In the retail industry, managing multiple stores and locations is a critical component to maintaining business continuity. Retailers need to be cost-effective while ensuring zero data or revenue loss. In this retail customer profile, understand why a storage virtual appliance (SVA) was the most effective multi-store management solution.
Retail Customer & Their Store Environment
+ Large Big Box Retailer
+ Number of Store Locations: 2,000+ (U.S. and International)
+ 2+ Servers Per Site
+ 1 Storage Area Network (SAN) Per Site
+ Local VMware Server Virtualization (vSphere)
+ No Onsite IT Staff
Business Applications Running in the Stores
+ Point Of Sale
+ Inventory
+ Labor Management
+ Time Clock Keeping
+ Radio Call Box
Other Applications Running in the Stores
+ System and Environment Health Monitoring
+ Server Services
+ Network Shares
+ Database Server
+ Backup
Store Business Requirements
+ High availability
+ Reduced hardware infrastructure complexity
+ Reduced branch infrastructure management complexity
+ Ability to deploy and manage shared storage
+ Cost effective acquisition and management
+ High performance
Store Challenges Pre-Implementation
+ Physical local SAN failures and data loss
+ Raid failures requiring restore from backups
+ Drive replacements requiring restore from backups
+ Costly external IT services for downtime resolution
Store Benefits Achieved with SvSAN
Reduced Hardware and Improved Store uptime
SvSAN enabled simple two server high availability at each store without the single point of failure associated with traditional SAN solutions. With no additional storage hardware requirement, SvSAN reduced store infrastructure complexity and downtime, as well as improved application performance.
Centralized IT
SvSAN provided infrastructure management from central IT with single-pane-of-glass management of store locations from the centralized vCenter. Scripted deployment enabled hands off deployment of SvSAN across all store locations from central IT and, therefore, reduced IT resource requirements.
The SvSAN Storage Virtual Appliance Solution
SvSAN 5 is the first storage virtual appliance solution developed specifically for large multi-site environments with automated scripted deployment capabilities. The streamlined interface enables faster, simplified deployment and management of shared storage. The single-pane-of-glass management is easily managed from within VMware's vCenter. The automated scripted deployment functionality enables IT administrators to implement VMware high availability at multiple locations simultaneously from the central office with minimal impact on IT resources.