German Industrial Electronics Company MENNEKES Puts Complete SAP Environment on a Virtual Infrastructure with DataCore and VMware
One of Germany’s top CIOs sees costs down and performance up at MENNEKES – all the result of virtualization
Munich, Germany – April 21, 2009 – DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today announced that MENNEKES Elektrotechnik GmbH & Co., a specialist in the field of plugs and sockets for cargo containers on ships and at terminals, has migrated its complete SAP environment onto a virtual infrastructure with VMware and DataCore Software on Dell hardware. A software-based approach utilizing DataCore has meant that further investments into costly SAN hardware have been avoided. MENNEKES today benefits from a high-performance infrastructure – an agile environment with the potential for even further cost savings.
MENNEKES Elektrotechnik GmbH & Co. is a manufacturer and supplier of electronic plugs, receptacles, connectors and sockets as well as ready-wired receptacle combinations for cargo containers on ships and at terminals. When they planned their implementation of VMware ESX, the company had to reevaluate whether their existing, direct-attached storage infrastructure was capable to the task of delivering the needed storage to the virtual servers. The company evaluated several offers for hardware-based SAN solutions from manufacturers such as IBM, NetApp and HP. Finally, MENNEKES’ long-time IT partner, Networkers, introduced the company to the power of storage virtualization with SANmelody(tm) from DataCore Software. Now MENNEKES has a radically simple, high availability, storage virtualization solution designed to meet the needs of VMware-virtualized IT environments.
Higher Performance
“We went with DataCore’s SANmelody storage virtualization software solution because of its higher flexibility and its hardware independence – particularly for when we require capacity expansions, as well as the very good price/performance in comparison to a hardware SAN,” states Jrgen Bechtel, CIO, MENNEKES. “SAP was the critical element in the project because the SAP system places the highest load and the greatest demand on both performance and on the need for availability. The result was very positive – SAP runs on SANmelody, with more performance than on the network-attached storage from NetApp. The DataCore solution simply proved itself.”
MENNEKES’ IT partner Networkers did the installation as well as the data migration onsite. As a first step, four Dell PowerEdge 2950 with VMware Infrastructure 3 and two Dell PowerEdge 2900s with DataCore SANmelody 2.0 were installed. They were connected to two Dell disk subsystems with 3 TB SAS disks via a SAS RAID controller. The VMware server was then connected to the SAN 4-Gbit Fibre Channel infrastructure. In the second step, additional ESX servers were integrated and capacity was easily extended with SATA disks. This resulted in a virtual infrastructure that today comprises six ESX servers and 50 VMs as well as 8 TBs of SAS and SATA hardware spread among two data centers.
High Availability Is Key
After the migration of many different applications such as file services, CAD applications, ProE construction software, access control, etc., SAP R3 – including all the ERP modules and the very performance demanding SAP databases – were migrated from the NAS onto the DataCore SAN. Finally, business WAN servers, which support MENNEKES subsidiaries, were virtualized as well.
Today, the virtual infrastructure is an important part and contributor to the overall business success of MENNEKES. For this project, CIO Jrgen Bechtel was selected among the Top 10 CIOs in 2008 by Germany’s leading professional computing magazine, “Computerwoche.”
Jrgen Bechtel summarizes the deployment as follows, “High availability of storage in a consolidated environment with VMware is an absolute MUST. SANmelody not only provides us with the required high availability, but it also offers hardware independence, flexibility and the opportunity to easily expand with hardware of our choice. The costs of a conventional SAN with mirroring would be multiple times more costly. “
DataCore’s Non-stop, Lightning-Fast, Waste-Free Storage Solutions: The Future of Data Storage Is Now
DataCore’s storage virtualization software solutions pool and mirror disk blocks across available devices, despite differences in make and model. In the process, they speed up I/O response and throughput using extensive SAN-wide caching.
DataCore makes high availability practical! For more information on the full-line of DataCore’s feature-packed, business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) virtual storage solutions, please visit: www.datacore.com/SANpackages.
About MENNEKES Elektrotechnik GmbH & Co. KG
Electricity changed the world. Here in Kirchhundem, Germany, it certainly changed ours. Its invisible power has been the source of MENNEKES’ success over the past 70 years, in which time the company has become one of the leading manufacturers of standardized industrial plugs. From just one solitary product, our range has grown to encompass over 11.000 different articles. Today, we are a market-leading company with offices and representatives all over the world. And because we intend to stay that way, we apply state-of-the-art technology and a healthy dose of creative thinking to ensure MENNEKES’ products from the Sauerland maintain their reputation right around the world. For more, visit www.mennekes.de.
About DataCore Software
DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization SAN software, fundamentally changes the economics of managing storage with innovative software that combines advanced functions and services with the agility and savings of hardware independence. DataCore lowers the cost and complexity of IT by making storage efficient, fast, flexible, fail-safe and virtual. DataCore’s portable storage server software simplifies and automates capacity expansion and centralizes storage management for Windows, UNIX, Linux, MacOS and NetWare operating systems as well as hypervisors from VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and other suppliers. DataCore is privately held and its corporate headquarters are in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. For more information, call (877) 780-5111 or visit www.datacore.com.
DataCore, the DataCore logo and SANmelody are trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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Media Contacts (Germany):
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