South African Cinema Company Ster-Kinekor Using Tintri

Tintri Inc., announced that South Africa cinema complex Ster-Kinekor is using Tintri VMstore to support its virtualised IT environment.

Since implementing the Tintri solution, Ster-Kinekor has benefitted from increased performance and simplified management, reducing the time and expertise required to manage storage.

Founded in 1969 in Johannesburg, Ster-Kinekor is a division of Primedia (Pty) Ltd with 58 cinema complexes, more than 400 screens and 63,000 seats.

To provide entertainment and service to thousands of customers, Ster-Kinekor requires a solution that can handle performance workloads. It had been relying on a range of different storage technologies, including Dell Compellent, EqualLogic, and MD3600 systems to support its three vSphere 5.5 environments, with 60 to 70 storage LUNs. However, the company decided to look for a new solution as its existing environment was experiencing significant performance issues and becoming increasingly difficult to manage the data stores.

After running a test, the company decided to purchase a Tintri VMstore T540 hybrid-flash system for its production environment as well as an additional VMstore T850 hybrid-flash for the company’s theatre division. Since deploying the T540 and T850, Ster-Kinekor has tripled performance speed and eliminated the need for dedicated storage administration.

Andre Potgieter, IT executive, Ster-Kinekor commented: “Once we migrated SAP over to Tintri, we just clicked on the database, took a snapshot and 15 minutes later our QA team was testing a full copy of our 5TB production environment. By deploying Tintri, we were able to get rid of all 50 data stores in VMware and we now have just one. As well as helping with the SAN, Tintri has simplified a lot of complex networking on the backend, which was the source of a lot of frustration. Deploying Tintri really simplified the networking behind the solution. The net result is faster performance from a smoother operating backend.“

After moving all of Ster-Kinekor’s production workloads over to the two Tintri systems, the company is considering putting another Tintri solution into its DR plan.

Potgieter reported: “The cost of maintenance on the legacy storage platform was nearly the same price as purchasing a new Tintri System. I am now re-thinking our DR plan, and would like to put another Tintri into our DR location instead of upping the warranty on our ageing Dell systems.“

Doug Rich, EMEA VP, Tintri said: “Our Tintri platform is built on a VM-aware architecture designed to offer simplified management and high performance-it is ideal for companies like Ster-Kinekor who need clear visibility into their virtualised systems. Now Ster-Kinekor can easily identify any issues and offer a high standard of customer service.“