Hardware/ Server Consolidation

How CFCL consolidated its data center

When CFCL’s disparate servers, storage, and applications began driving running costs up and impacting efficiency, the company turned to HP for assistance.By Akhtar Pasha

Chambal Fertilisers and Chemicals Limited, (CFCL) found that its legacy IT environment was becoming a hindrance to its growth. In the recent past, CFCL has consolidated its position in the areas of fertilizers, phosphoric acid, agri-inputs & seeds, agri-biotechnology, textiles, information technology and shipping. CFCL is the largest Urea manufacturer in the private sector and it operates two nitrogenous fertilizer plants at Gadepan, in Kota district of Rajasthan.

V S Rao Manager–IT, CFCL, explained, “Given our diverse business interests, we needed a radical shift in focus to stay ahead of the competition. Instead of concentrating time and money on managing standalone applications and services, we wanted to focus on improving our business outcomes—greater business agility, lower costs in managing legacy applications and standalone servers, and fewer operational risks.” Additionally when CFCL decided to standardize its business processes on mySAP ERP ECC, it wanted a solid platform that could scale and ramp up its business transactions with ease. To achieve its business objectives and growth, the company decided to implement SAP ERP on DB2 and standardized on the HP platform.

Disparate IT systems increased maintenance cost

CFCL’s data centre was expected to support the company’s new business initiatives while simultaneously controlling costs and streamlining operations. Its IT landscape consisted of disparate IT systems with standalone x86 servers running discrete homegrown applications spread across regional offices to manage its financial and transactional systems [developed in-house]. These standalone x86 servers were running at various utilization rates and had performance issues whenever the production demand was high. At the manufacturing plant too, certain servers ran commercial and other core applications alongside niche applications on x86 servers, which made it hard to consolidate data [financial, stock, inventories and production]. “It was a case of too many servers, too many applications, and too much customization—leading to increased spending on maintenance,” said Rao.

Data centre consolidation

Following an analysis of CFCL’s IT environment and their business and IT objectives, HP suggested replacing the company’s obsolete systems and applications, and consolidate and storage virtualization using HP Integrity servers.

The company decided to work with HP for two reasons. The first was HP’s approach to creating optimal data centre solutions–keeping the right balance between cost and throughput and secondly because of the vendor’s leadership position in the server market.

For a number of years now, CFCL had been utilizing HP Business Critical Servers. Its personal experience coupled with market feedback on HP’s systems and services in SAP and other landscapes further cemented the company’s impression that HP not only had the requisite technological know-how and experience, but was also one of the best solutions providers to work with.

HP was selected from a shortlist of three vendors, and presented an optimal solution, which addressed the challenges faced by CFCL.

CFCL decided to mitigate unexpected risks through the installation of HP Integrity servers running HP-UX 11i v2 to ensure high availability and simpler management. All the HP Integrity servers installed were fitted with dual-core Intel Itanium 2 processors. In the application layer, two HP Integrity rx7640 servers running the HP-UX 11i v2 operating system hosted IBM DB2 V8 database software alongside SAP software. Two HP Integrity rx7640 in cluster mode are virtualized to run mySAP ECC database, data warehousing, and Advance Planning Optimization (APO) database. Two HP Integrity rx3600 servers run mySAP ECC application on HP UX 11i v2. IBM DB2 provided access to enterprise data, and integrated Web-based applications with CFCL’s existing core business applications—mySAP ECC to manage all its operations. While the integration and alignment of IBM DB2 and mySAP ECC optimized CFLC’s software environment, any interruption to IT operations could have spelled disaster to the company’s business continuity. “The very high I/O performance from HP Integrity servers associated with the advanced virtualization technologies have given us unmatched availability levels for our SAP production environment,” said Sandeep Bir, Senior Manager–Intelligroup Asia Pvt. Ltd., an IT Consultant to Chambal Fertilisers.

For business continuity, CFCL is using a HP EVA 8000 SAN solution to consolidate its storage resources. To back up data, it employs the HP MSL6030 tape library.

“HP had the right balance of technology and lower TCO from the start. The combination of HP Integrity servers, HP StorageWorks EVA 8000 along with MSL tape library and HP Data Protector was not only well integrated–it was well thought out. From 24/7 availability to intelligent, virtualized storage, and a modular, scalable, and easily manageable solution, HP’s proposal met all the business objectives,” said Bir.

The migration to HP’s new architecture was thoroughly planned from start to finish, and change was managed across the company. As a consequence, CFCL did not experience a single instance where its IT and business operations were compromised throughout the migration.

A better harvest of business outcomes

Through IT consolidation, HP unified the management of CFCL’s server and storage infrastructure. IT management has been simplified, boosting the system’s efficiency—allowing financial resources to be diverted from IT into important business initiatives. Rao said, “We now need not have to commission new servers or storage, which used to take 6-8 weeks for just buying and sizing it, whenever we wanted to roll out new initiatives or application as a business strategy.

It has cut down on unnecessary expenditure in new hardware and licenses costs.”

A centralized source of information has also provided the company with early alerts, and has given it the ability to monitor key success factors. The installation of improved credit controls also allowed the company to manage revenues in a more organized, transparent manner. As a result, CFCL is now in a better position to expand its distribution and maintain its position as one of India’s largest fertilizer manufacturers in the private sector.

Rao added, “HP willingly provided standby systems during the deployment of the SAP solution and even after that, to ensure that the deadlines were met.”

Simplified IT management and reduced costs

The HP StorageWorks EVA8000 storage solution combines high transaction I/O performance with easy expandability, instantaneous replication, and simpler management. This approach helped CFCL to maximize IT and business growth by scaling capacity as and when needed while minimizing running costs and IT complexity, which was difficult to achieve in the earlier set-up.

The new architecture currently handles 250 plus simultaneous users, a number that Chambal Fertilisers anticipates will increase in the coming years as their business grows. And in the near future, CFCL plans to implement HP’s Business Continuity and Availability solutions in its IT environment to better protect its technology and business investments.

akhtar.pasha@expressindia.com