Genossenschaft Migros Zürich

Genossenschaft Migros Zuerich – New architectures for backup and SAP systems for Migros Genossenschaft Zuerich.

The Genossenschaft Migros Zürich offers its cooperative members and customers a varied shopping experience in 165 specialist and supermarkets and 65 restaurant locations. After Bechtle had designed a new, cross-data centre backup architecture with IBM Storage Protect software and “Node2Node” replication in the data centres of Migros Zürich and the Genossenschaft Migros Aare, the server infrastructure was also brought up to date. Then, in an SAP lifecycle project, Bechtle combined new IBM servers with Power10 technology in an Enterprise Pool 2.0 for both data centres. Today, this enables the two cooperatives to use their capacities flexibly in the event of server failures and to save costs.

Project details.

Services

Server & Storage

Industry

Trade / Service

Manufacturer

Company size

> 1,500 employees

Challenge.

The two Genossenschaften Migros Aare and Migros Zürich jointly provide an SAP platform service for SAP Retail FI/CO and HR on behalf of the cooperative retail trade. However, in order to save costs, they pool their resources wherever possible. Migros Zürich and Migros Aare have long used a data centre network to cover each other’s business continuity requirements and disaster provisioning. As a hardware platform, both cooperatives rely on IBM, among others, for their business-critical applications. They are supported and advised by Bechtle as a trusted IT partner with a great deal of expertise in the data centre business. Increasingly large data volumes with constant backup time windows meant that the previous backup architecture not only had to be replaced as part of a lifecycle, but the architecture as a whole had to be questioned. In a second phase, the SAP retail merchandise management as well as the FI/CO and human resources environments also had to be modernised in order to improve the lifecycle and performance. It was clear that although IBM was the favoured hardware manufacturer, it was still allowed to be questioned.

Solution.

Against the background of the already intensively practised data centre network, Bechtle showed Migros Zurich and Migros Aare various options that differed primarily in the degree of sharing. In the end, both cooperatives decided to continue using the existing IBM Storage Protect software for backups, but with a modernised architecture. Via the IBM Storage Protect “Node2Node” replication proposed by Bechtle, the backup servers communicate directly with each other, which ensures higher availability and redundancy of the data. Bechtle dimensioned the Storage Protect solutions according to the recommendations of the IBM Red Books and proposed a modular solution consisting of Building Blocks. This is how the quantity structure for the backup servers was created. After weighing up the variants presented by Bechtle, Migros Zurich and Migros Aare decided to operate three IBM Storage Protect servers per data centre, two of which form a Power-HA cluster and are self-sufficient. The third server is operated in the other data centre as a disaster recovery system. The disk pool located on the IBM Flash system and the storage area network are in turn shared by both cooperatives. In addition, the tape libraries for disaster recovery purposes are housed in the other data centre.

In another project, Bechtle and the IT department of the Genossenschaft Migros Zürich tackled the server distribution in the data centres in order to renew the dedicated systems for the SAP environment, HR, finance and fresh produce procurement. Migros opted for Power10 systems from IBM. A detailed analysis by Bechtle showed that they could save costs with PEP 2.0 (Power Enterprise Pools 2.0). This technology, which is only available from the Power10 generation of IBM Power Servers onwards, enables local computer resources to be used to the minute and thus enables more accurate billing and optimisation of resources. Bechtle calculated the optimum price for Migros Zurich and Migros Aare with IBM on 26 cores. Through this type of virtualisation, the performance of the servers of both cooperatives was combined into one large enterprise pool. This allows the cooperatives to flexibly share the performance capacities among themselves. The Hardware Management Console (HMC) takes over the efficient administration, monitoring and measurement. It also recognises the additional power requirements, which are billed via so-called capacity credits. Migros Zürich and Migros Aare booked a total of 200 capacity credits, which enable them to call up additional services as needed.

The cooperation with Bechtle is a true partnership and not just a supplier-customer relationship. Bechtle advised us honestly, competently and always in a solution-oriented manner and not just sold us. The implementation went smoothly, and any problems that arose were quickly solved by Bechtle. The new SAP platform enabled us to reduce our footprint and cut costs, power consumption and CO2 emissions. We are also very satisfied with the new IBM products such as Power10 and Storage Protect. The flexibility of the CPU allows optimal use at a good price-performance ratio.

Mick Purtschert, Head of Unix & Core Services, Genossenschaft Migros Zürich

Business Benefits.

Thanks to the modernisation of the backup architecture and the new IBM Power10 servers, the two data centres are now more stable, more powerful and more flexible in terms of power allocation. With PEP 2.0, the two cooperatives also save costs through the minute-by-minute billing of the required server performance. This means that the Genossenschaft Migros Zürich and Genossenschaft Migros Aare are working even more sustainably: lower costs, less electricity, less CO2.