Case Study: Thomas Concrete Group AB

Thomas Concrete Group AB, a global leader in concrete and construction, supports a network of 40 international locations, including offices in the U.S., Poland, and Germany, from its headquarters in Göteborg, Sweden.

Thomas Concrete's network architecture is as extensive as its network of offices and datacenters around the world, and virtualization is a key to its efficient, cost-effective operation. Today, with 90 percent of its servers virtualized, integration of its data storage systems with Microsoft SQL Server®, Microsoft Exchange, and VMware® vSphereTM is a paramount concern—as are backup and replication of its 15 TB of critical application data.

With contracts on its Dell Equallogic storage arrays about to expire, Thomas Concrete had technology issues to contend with. Head of Infrastructure Jozef Cabaj said, "We had so many issues with timeouts and slow responses with our previous network storage. Our challenge was to find a storage product that made storage and backup easy to administer, delivered high availability, and helped us ensure business continuity."

During his search, Cabaj encountered the Nimble Storage CS-Series and was immediately sold on the concept of flash-optimized storage and integrated data protection. Days after making the decision to move, Thomas Concrete was up and running with two Nimble Storage arrays for its critical application environment. As a result, IT was able to overcome the reliability issues that had plagued the company. These arrays also allowed Cabaj to revamp the company's methodology for data protection. "With those issues behind us, we have recovered a couple hundred hours of what would otherwise be a lost effort and can focus on other critical tasks. Our results have been amazing."

Serving Data for Critical Workloads

The two CS260G arrays house all the data supporting Thomas Concrete's critical applications – currently numbering over 60—as well as the company's multi-terabyte data stores for virtualization. In addition, these arrays deliver 24/7 snapshots and replication for disaster recovery. The Nimble Storage arrays are located in two datacenters in different areas in Gothenburg, approximately 10 kilometers apart.

Cabaj noted that integration with other applications is easy. With the new arrays serving such a vast global network, he says that Nimble's tight integrations with Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, and VMware vSphere allowed the company to transition to the new arrays over a few days and with no interruptions to its business.

Cabaj adds, "We love Nimble's seamless integration with VMware, not to mention with SQL and Exchange. This makes it easy to move between the two operating environments, and it greatly simplifies backing up virtual servers. Backup of file servers, which used to take as much as three hours, is now accomplished in seconds. The same is true for other workloads." Cabaj also appreciates the ease of creating LUNs on the Nimble Storage arrays, which frees up valuable time for productive tasks.

Integrated Data Protection

With 15TB of critical application data, including Microsoft SQL Server databases, to protect, and with operations in over 40 global locations, Cabaj said that backups and restores must provide uncompromising data protection – but, at the same time, have no impact on operations. "I don't want backups and restores to take any time away from productive tasks. Our job is to keep the concrete moving to destinations around the world, not to be distracted by data storage." With the Nimble Storage arrays coming on board, several standalone NAS products currently used for backups, along with the company's legacy tape backup products, are being phased out.

"We needed advanced functionality and high reliability in our storage to keep 60 servers and terabytes of data in corporate databases, including all our Microsoft Exchange applications, available," he said. "We have this critical data on our Nimble arrays and are currently migrating our SQL Server databases as well. In the event of an application or system crash, nothing can be left to chance. There's just too much at stake."

The two Nimble Storage arrays are replication partners, together providing data protection for all of the company's data. Cabaj said that Nimble's simple replication with inline compression will reduce the amount of data that needs to be replicated, resulting in lower replication times. He added that replication once took 16 hours, but today with Nimble Storage takes minutes. He added that universal compression not only helps him reduce the company's storage footprint but also forestalls the need for greater capacity.

Snapshots Improve RPO and RTO

Since Thomas Concrete made the move to Nimble Storage, Cabaj said he has seen "tangible, notable benefits" – most importantly, a significant reduction in storage administration time and backups and restores that happen in seconds or minutes versus hours. "Once you have created the backup rules that suit the organization — a quick and easy process — protection is up and running in a matter of minutes, not days or weeks."

His initial reaction upon deploying Nimble: "Backup and snapshots perform flawlessly, and replication between SANs has never been more efficient."

Think of a snapshot as a point-in-time copy of data that almost always happens instantaneously. In traditional backup deployments, applications either have to be taken off-line or suffer from degraded performance during the backup window — not so with snapshots.

Best of all, snapshots help Cabaj improve the company's service levels for recovery-point objectives and recovery-time objectives. By running frequent snapshots, Cabaj says he has dramatically reduced the risk of lost data. "With no impact on system performance, I can essentially take snapshots as often as necessary."

While snapshots simplified data protection, reducing times for backup and restore operations was also a critical concern. "With Nimble, our backup and restore times are measured in minutes. It's very impressive, not to mention that administration is a snap. Issues we had with our previous storage arrays have disappeared since we adopted Nimble."

Thomas Concrete has set up a regimen for snapshots to be taken 24/7. The company is planning to maintain years worth of snapshots, which will be replicated to the other site for disaster recovery. He finds snapshots to be his first line of data protection, executable anytime during the work day because they take no toll on system performance. "User complaints have vanished. And a side benefit is that snapshots require negligible incremental storage."

For disaster recovery, the two arrays replicate to each other, and for routine backup Cabaj is implementing a regimen to back up all physical machines to Nimble Storage arrays.

The company still maintains a tape backup for longer-term retention and an additional level of recovery, but has reduced its reliance on tape. "Nimble snapshots and replication have let us take less-frequent tape backups. We are saving with the shift to snapshots and replication; as much as 90 percent of our costs related to backup are eliminated. We will eventually phase out tape backups altogether."

Cloning Delivers Higher Productivity

Cabaj uses zero-copy cloning to simplify everyday operations. With Nimble Storage, zero-copy clones quickly create a copy of an existing volume without requiring any additional space.

With traditional systems, cloning results in lengthy copy times, additional overhead, and the need for significantly greater storage capacity. But with Nimble Storage, the new clone shares common blocks with its parent volume, meaning that no additional storage space is required. If an application or developer then writes to the new clone and the clone begins to diverge from its parent, the Nimble Storage array simply stores the new data separately as a change to the original volume.

"We use cloning primarily for restoring virtual machines and applications on the SAN. We also leverage cloning to efficiently create copies of our data for testing and verification. Cloning with Nimble is truly a productivity tool — and with no additional storage consumption or performance downside."

In the period since the company deployed Nimble arrays, Cabaj has used cloning numerous times, saving substantial time and capacity. "Like a Nimble array itself, it just works."

Positioning for Growth

A few months after the deployment, Cabaj says he has been thoroughly impressed with Nimble Storage — especially its help desk. He commented that Nimble Storage's support team members "do not stop at the Nimble Storage arrays. They will help you with other areas, including network configuration and best practices to help accommodate growth."

The results have persuaded Cabaj to expand the company's Nimble Storage deployment to its facilities in the U.S. "Looking at how our Nimble arrays have performed, we are extremely pleased with how the product serves us. Our Nimble deployment will grow along with our expansion."

When asked to cite the three top advantages of Nimble, he said, "backup/recovery, replication, and cloning — and the best help desk I have ever worked with."

"Most importantly," he said, "my first two Nimble Storage arrays paid for themselves the day I bought them."