Having reached the end of the life cycle of their IT infrastructure, Retraites Populaires challenged us for the third time in a row to accompany them in the renewal of their IT infrastructure. “Our long-standing relationship, Bechtle‘s very good knowledge of our IT environment and the competence and know-how of its experts made it a natural choice for us to entrust Bechtle with this major project,” says Daniel Pizzolante.
In the run-up to the project, we carried out a macro study to evaluate whether it made sense to keep the same type of solutions or to change them. This study was followed by an analysis of the existing system, which provided us with three different proposed solutions.
Our aim was therefore to set up a sustainable infrastructure for a period of at least five years. This infrastructure should correspond to the results of the preliminary analysis, which had identified the specific needs of Retraites Populaires in terms of volume, performance and management.
The solution.
After a thorough analysis of the solutions available on the market, tailored to the needs and specificities of our client, as well as a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) that allowed us to define a solid approach for the renewal of this IT infrastructure, it was obvious that the HPE dHCI and NetApp MetroCluster solutions were the most suitable for the NAS.
The HPE dHCI part consists of 2 mirrored Alletra 6050, 6 HPE DL380 servers for the VSI (Virtual Service Infrastructure), complemented by 2 HPE DL380 servers for the VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). The NetApp MetroCluster solution was implemented for the NAS, which makes it possible to maintain redundant solutions.
The backups and archives supported by Veeam solutions are now hosted on HPE Proliant DL380 servers and an HPE StoreEver MSL2024 tape drive. This allows us to take advantage of the immutability protection mechanisms offered by the Veeam solution and to comply with the 3-2-1-1-0 rule, which is a key recommendation for data retention strategy.
Once we had defined this new infrastructure, we were able to proceed with the implementation according to our best practices. We transferred the existing data to the new infrastructure without disrupting ongoing operations (VMs, DMS, backup). We also trained our client to manage the brand new infrastructure efficiently. All these services made it possible to meet the specific needs of Retraites Populaires.
“The Alletra solution meets all our expectations! It is perfectly tailored to our needs and allows us to create beautiful synergies with our existing backup solution. It was of the utmost importance for us to maintain a strong adhesion with our Veeam solutions“, Daniel Pizzolante is pleased to say.
We relied 100% on the Bechtle teams to provide us with the best solution and are completely satisfied with the result. Our new IT infrastructure is powerful and reliable and fully meets our expectations. The Bechtle teams have been responding to our needs for over 15 years, it is teamwork at all levels that always leads to success.
Daniel Pizzolante, System Architect, Digital Transformation and IT, Applications and Operations Department at Retraites Populaires.
Benefits.
„Our infrastructure is easier to manage thanks to less redundancy and more automation, in particular automatic updates with little intervention thanks to the “one-click upgrade” function. This saves and frees up considerable time, which we can now spend on value-adding tasks. The ease of maintenance offers a reduction in internal burden, so we spend less time managing infrastructure devices.
We benefit from 2 data centers in Lausanne and Geneva that provide disaster recovery capabilities. Our new HPE solution enables synchronous redundancy without the risk of data loss. We have therefore moved from asynchronous to synchronous solutions with our new systems. This solution therefore fully meets our requirements.
HPE‘s proactive Level 3 support, with engineers who respond quickly and in a targeted manner, is an incredible time saver. This was a key requirement for this project and has now become a reality. The manufacturer‘s support is excellent, which is a real benefit in terms of both time savings and efficiency.
We see the potential for time savings in managing upgrades, and this also benefits the people in the IT teams. The return on investment is in the ability to reduce data size, with the reduction going beyond what was guaranteed in the SLAs. We have earned more than mentioned, so in the long term it will not be necessary to increase our infrastructure, which will protect us from rising costs. So Bechtle‘s advice and the choice among the solutions offered were right,” concluded Daniel Pizzolante.
Partners.
