LTO-6 drives
• 2 x HPE StoreFabric SN6500B
16 GB switches
Software
• HPE 3PAR Dynamic Optimization
Software Suite
• HPE 3PAR Reporting Suite
HPE services
• Five years of HPE Proactive
Care 24x7x4
About Concat:
Concat AG (www.concat.de)
has been oering tailored IT
infrastructures with optional
support and operational services
and a 24/7 helpdesk since 1990.
The company also oers private
cloud enterprise solutions and
streamlined, fully managed hybrid
and public cloud services. Its
acquisition of Synergy Systems
expanded its portfolio to include
data centre and hosting services.
Concat AG is based in Bensheim,
Germany and has 12 branches and
sales oices across the country.
The company’s 240 employees
generated sales of 96 million Euro
in the 2014/15 financial year. Concat
has been part of Meridian Group
International Inc., USA since 2006.
Montana chose to use a tiering concept
for the HPE 3PAR StoreServ. The businesscritical databases are now stored on 20 highly
performant SSD drives with a total gross
capacity of around 38 TB. The rest are stored
on standard hard disks. Now, a few months
after the launch, Montana’s IT team is
analysing the capacity utilisation and
performance of the two groups of drives.
They may eventually have to move the data
or increase the capacity of one of the areas
manually. In future, if data volumes continue
to grow, Friedrich plans to use the HPE 3PAR
Dynamic Optimization Software Suite, which
the company purchased together with the
new hardware, to do this instead. It will be
able to move the data between the two types
of storage automatically.
Advantages
Increased availability and performance
The new HPE 3PAR StoreServ system also
enables Montana to further increase the
availability of the business-critical INTEX
database, which is based on Microsoft SQL
Server, by using the AlwaysOn feature. This
uses a failover cluster service to mirror the
databases, without the nodes requiring a
shared storage area. “This increases our IO
demands, but that’s not a problem for the
HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Today we can generate
reports from the mirrored INTEX database
very easily,” says Friedrich.
The new HPE StoreEver MSL6480 Tape
Library with LTO-6 drives also provides
considerable benefits for Montana. The
tapes have substantially more storage
capacity and provide better performance
than the previous LTO-4 drives. “This saves
us a lot of work in terms of managing the
tapes,” says Friedrich. “Plus, the increased
performance of the LTO-6 tapes and the
more performant storage solution with fast
SSD drives mean that we can get rid of
our virtual tape library entirely. So we can
backup our databases in a single stream.
This simplifies our job hugely.”
The data is still written to the tapes using
HPE Data Protector software, which
Montana plans to upgrade to the latest
version (version 9) in the medium term.
Should backup volumes increase more
than expected, Montana plans to use
HPE StoreOnce with the HPE StoreEver
MSL6480 Tape Library and HPE Data
Protector software. This solution will
deduplicate up to 95 per cent of the
storage capacity for data backups so that
the available storage space can be used
more eiciently. Friedrich is confident of the
benefits this will provide: “It will make certain
applications run even faster.”
Learn more at
hpe.com/storage
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4AA6-3801EEW, January 2016
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