Real World Solutions from People in the Trenches featuring DataCore Software and Felix Schoeller Group

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With six locations in Germany and Canada, Felix Schoeller Group is one of the largest manufacturers of specialty papers worldwide. Schoeller selected DataCore virtual storage area network (SAN) technology to complement its VMware ESX Server systems. SANmelody was initially deployed since it increased SAN performance compared to the previous hardware solution. The system also provided high availability protection and then was subsequently further enhanced by way of upgrading to DataCore’s SANsymphony, which provides the company with the unlimited storage capacity that it requires.

“To migrate the consolidated VMware server workloads into the production environment, we needed a high-performance, failsafe SAN,” explains Michael Mohlmann, IT department director, Felix Schoeller Group. “We searched for a technically mature and affordable solution, which we found in DataCore. The DataCore solution fulfills our requirements in terms of performance and high availability&#mdash;and, in addition, we have a very flexible and reliable SAN platform that gives us hardware independence and long-term costs savings.”

Performing in a Crisis: Proven Business Continuity

The VMware and DataCore combination already has been proven to failover properly in a real life emergency case when a power loss paralyzed three ESX servers and the disk systems. Automatic failover of both systems functioned as they should in test scenarios and shifted the virtual machines, including the corresponding virtual drives, without any interruption of business. After restarting the system, SANmelody’s auto failback reassigned the drives to the corresponding virtual machines. “In our old architecture we might have had a loss of several hours. The high availability functions of VMware and DataCore hand-in-hand saved us time and costs,” noted Mohlmann. Even in terms of the physical configuration, the storage devices are distributed between two data centers for business continuity. The SANmelody disk server therefore serves as the central control center for the fast SAS disk storage. DataCore’s Thin Provisioning optimizes the storage utilization by presenting to applications the volumes sizes maximally allowed by the operating systems but only providing just the right physical capacity when needed. "With Thin Provisioning, systems can be staged for the future. We reduced unused disk capacity and utilize up to 80 percent of the capacity,” confirmed Mohlmann.