German Freudenberg IT Replaces Storage Vendor by 3PAR

3PAR
announced
that Freudenberg IT (FIT), a subsidiary of the Freudenberg
Group, has
chosen 3PAR to replace a traditional storage vendor in its
datacenters.

According to the Freudenberg Group, 3PAR Utility Storage
is a perfect match
for FIT’s needs and the Freudenberg Group’s affinity for
deploying cutting
edge technologies. The 3PAR InServ Storage Server
is a highly
virtualized tiered-storage array that offers massive scalability,
performance, and connectivity within a single system. With
the InServ
Storage Server, FIT can add capacity at any time — seamlessly
— while the
3PAR InForm OS makes management of the storage system
simple and
efficient. The 3PAR InServ Storage Server uses massively
parallel and
fine-grained striping of data across internal resources
for the purpose of
maintaining high and predictable service levels for all
workload types,
even as the use of the system grows.

"3PAR is very innovative compared to traditional storage
vendors," said
Oliver Koban, Manager Business Unit Hosting International
at FIT. "3PAR’s
high-performance, reliable, and proven technology has increased
the
simplicity and efficiency of our production environment."

Headquartered in Weinheim, near Frankfurt, Germany, the
Freudenberg Group
is comprised of thirteen business groups and boasts approximately
33,000
employees in 53 countries and more than five billion euros
in annual sales.
FIT became a subsidiary of the Freudenberg Group in 1995
with a mission to
fulfill the Group’s IT needs while also selling services
outside the Group.
Today, FIT has become an international, full-service provider
successfully
implementing, optimizing, and operating IT systems within
Freudenberg’s
subsidiaries throughout Europe, the U.S., and Asia. With
over thirty years
of experience with SAP, FIT is highly specialized and is
one of nine
certified SAP partners.

Prior to purchasing 3PAR Utility Storage, FIT was dissatisfied
with one of
their traditional storage suppliers, citing performance
issues and poor
reliability as the cause. FIT decided to replace this vendor
with 3PAR
Utility Storage, starting first with the InServ E200
Storage Server. The
InServ E200 is designed to deliver all the benefits of the
3PAR Utility
Storage platform in a scaled-down architecture and to be
ideal for mid-size
deployments. FIT has since deployed another four InServ
arrays, bringing
their total 3PAR deployment to five arrays — four in Germany
and one in
the U.S. Each InServ took less than half a day to install
— an extremely
simple process that did not require additional services.
All InServs are
configured with 3PAR Thin Provisioning and thin copy technology
supplied by
3PAR Virtual Copy as well as 3PAR Dynamic Optimization for
on-demand
modification of data service levels. By using 3PAR’s Fast
RAID 5, FIT also
benefits from hardware acceleration that enables the business
to achieve
performance comparable to that of traditional RAID 1 mirroring
yet with a
66 to 88% improvement in storage utilization.

The InServs at FIT’s datacenters are connected to IBM AIX
and Windows
hosts running SAP, VMware, and database applications
including
Microsoft® SQL Server(TM).

"3PAR Utility Storage represents a great investment for
us since we can
implement storage virtualization for our Windows and VMware
platforms
internationally from one central point, and without any
hardware or
software upgrade," said Mr. Koban. "We have also found the
3PAR arrays
require much fewer management resources since the time and
effort to
provision storage is negligible as compared to traditional
storage
systems

3PAR

Freudenberg IT