DataCore Powers Harting Technology Group

DataCore Software announced that HARTING Technology Group has deployed its SANsymphony storage virtualization software to realize cost efficiency, high-performance and a high-availability enterprise storage environment.

HARTING will run DataCore’s SANsymphony on hardware from Hitachi. The storage solution will help support the delivery of business critical applications, such as SAP, MS Exchange, as well as CAD and product lifecycle management software. The environment will be housed in HARTING’s new virtualized data center, enabling them to take advantage of more flexible and cost effective options.

HARTING Technology Group is a global manufacturer and services company specializing in electrical, electronic and optical connection, transmission and networking. It produces technology products and solutions for industries including high-speed rail, automotive and renewable energy such as wind. With over 3,300 employees in 36 countries relying on being able to access the company’s data at all hours of the night and day, it needed a performance storage environment.

The company chose a joint solution proposed by solution provider ISO Dataentechnik GmbH, which included Hitachi Data Systems storage hardware and DataCore’s SANsymphony storage virtualization software.

By moving from a less-flexible legacy hardware infrastructure to a cost-effective midrange hardware storage system and managing all their storage environment with a DataCore-powered virtualized SAN, HARTING was able to overcome three challenges:

Reduce the overall costs of storage and provide greater options and flexibility for adding storage systems in the future.
Improve reliability through the addition of DataCore’s high availability for critical business systems.
Substantially increase enterprise application performance.

Performance and Low Cost
"Our expectations of the combination of HDS hardware and DataCore software have been exceeded," said Rudolf Laxa, operations and data center team leader at HARTING Technology Group. "The new HDS midrange systems and the DataCore virtual storage layer have allowed us to lower costs and achieve a significant increase in fail-safety and performance. The excellent interaction between DataCore software and VMware is another reason why we are more than satisfied with the current solution."

According to Laxa, there was initial hesitation to move business-critical SAP applications to the virtualized storage environment – as it represented a significant break from HARTING’s past practices. However, examples of success with similar moves with other DataCore customers and the opportunity to significantly enhance current capabilities ultimately prevailed. Laxa continued, "The benefits of central administration finally provided the impetus for implementation – a decision we have not had a reason to regret so far."

In particular, HARTING credits DataCore’s SANsymphony software with introducing performance and business agility, especially when combined with the company’s existing VMware-based server virtualization deployment throughout its data center.

"The technical capabilities of DataCore virtualized storage appealed to us almost immediately; it creates high availability, gives us independence from the hardware and makes flexible migration scenarios possible," said Laxa "The software has proven to be a meaningful extension of our VMware environment and guarantees the highest levels of availability we require from our storage solution."