success story -
Rational Einbauküchen GmbH
IT restructuring without Downtime
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the challenge
Rational’s central concern was to further enhance the safety of the existing production system. In addition, restructuring measures in the company in recent years had resulted in a certain backlog demand for the modernization of the entire IT infrastructure. The aim was to noticeably improve performance through new hardware and software. The main challenge was to replace the existing IBM Power 5 servers with Power 7+ servers, integrate new storage hardware, migrate the data and set up and commission the new backup data center. All of this without interfering with daily operations.
The solution
In the first step, K&P Computer set up the new, spatially separated backup data center and migrated the data. Subsequently, the old Power 5 machines were dismantled in the existing data center and the second new IBM server was installed. The data from the backup server was then restored to these servers. The real benefit for the customer, however, was that K&P Computer carried out and successfully completed all the work on the weekend, so that the Rational employees didn’t notice anything about the move. The IT ran without any problems or was considerably better due to the increased performance after the conversion.
Rational Einbauküchen GmbH has been a customer of K&P Computer for more than ten years. K&P Computer is already responsible for the maintenance and monitoring of the IBM-AIX servers and other hardware. Also the self-developed high availability solution KPCrac® is already in use at Rational. This had to be adapted to the new conditions. K&P Computer set up a so-called “stretched” cluster for this purpose. With this variant, the data is replicated to the storage systems using the system’s own mirroring options. This means that all Rational applications are also protected against local failures caused by external influences such as fire or water.
While the load is normally distributed to both servers, which in turn improves performance, the second system takes over the entire load in the event of a disaster. If one of the systems fails, a short manual intervention is enough to activate the failover, so that one server takes over completely. Since all applications and the associated transaction data are located on shared SAN systems, the backup can be based on the current data until shortly before the failure. “A big advantage of KPCrac® is the fact that the system is very slim and stable and can be easily managed,” explains Franz-Josef Bultmann, explaining the use of K&P Computer’s proprietary development. In everyday operation, the planned takeover of all services by one of the two servers can also be used for test or maintenance purposes, so that employees are not impaired in their work even in such cases.
After the successful development of the new IT landscape, the employees were trained and familiarized with the new system.
Despite the fact that the working hours at Rational’s headquarters for K&P Computer were limited to weekends, there were only a few weeks between the hardware deliveries and the completion including the handover of the computer centers.
The competitive advantage
A high level of expertise in consulting as well as in the expansion and development of modern IT infrastructures in combination with our own system solutions, such as the high availability solution KPCrac®, offer the customer considerable competitive advantages. This applies both to the smooth implementation phase without downtimes and to the subsequent cost-efficient operation of the optimized IT landscape.
Rational Einbauküchen GmbH
The kitchen expert Rational has been successful on the market for over 45 years and is now represented in more than 50 countries around the world. The traditional company has always set high standards in technology, quality and functionality. The company also sets these standards for its own IT infrastructure. Based on this high quality standard, Rational decided at the beginning of 2013 to modernize the existing infrastructure and to set up an additional, physically separate computer center.
status 03/2015
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