Oetker Daten und Informationsverarbeitung speeds provisioning times by 40 percent with Cisco Unified Computing System
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Customer Name: Oetker Daten und Informationsverarbeitung
Industry: IT services
Location: Germany
Number of Employees: 100
Challenge
- Reduce costs while maintaining quality of service
- Attract new hosting customers
- Improve time to market
Solution
- Data center architecture transformation with Cisco Unified Computing System servers and Cisco Nexus switching
Results
- IT team productivity improved by 30 percent
- Provisioning time reduced by 40 percent and availability increased by 10 percent
- Hardware and cabling decreased by 25 percent and 85 percent respectively
- Customers see benefit of higher hosting capability with more reliable data center services
Challenge
Oetker Daten und Informationsverarbeitung (OEDIV) is a data center application hosting business belonging to Dr. Oetker, the German multinational conglomerate. Providing data center services to other businesses across the Dr. Oetker group and commercially to mid-sized enterprises, OEDIV focuses on SAP hosting, managed services, HR applications, and EDI systems. Balancing quality against cost is an ongoing challenge for the business.
"What we try to achieve is not the lowest cost, but a fair price for the services we offer. We try to be as efficient as possible and achieve a faster time to market while maintaining or improving our quality of service. That means we have to increasingly rely on automation."
- Simona Georgescu, IT Marketing and Sales at OEDIV
Historically, OEDIV's data center used rack servers from a range of vendors, which hindered efficient operations. To address this, OEDIV sought to move toward a single-vendor, stateless computing model. This model would allow compute nodes with no set configuration to be reconfigured spontaneously using standard service profiles.
Solution
The company was already using Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series Switches and Cisco Nexus® 7000, 5000, and 2000 Series Switches in its network and decided to include Cisco as a potential data center partner. Simona Georgescu explains, "A series of factors led us to choose Cisco. Our buzzword is the software-defined data center, and Cisco acknowledged this market gap. Other companies simply weren't as innovative and tended to focus on their core products, whereas Cisco had started from scratch."
The Cisco Unified Computing System™ (UCS®) was adopted as a new platform that broke away from the traditional mold, offering a more flexible architecture pre-configured to be compatible with storage and virtualization technologies.
Technical Details and Implementation
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"Cisco changed our mindset and offered exactly what we needed in order to get to our goal, which is automation and reduced time to market."
- Martin Stratmann, Managing Director, Oetker Daten und Informationsverarbeitung
"Our buzzword is the software-defined data center, and Cisco acknowledged this market gap. Other companies simply weren't as innovative and tended to focus on their core products, whereas Cisco had started from scratch."
- Simona Georgescu, IT Marketing and Sales, Oetker Daten und Informationsverarbeitung
In addition to the technical capabilities of the Cisco® UCS architecture, OEDIV was impressed by the quality of the account team, which was the only one offering equipment for testing. Following an 18-month selection process, a Cisco data center architecture was implemented to power three SAP High Performance Analytic Appliance (HANA) instances and for generic SAP hosting.
The OEDIV UCS architecture comprises eight Cisco UCS 6296UP 96-Port Fabric Interconnects, plus sixteen UCS chassis equipped with a total of 200 Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Servers. These are powered by Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2690 chip sets with 256GB of RAM. Selected for their high-performance capabilities, they operate as VMware ESX hosts. These appliances include two HANA S-Size single nodes (C260 256GB) and a M-Size (C460 512GB) node used to support customer demonstrations for SAP HANA hosting.
The servers are attached to EMC storage arrays. Switching is handled by Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches. The infrastructure is secured via Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances, Cisco Email Security Appliances, and Cisco Web Security Appliances. UCS Director is also utilized. This arrangement improves automation through unified converged infrastructure management for administering computing, network, virtualization, and storage from one self-service web interface.
The Cisco equipment is covered by a Cisco SMARTnet™ services agreement and installed in two fully redundant active-active data centers located about six miles (10 kilometers) apart. The kit was purchased with finance from Cisco Capital®. Computacenter, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner, was engaged to assist with equipment installation and configuration.
Results
OEDIV is leveraging Cisco UCS to enhance its hosting capabilities, a strategic focus for the business. Compared to its previous infrastructure, the Cisco UCS data center architecture provides significant benefits. Cabling requirements, for instance, have dropped by 85 percent. Georgescu notes, "You no longer need different servers connected to a hundred cables."
The adoption of blade technology also allows OEDIV to provision new services 40 percent faster, as hardware can be easily slotted into an existing chassis and configured in minutes using pre-existing service profiles. Georgescu states, "You have one big block with replaceable blades. Having only one block and not different servers saves time and optimizes cost."
This simplicity, combined with managing approximately 25 percent less hardware, has also increased the IT team's productivity by around 30 percent. Furthermore, the reliability of the Cisco UCS platform has led to a 10 percent increase in availability. Georgescu adds, "The MAC address and the BIOS are not on the hardware, but on the software layer. So if a blade breaks, you just replace it, and the information's still there. So customers enjoy much reduced downtime."
Next Steps
With approximately 200 Cisco UCS blades already in production, OEDIV plans to utilize Cisco UCS and Citrix technologies as a platform for customer virtual desktop infrastructure services. The company also intends to integrate Cisco technologies further into its business operations. Martin Stratmann summarizes, "Cisco changed our mindset and offered exactly what we needed in order to get to our goal, which is automation and reduced time to market."
For More Information
To learn more about the Cisco architectures and solutions featured in this case study, visit:
Product List
Data Center Solutions
- Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)
- Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Servers
Routing and Switching
- Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches
- Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches
- Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Switches
- Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches
Fabric Interconnects
- Cisco UCS 6296UP Series Fabric Interconnects
Security
- Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances
- Cisco Email Security Appliances
- Cisco Web Security Appliances
Processors
- Intel Xeon Processor E5-2690
Applications
- VMware
- SAP HANA (two S-Size single node C260 256GB and one M-Size C460 512GB)
Storage
- EMC
