A new option for private cloud infrastructure in support of information service business
IT Services
With HPE GreenLake with Nutanix, future expansion is possible while keeping initial costs down. Resources can be buffered with pay-as-you-go billing, so you can flexibly respond to sudden resource shortages.
Hiroshima Information Symphony (HIS) was established in 1988 thanks to joint investment from the Hiroshima Prefecture, Hiroshima City, and Sunnet Corporation. It is a third sector business that is managed as a model corporation for the large-scale employment of people with severe disabilities, and is working on its social mission to enable vocational independence for the disabled. Because HIS is a corporation established with the prerequisite of employing disabled people, in-house facilities are provided as barrier-free. HIS is also working to create an information barrier-free environment, especially for their employees with disabilities who have difficulty commuting to work, and whose works are deeply involved in teleworking to produce TV broadcasts (Terrestrial Broadcast, Broadcast Satellite, Communication Satellite) and screen data for YouTube..
HIS has an in-house datacenter. It hosts servers and network devices, and is entrusted with resource monitoring and system operations, for customers centered around Hiroshima Prefecture in the Chugoku region. In recent years, HIS has also been handling development and creation. These have involved the use not just of private cloud services but public cloud services such as AWS.
In that context, there were numerous cases in which HIS was confronted with the need to solve issues related to the increased burden of responsibility on its customers’ system managers.
Kenji Sasaki, Deputy General Manager for the SI Service Division at HIS, describes the situation, “Our company’s customers were dealing with various issues related to IT systems. For example, system renewal arising once every five years, not wanting to own hardware, an aging demographic among systems personnel, and the consideration of on-premises and the cloud. They were seeking the most appropriate solution for such system management issues.”
As a measure for solving these issues, HIS opted to take advantage of the Nutanix Cloud Platform with a pay-as-you-go, a choice to build a private cloud that can provide flexible IT resources to customers. Up until now, the infrastructure has been running multiple different composited environments, such as VMware and Hyper-V, at different times of deployment, and this has imposed a certain burden on operation and management. However, as Deputy General Manager, Sasaki explains, “Among other things, HIS enables long-term system use, a pay-as-you-go service, outsourcing of system management, and provision through cloud resources. By adopting HPE GreenLake with Nutanix, we considered building a private cloud service with our own company’s services and added value to be the ideal solution.”
Nutanix was adopted after comparing several products. Looking back on the process, Hiroshi Umeki, Manager for the Infrastructure Solution Department, the SI Service Division at HIS, says, “Our main reasons for choosing Nutanix were its superior potential for expansion and the point that we can expect reduced costs when migrating in five years’ time. In the case of other companies, there is no guarantee of those server products being available should we want to add resources in two to three years’ time. Furthermore, there is a possibility that we will not be able to enhance our facilities. With Nutanix, although we needed to unify the server vendors, but we only need to add nodes to boost our resources.”
At the time of introduction, infrastructure procurement services with a pay-as-you-go model were also utilized. In praise of this, Sasaki says, “Thanks to HPE GreenLake with Nutanix, it became possible to expand with a view to the future while keeping down initial procurement costs. Because resources are buffered with pay-as-you-go, we can flexibly cope with sudden resource shortages. Furthermore, another appealing point of service is that its automated prediction based on statistics for monthly usage, alerts and recommendations which are provided in advance of resource shortages.”
In October 2020, the service started from a Nutanix environment with a three-node cluster and was expanded on January of the following year. The expansion work was easily completed, in around two hours, which also led to a solution for the issue of reducing the burden on system managers. Yukihiro Naruishi, Assistant Manager for the Infrastructure Solution Department, the SI Service Division at HIS, says, “When we were looking into products, we appreciated the migration features in Nutanix Move, which Nutanix offers free of charge. So from an environment in which differing virtual systems, such as VMware and Hyper-V, were in operation, this time we were able to migrate smoothly to the newly introduced Nutanix environment.”
Since introduction, there have been no delay in operating virtual machines, operations have been stable, and firmware updates can be completed with just a few clicks. This ease of use is also highly rated. Sasaki continues, “By adopting of Nutanix, we have been able to dispel any issues relating to system replacement, which came hand in hand with the time limit on hardware maintenance expiring after five years. Both the simultaneous renewal of virtual infrastructure and manual migration work for data and virtual machines are no longer necessary, and the removal of nodes when the time limit for maintenance expires can also be handled easily from Prism in just two clicks.”
By unifying all its systems, HIS was successful in unifying its dedicated points of contact for support. Sasaki has further praise for Nutanix, saying, “There was a problem with part of the firmware during introduction, but even when this happened, we received a prompt reply in Japanese to our inquiry, and were able to deal with the problem smoothly. Moreover, Nutanix support is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and we appreciate the fact that we can request remote response when it is required.”
It is now possible to realize disaster recovery (DR) with on-premises or on the cloud as a business continuity planning strategy going forward. This time, Hiroshima Information Symphony has created a private cloud environment in their in-house datacenter. However in the future, plans are underway to introduce Nutanix in other locations and structures.