Thai Internet Provider Builds Foundation for Virtualization and Cloud Offerings on Hitachi Storage

Challenge

The Search for an Ideal Storage for VMware

Founded in 1994 as a joint venture between Internet Knowledge Center Co., Ltd., (IKSC) and the Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT), KSC was the first commercial Internet service provider (ISP) in Thailand. In the year that followed, KSC played a major role in building Thailand’s Internet infrastructure. It earned the company a reputation for fast, stable Internet access and innovative Internet solutions for both individual and corporate customers. KSC has since expanded to offer business solutions. To support this expansion and growth, KSC looked to cloud and virtualization solutions from Hitachi.

KSC operates with the corporate philosophy of “Always Ahead.” It works toward developing technologies, products and services to serve customers’ needs both today and in the future. It was among the pioneer companies that adopted virtualization technology to help manage storage systems more effectively.

Narathippaphong Chittaleark, system manager in the KSC Internet Technology Department explained, “We thought that virtualization technology would bring our costs down while promoting effective IT management. We decided to adopt VMware to manage our data, but the existing disks could not support VMware, so we needed to search for new disks. After testing many brands, we found that Hitachi can run VMware smoothly.”

Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2100 for Virtualization

KSC chose Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2100 (AMS 2100) which is a midrange storage solution with the features equivalent to enterprise-level storage solutions. “The product is very cost-effective and can truly adopt active-active controller while effectively supporting VMware,” says Narathippaphong. “We are very impressed by its performance. The AMS has worked perfectly since the first day, so all our worries for Internet services do not exist anymore.”

AMS 2100 features symmetric active-active controller technology to offer automatic I/O balancing for each controller. It also offers functions to support cache partition management that is integrated with RAID-6 technology. In this way it enables continuous operation, even in the case of 2 hard disks being damaged. In addition, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software functions support flexible and highly effective disk capacity.

Solution

Hitachi Unified Storage 150 for Cloud

After using AMS 2100 for a while, KSC decided to purchase Hitachi Unified Storage 150 (HUS 150) to offer public cloud service for corporate accounts. Narathippaphong explains, “Most of our corporate customers need a variety of cloud services and HUS 150 can serve a wide range of requirements. After testing storage solutions of many brands, we saw that HUS 150 can deliver performances as per its specifications.”

HUS 150 can store various data types with balanced flexibility and scalability so the management of applications that are important for business and needs to satisfy growth requirements can be achieved without compromising performance, effectiveness, budgets and scalability. The product can be applied to all data types and serve the changing storage environments, while offering the services for business-critical applications in accordance with the goals.

Moreover, KSC uses Hitachi Content Platform 500 (HCP 500) and Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI) to manage the storage of corporate email. The company plans to offer data archiving and email storage services for customers who need to store data in the long term.

Outcome

Integration and Expansion, From Edge to Core

In the future, KSC plans to continuously expand its system and adopt Hitachi NAS Platform (HNAS) to store customer emails, as high-performance HNAS can effectively integrate systems and reduce costs.

With HCP, KSC gains an open architecture for multilayered, object-based data management. It provides a centralized storage and maintenance format in the long term. At the same time it minimizes the limitations and problems of data file and tape systems. Its active-archive feature, a Web 2.0-based storage capacity, can be used as an infrastructure for a various formats of cloud-based storage.

The combination of HCP and HDI allows organizations to adopt “edge-to-core” data solution to speed up all data backup processes so the backup processes will consume less time. In the future, this advantage can bring down costs and reduce complexity on KSC’s backup processes while enhancing control, security and data protection.