Intelligent Data Centres Issue 08 | Page 48

END USER INSIGHT BENEFITS • • Agile and scalable IT infrastructure to keep pace with 50% growth in container port traffic • • 15% saving on IT Operational Expenditure (OpEx) through major reduction in rack occupancy, lower power and cooling requirements plus significant savings in management and support • • Enhanced availability and instant failover using built-in snapshot and replication tools across Enterprise Cloud clusters in two separate data centres SOLUTIONS • • Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform hosted across two replication/ failover clusters • • Prism management plane • • VMware Hypervisor APPLICATIONS • • • • • • • • • • • • Navis N4 Terminal Operating System (TOS) EmPower employee performance management platform Microsoft Dynamics GP In-house ERP solution SQL Server Microsoft Windows file, print and management servers IT HAS ALSO ALLOWED THE PORT OPERATOR TO REDUCE RACK OCCUPANCY BY A FULL 1.5 RACKS, IN TURN, LEADING TO A SIGNIFICANT REDUCTION IN ASSOCIATED POWER AND COOLING OVERHEADS. 48 Issue 08 (GSCCO), to meet its commitment to the ambitious Saudi Vision 2030 agenda for economic diversification, it needed to make big changes to its IT. Virtualisation was a real priority as was replacement of the legacy three-tier server plus storage hardware in its data centre. With three port terminals operations to manage, the company was also keen to migrate to a solution that would integrate management of all physical and virtual resources through a single interface as well as provide tools to enhance the resiliency of its IT infrastructure. “We wanted a solution that would deliver linear scalability to handle predicted rapid growth in container traffic,” said El-Masry. “We were also looking for greater resiliency and the ability to upgrade and manage the infrastructure without any downtime or impact in any way on the level of service provided to staff and customers at the ports we manage.” Solution Following a comprehensive evaluation of hyper-converged solutions from a number of vendors, the team at GSCCO decided on Nutanix Enterprise Cloud with implementation in two phases. The first involved installation of a primary Enterprise Cloud cluster in the GSCCO data centre, followed by virtualisation of as many server workloads as possible then subsequent decommissioning of the legacy hardware once the new software and client workloads were fully operational. www.intelligentdatacentres.com