The Case Study Grünenfelder SA

ABOUT GRüNENFELDER SA

A leader in Ticino in the distribution of food and non-food products, Grünenfelder SA stands for guarantee and quality. This food logistics company, which is more than seventy employees strong, operates mainly in Canton Ticino but also throughout Switzerland. It is experiencing a period of growth, and this is reflected in the information systems, which must meet the demands of business and give services to employees.

THE CHALLENGE

Luca Bolla è responsabile IT di Grünenfelder SA, che governa un’infrastruttura relativamente piccola, interamente centralizzata su tre server fisici on-premise che supportano il carico di elaborazione dell’intera azienda. When he joined the company in 2004, he found an AS/400 system and a Windows server and pursued a process of system modernization through virtualization.

“We have long learned to take advantage of virtualization, both at the server level and for delivering applications to users’ desktops,” Bolla reports. “Lately we have been experiencing a performance problem with the entire information system, server and client side.”. The slowness concerned the use of VDI virtual machines during routine operations and in accessing data. The business software was running sub-optimally, and this slowness had a negative impact on administrative activities and daily logistical work. Data processing, in particular, was slowed down and users’ enjoyment of the data suffered. From a systems management point of view, it was necessary to work with several systems dedicated to servers, applications, and storage, respectively. The latter, in particular, had outgrown its support period and showed too high maintenance costs in relation to the need for expansion of available space.

“From a software perspective, our choice for virtualization was not in question, considering that it has been a key element in the modernization of the company’s datacenter,” comments Bolla. “We have been working with VMware systems for several years and have been so comfortable with the virtualization solutions that we introduced VDI features as well. Considering that I am the only IT person in the entire company, running workstations in traditional mode was no longer sustainable, we solved the problem very well with VDI. Today it is a matter of going further with a new hardware platform.”. A market analysis is then initiated to improve performance with new hardware, according to criteria related to improving software response time.

THE SOLUTION

Grünenfelder SA turns to its VMware Partner of choice, 4IT Solutions, which guides the company in selecting the hardware platform best suited to the identified needs and the most consistent evolution of virtualization systems. The company chooses Dell hardware for the new servers because of, in addition to the economic conditions offered, a higher level of integration between hardware and software from two closely related vendors. For VMware systems, however, this is primarily a release upgrade, which is accompanied by a switch from traditional storage to a vSAN. “The choice made by Grünenfelder SA includes 5 years of support, guaranteeing the necessary upgrades and making the company safe from unforeseen contingencies, points out Raffaele Amoia, the 4IT Solutions account manager who oversaw the project. “At the end of the 5 years, if you want to change the servers, you will not have to pay for the licenses, but only for the hardware (physical server) with significant savings in anticipation of a later technology upgrade.”

Implementation of the new servers and vSAN by 4IT Solutions consultants proceeded quickly, and testing and commissioning activities were completed in less than a month. Migration of critical applications, such as the SAP system, is carried out over a weekend, without further disruption or downtime. The three new servers installed at the Grünenfelder data center cross-manage all processing, storage and delivery activities to desktop users in VDI mode.

“The big leap for us was moving from traditional storage to a storage area network virtualized with VMware vSAN,” says Luca Bolla: “It’s the big change that has allowed us to optimize performance frighteningly, with response times up to ten times faster.”

BENEFITS

After deployment of the new systems, IT resources are now available in abundance, providing greater flexibility in managing and migrating virtual machines. The user experience has also definitely improved. In terms of data access, Grünenfelder AG was able to record a significant improvement in response times and data access times. “Some of our computational processes and processing of different queries on the day’s data used to take place at night and last several hours, whereas today they are completed in minutes,” Bolla explains. “We have verified a great improvement on the SQL Server database, which is the basis of SAP systems, with visible optimization of response times of applications running on the database.”

Significant improvements are also seen on the storage front. The size of the new disks and the optimizations made possible by vSAN ensure abundant storage space to ensure future evolution. If needed, it will also suffice to add a single disk to increase the capacity of the entire solution. The backup is also much faster and falls within the allotted time window.

From a systems management perspective, the work of the IT team is much smoother because users are more satisfied, while the availability of a single integrated management console simplifies the work of administrators. “Thanks to the fully integrated vSAN system, I manage everything in a single point using vCenter, a tool we already knew, integrating functionality, updates and monitoring of storage, servers and virtual machines,” Bolla clarifies.

Alla semplificazione delle attività di amministrazione si aggiungono le migliori capacità in termini di sicurezza e disaster recovery. “With vSAN we have the ability to set up disaster recovery easily and at no additional cost,” Bolla explains.The new infrastructure allows us to build a replicated system that works even if one or more disks and a server fail, so we have a redundant system that works without interruption even during upgrades and maintenance.”

“At the application level, we haven’t changed anything, but that’s the beauty of VMware,” Bolla reports. “Thanks to VMware technology, we were able to change our servers without changing the application layer in any way, with the benefit of measurable performance gains, a new storage size, and previously unimaginable disaster recovery service.”