THE COMPANY
A multinational grower and marketer of fresh and packaged produce, this company was running all of its business operations on an aging IBM mainframe and several iSeries servers.
Facing the need to leave its former data center location for a colocation facility hundreds of miles away, the company realized that a technology refresh could be done at the same time. Installing new hardware at its new colocation facility and migrating data would be more efficient than hauling old hardware to the new facility.
The difficulty would be coordinating the migration among multiple divisions located in several countries.
THE NEED:
Technology refresh and data migration. Once the company found a new home for its data center in a co-location facility more than 300 miles away, it turned to the matter of a much-needed technology refresh. Buying all new hardware for its new location instead of hauling its outdated boxes was the best decision to make.
The decision was heavily influenced by the fact that that the company’s business operations could only be down for four hours instead of the two or more days it would have taken to move its existing hardware.
They needed a technology partner who could design the hardware configuration they needed and install the new hardware at the co-lo facility. Then the partner had to be able to migrate all of their operations in four hours or less.
So the company turned to its trusted technology partner, LRS IT Solutions.
THE SOLUTION:
IBM mainframe, Power servers, and storage LRS designed a hardware package comprising an IBM z15 mainframe, DS8910F rack-mounted storage for the z15 server, a Power 9 server with six partitions and internal disk storage, and TS4300 and TS3200 tape drives.
The LRS team had to work within the constraints of the co-location facility, which rents modules to companies to locate their hardware. Rent at a co-lo is based on the square footage of the module, so consolidating their hardware into a relatively small footprint helped deliver lower operating costs.
As Sam Cohen, System Z Consultant/ Technical Team Lead, recalled, “The company was able to have their IBM Z and the Z storage in a single rack, so that saved them a lot of money.
So did using what’s called single phase power, so they have lower operating costs.” The LRS team spent weeks applying operating system and microcode updates on the company’s new Power server to make sure they were completely current.
Then the team faced a challenge: Physically moving the equipment from the colocation facility’s staging area to the specific module where it would reside. The company’s deadline meant that the team couldn’t wait for the co-lo staff to move the equipment, so Tom Pieropon, IBM i Technical Specialist for LRS, and two IBM Systems Support Representatives (SSRs) simply rolled it the 300 yards between the two areas.
Then came the biggest challenge of the project: Coordinating with the company’s multiple divisions located in multiple countries to create the four-hour window for migration of all the business data and operation to the new installation. The LRS team successfully negotiated a window that was acceptable to the multiple business units, but it turned out that they didn’t really need four hours to complete the cutover. The team got the job done in 90 minutes.
THE RESULT:
Faster hardware and lower costs The produce company accomplished its overdue technology refresh and realized all the dividends of new hardware which is faster and less expensive to operate. With new equipment, the company is also saving money on maintenance fees.
Completing the refresh and relocation positions the company to develop and test a disaster recovery plan. They’re also ready for the addition of high availability equipment in the future.
SOLUTIONS
Hardware
Mainframe Single-Rack configuration
- z15-T02 server
- DS8910F Disk Subsystem
POWER System
Single-Rack configuration
- POWER9 Model 42G Qty(6) Partitions
- Internal Disk Storage
- TS4300 Tape Drives (LTO-9/ Qty(6))
- TS3200 Tape Drive (LTO-6 and LTO-4 for archive recovery)
Services
- 350 hours of LRS and IBM services
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