BUCS IT: Highly Available Storage for Stable Hosting Projects

Roland Gemmert, Business Development Manager at BUCS IT in the company’s own server room

IT, the simple way: Under this motto, the Wuppertal-based IT service provider BUCS IT offers small and medium-sized companies in the region comprehensive data centre and IT services. The portfolio ranges from comprehensive IT support to hosting, cloud backups or co-location of individual services to specially programmed applications. Customers from the areas of production and trade can therefore conveniently outsource their IT requirements to the specialists in Wuppertal, save their own IT capacities and focus on their core business. The main service of BUCS IT is a hosting platform that the company operates georedundantly in three data centres in North Rhine-Westphalia. The primary storage for the hosting environment is provided by the managed service provider via synchronous storage solutions in two of the three data centres.

The IT company under the management of Managing Directors Robert Stübner and Dennis Felderhoff has been in existence since 2009, is growing steadily and currently has around 100 employees.

Overcoming limits, the smart way

More and more customers are using the services of BUCS IT. But with every further migration of customer servers into the managed service provider’s IT environment, the existing hybrid storage solution was getting ever closer to its limits. "If a customer migrates from their on-premises data centre to our platform, this means that we commission around 50 or 60, sometimes even 100 new servers after the migration weekend. We must be able to map this additional performance in a stable manner," says Roland Gemmert, Head of Business Development at BUCS IT. Before each major switchover, the company therefore carried out numerous tests to ensure that the existing storage system can withstand the additional load. A lot of effort, which made one thing clear above all: “We outgrew our existing Storage Area Network (SAN) system and needed a new solution that gives us greater confidence in performance and stability,” says Gemmert. The company placed great importance on a system that was easy to maintain and highly available with plenty of scope for further customer growth. “We wanted to reduce our workload with the new system, no longer have to calculate before large projects and have peace of mind in the storage area in the long term,” says Gemmert.

Fast turnaround and comprehensive support

During a proof of concept with Huawei, BUCS IT was able to successfully simulate its hosting platform including georedundant and synchronous storage and test its performance. The medium-sized company therefore chose two units of Huawei’s All-Flash Storage OceanStor Dorado 5000 when renewing its storage capacity. In two of the three data centres, the team in Wuppertal installed a controller to secure the storage units with geographical separation. With the new solution, the medium-sized company currently covers around 50 percent of its existing storage capacity.

The installation of the two accumulators was quick and simple thanks to the standard interfaces. "Before commissioning, we carried out around 85 acceptance tests with the new system and were very satisfied with the results every time from the first run. This impressed us considerably and confirmed our confidence in Huawei’s solution," says Gemmert. The system demonstrated unprecedented qualities in terms of reliability, for example: "If the power fails, the backup battery is sized to run for five minutes. This is enough to write all data from the controller cache to the hard disk before the system shuts down. This means that no data is lost in the event of an emergency," says Gemmert, outlining the all-round positive endurance tests. It only took a few months in total, from the first simulation and the ordering of the controllers and hard drives to the successful start. “Huawei’s support before installation and now, more than a year after commissioning, has always been fast and thorough,” says Gemmert.

Solid, stable and cost-effective

Stable performance, predictable behaviour even in the event of failure and reliable support: With the all-flash storage OceanStor Dorado 5000 from Huawei, BUCS IT has got exactly the solution that the medium-sized company wanted. Thanks to its high performance, the managed service provider can also tackle large migration projects without stress. No matter how many customer servers are added as a result of a switchover, Huawei’s storage system securely intercepts any load peaks and additional loads and works flawlessly. BUCS IT customers also benefit from the new storage facilities - in the form of lower access times to their applications. The new solution also pays off in terms of costs: Previously, the medium-sized company had to pay regular licence costs for its virtualized storage environment, which increased linearly with consumption. In contrast, with the OceanStor solution, BUCS IT only had to account for the acquisition costs for controllers and hard drives. Additional hard drives cost much less than the licences previously required for capacity expansion. The storage units also offer plenty of room for additional storage space. BUCS IT has long since ordered the corresponding hardware. This is because Huawei technology is now the primary system in the area of storage and is expected to continue to grow. "We already have the other discs in the basement. We just have to install them," says Gemmert, looking forward to the further expansion.

More about BUCS.IT

Find out more on the website: https://bucs-it.de/