The Challenge
The IT infrastructure of the Chippenham office is operated independently of the corporate network but serves multiple remote sites around the country. As the main hub, this office hosts most of the legacy applications and operating systems that are vital to supporting the signalling and safety critical work the company undertakes.
At the time, Siemens R&D Network Infrastructure was being managed by a 3rd-party service provider. But with this, the legacy apps and operating systems could not be migrated to the corporate network due to compliance requirements so, when the server estate and core switch were due to be refreshed and the contract also up for renewal, the decision was taken to bring ownership back in-house. Siemens Rail Automation approached Bechtle to develop a better solution that would lighten their workload, ease pressures and better suit their requirements. The idea of installing an updated data centre solution would be fairly simple in many cases. However, Siemens also had to remember their shorter-term focus - having to maintain existing systems installed at the UK’s many rail infrastructure organisations. Siemens Rail Automation had to ensure continuity on their wide range of equipment and the infrastructure it supports, while driving the innovation that they actually needed. At the time, Siemens were in the process of building a new server facility in Chippenham and were looking to consolidate their IT estate across multiple remote sites. They wanted to find the easiest solution that implemented new hardware but that didn’t require building lots of hypervisors and storage arrays. Siemens were also working to a tight timeframe to complete the project and exit their managed service contract.
The Solution
With all the requirements, challenges and limitations taken into account, Siemens were led to consider a hyper-converged infrastructure - the next big step in business computing. A hyper-converged solution combined compute, storage and network into a single appliance that delivered the speed, simplicity and agility the business needed.
Having identified hyper-convergence as the best solution for their needs, Siemens now had to work with Bechtle to identify which solution they wanted to pursue. To do this, Bechtle carried out a 1-2-1 workshop with Siemens where they identified and showcased 3 similar solutions, from 3 different manufacturers and highlighted the advantages and approaches for each. Having looked through the options and with guidance from the specialists at Bechtle, Siemens decided on their chosen platform, Cisco HyperFlex - a next-generation solution combining compute, network, storage, virtualisation and data protection into a single platform. On top of that, the Cisco HyperFlex solution could be deployed in under one hour and managed using a widely adopted, common toolset. Whilst deciding on the best solution, Siemens had also recently achieved ISO 27001 accreditation, meaning that aspects such as high availability with back-up and recovery, as well as security and compliance influenced the design and specification – which also led to the decision on Cisco HyperFlex. So, why else did Siemens choose Cisco HyperFlex? The environment was built to mitigate risks and secure their legacy applications which are required for an extended period of time for compliancy reasons. At the same time, the solution would allow Siemens to respond in an agile manner to the research and development demands of the business. For Siemens, the speed of provisioning was critical because they only had a small window of opportunity to update their systems in-between peak periods of engineering work. They liked the idea of hyper-converged because it’s all-encompassing, in one box. There’s no need to operate multi-vendor storage, networks and servers, and it’s supported end-to-end.
Key benefits for Siemens Rail
With its subscription-based software model and support for independent scaling of compute, storage performance and capacity, Cisco HyperFlex provides Siemens Rail Automation with a pay as you grow, scale as you go infrastructure able to support the dynamic needs of its R&D team in the UK and globally. It’s estimated that with the reduction in management fees, the new solution will save, on average, £60,000 per year.
With Cisco HyperFlex, Siemens have removed the legacy, reduced costs and driven innovation for the company without too much disturbance. With their physical data centre significantly reduced in size, Siemens are now able to transform the newly acquired space into further office space as and when they need it. They have the capacity to grow even further if they ever start hitting
the limits of their current cluster.
Network performance has improved where they’re running storage with all flash and they have also achieved a good level of high availability and back up with a robust UPS and generators. Siemens now have the ability to support more people and applications, plus about 1.2Tb of data on their 8-node, all-flash cluster. As a result, they’re expecting to offer strong performance enhancements for their users.
One of the biggest benefits of HyperFlex for Siemens is the speed and agility it brings. Siemens can now use HyperFlex to update their infrastructure, their hosts, and all the security fixes. Crucially, they can do all this faster and more easily without having an impact on production.