Best of Breed Storage Area Network

Computacenter delivers under Storage Area Network framework contract by the German Federal Employment Agency.

Computacenter have been awarded a contract with the German Federal Employment Agency to expand and modernise their existing storage environment with hardware and software from Hitachi Vantara, Pure Storage, Brocade and NetApp.

Objective

The existing storage systems at the Federal Employment Agency’s data centres in Nuremberg had hit the limits of their capacity. In the light of this, the agency put out a fresh invitation to tender for the new infrastructure and various services as part of a framework contract. The key priorities were to speed up and modernise access to data. In addition, a central storage management system was to be introduced to make the entire storage infrastructure easier to plan and administer.

Solution

The agency decided to hire Computacenter as the general contractor. Computacenter’s multivendor approach involved three different vendors and promised to deliver the best possible results in response to the required specifications. Under the framework contract, the IT service provider has been tasked with expanding and modernising the existing storage environment with hardware and software from Hitachi Vantara, Pure Storage, Brocade and NetApp. Only flash-based storage systems are to be used and all management tasks will be handled by the Storage Resource Management (SRM) solution, NetApp OnCommand Insight.

Outcome

Thanks to the new storage infrastructure, the Federal Employment Agency will be able to improve productivity whilst reducing operating expenses and other costs. There will be less management and administration work. The flash-based storage systems enable high-speed data access and now that storage resource management has been introduced, smooth operational processes are assured.