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One of Colombia's largest retailers gains compute and flash storage for SAP on IBM i, at a lower total cost

Redsis expanded the IBM Power server behind the chain's SAP Retail with capacity on demand and refreshed its storage with a new IBM SAN Volume Controller and three IBM FlashSystem 7200 arrays: 2 TB of RAM, 20 additional cores and 321 TB of effective capacity, with better performance and a lower total cost of ownership.

Client

Top-5 Colombian retailer by revenue

Industry

Retail: supermarkets and drugstores

Location

Caribbean region, Colombia

Solution

IBM Power E870 · IBM SVC · IBM FlashSystem 7200

Service line

Infrastructure & data center

The client

The client is one of Colombia's five largest retailers by revenue: a 100% Colombian-owned chain headquartered in the country's Caribbean region, with roughly 15,000 employees. It runs a mix of hypermarkets, supermarkets, large-format drugstores and neighborhood pharmacies nationwide, and alongside a broad consumer-goods assortment it sells private-label lines in grocery, apparel, appliances, electronics and home goods.

Much of that national operation runs on a single application: SAP for Retail, deployed on IBM Power servers running IBM i. Inventory, pricing, replenishment and sales flow through that platform every day, so its compute and storage capacity is, quite literally, the capacity to sell.

The challenge

The production SAP environment was hitting its ceiling on two fronts at once. Application trends showed the server would need more processing power and memory to support operations for roughly another year. At the same time, every terabyte of storage available to production had already been allocated.

  • Compute and memory: the IBM Power server needed more capacity without a platform change or an SAP outage.
  • Storage exhausted: with no free space, any business growth was at risk.
  • Local copy: the upgrade had to cover both production workloads and an additional local copy on a separate system.
  • Cost: the investment had to make financial sense compared with keeping the existing platform running.

Before and after

Before

Capacity maxed out

1.5 TB of RAM on the server, a previous-generation SAN Volume Controller and two IBM Storwize V7000 systems with all capacity already allocated.

Today

On-demand compute and flash storage

2 TB of RAM, 20 additional POWER8 cores on demand, a new IBM SVC 2147-SV2 and three IBM FlashSystem 7200 arrays with 107 TB of effective capacity each.

The solution

Redsis designed a proposal that kept the platform's existing organization (the same server, the same virtualized architecture and the same backup approach) and focused the investment where it mattered: more compute and memory available whenever the business needs it, plus a storage refresh built on flash.

On-demand compute and memory on IBM Power E870

On the IBM Power E870 hosting production SAP, Redsis enabled the equivalent of 20 POWER8 cores and 512 GB of memory through Capacity on Demand licensing for a defined term. That memory was added to the existing 1.5 TB for a total of 2 TB. The advantage of the model is that the capacity is already installed in the machine and is activated as business needs dictate, with no server replacement.

Virtualized storage with IBM SVC and FlashSystem 7200

For storage, the virtualized architecture with on-site data replication was preserved, but on current-generation hardware:

Redsis engineering services delivered the entire project, from sizing to go-live.

  • One IBM SAN Volume Controller 2147-SV2, with more processing power and cache, replacing the previous SVC and including a spare.
  • Two IBM FlashSystem 7200 arrays with 107 TB of effective capacity each, replacing the two Storwize V7000 systems and spreading the SAP workloads.
  • A third IBM FlashSystem 7200, also with 107 TB effective, dedicated to the local copy of the environment.
  • SVC Volume Mirroring to keep a local replica of every volume.
  • FlashCopy with thin provisioning, so the chain could keep its storage-based backup process.
  • Two new IBM SAN switches for fabric connectivity.

Results

2 TB of RAM

512 GB on demand added to the existing 1.5 TB, plus 20 POWER8 cores to keep pace with SAP growth.

3 × 107 TB of flash

321 TB of effective capacity on IBM FlashSystem 7200, with a local replica of the entire environment.

Lower total cost

More performance and more capacity than the previous platform, at a lower total cost of ownership.

  • SAP Retail on IBM i
  • Capacity on Demand
  • Storage virtualization
  • Local replica with Volume Mirroring
  • FlashCopy

Why Redsis

The decision came down to numbers: Redsis delivered a total cost of ownership analysis that showed the chain how a storage refresh would deliver more performance and more capacity at a lower total cost. With more than 25 years in mission-critical infrastructure across Latin America and IBM Platinum partner status, Redsis knows IBM Power, IBM i and IBM's storage portfolio inside out, and supports the full cycle: sizing, design, implementation and support.

Related case: the same chain now protects its SAP core with multi-site replication. See how it recovers SAP in 3 hours with IBM PowerHA.

Is your SAP environment hitting its limits?

Let's talk about expanding compute and storage for SAP on IBM i without changing platforms, and with a total cost you can defend.

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