Spirhed (fka. CTGlobal Norway) has designed, implemented and deployed Braathe Gruppen’s brand new fabric design for their Hyper-Converged Datacenter
In 2018, Norwegian IT and cloud services provider Braathe Gruppen A/S were setting up new Storage Spaces Direct servers to improve scalability, reduce cost and simplify procurement and deployment, and essentially deliver an overall boost to efficiency and performance to their storage infrastructure.
In preparation for the Storage Spaces Direct installation, Braathe Gruppen’s Chief Technology Officer Håkon Svendsen attended a Lenovo seminar on Storage Spaces Direct, and became interested in Spirhed´s take on the importance of have a separate and isolated fabric domain, to protect the Hyper-V hosts and backup services, and all other related services.
“We saw that Spirhed had the cutting-edge knowledge of how to set up a fabric domain in conjunction with our Storage Spaces Direct installation, and we decided to ask them to assist us on our project. We are in the IT provider and consultancy business ourselves, and if there are two things we know it is these: It is always worth doing things correctly from the start; and always advisable to base your approach on best practices and on insights from the true experts. Addressing complex IT projects accurately from the beginning ultimately saves you a lot of money, frustration and resources,” says Håkon Svendsen about Braathe Gruppen’s decision to enlist Spirhed´s services.
Implementing a good storage solution requires expert insight which very few organizations have readily available in their in-house pool of IT professionals: “There are a great number of tasks and processes involved in a successful installation – design, deployment, setting up processes, customization, validation, optimization and maintenance – and the more experience and expertise you can apply to these projects, the faster and better the results,” explains Jan-Tore Pedersen, Senior Consultant on the project for Spirhed.
The installation at Braathe Gruppen is based on Lenovo data center hardware: “Lenovo’s hardware is without question the best hardware choice for the majority of our customers as the backbone of any Storage Spaces Direct solution. It is an incredibly flexible solution that allows the organization to add storage space incrementally and on demand. Basically, it’s well-designed and well-built, and reasonably priced. As a result, a customer like Braathe Gruppen no longer needs to be able to predict what storage space requirements they may have five years down the road – they can just add space as the need arises,” explains Jan-Tore Pedersen.
Substantial infrastructure improvements
For Braathe Gruppen A/S, Spirhed’s involvement in the installation of Storage Spaces Direct and the fabric structure has resulted in substantial improvements to the infrastructure: Significantly higher speeds, far more automation, increased capacity and stability and improved security – all improvements that result not only in a healthier, more robust and efficient infrastructure, but also in better service to Braathe Gruppen’s customers, who experience better deliveries across the board.
“Spirhed have delivered a fully automation-based set-up with unparalleled speed and accuracy, and I am very glad that they came on board to help us. Thanks to their technical expertise we have a future-proofed and optimal solution to support our business. Not to mention that we are no longer dependent on SAN!,” says Håkon Svendsen.
What did Spirhed deliver
Spirhed (fka. CTGlobal Norway) designed, implemented and deployed a complete isolated fabric infrastructure with Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, PKI, Fileserver, Virtual Machine Manager to deliver the private cloud abstraction-layer and Bare Metal Deployment of Storage Spaces Direct nodes and clusters, and extended it over two data centers, and educated Braathe Gruppen’s internal IT team on how to maintain the solution.
About Braathe Gruppen A/S
Braathe Gruppen provides cloud services and IT products to Norwegian businesses. The company is located in Norway, was founded in 1989, and in 1997 became one of the very first cloud providers in Norway. Braathe Gruppen delivers flexible end-user and infrastructure services to over 10,000 users and 3,000 servers from state-of-the-art data centers.
Learn more: braathegruppen.no
