AS TALLINK GRUPP
European travel leader sets sail for business expansion with ScaleIO
SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE HELPS TRAVEL FIRM CHART A PATH TO MARKET LEADERSHIP
When it comes to superb accommodations, first-class service, and state-of-the-art onboard facilities, no one does sea travel better than Tallink. The company pioneered the business in Europe, operating some of the most advanced cruise and ferry services on the Baltic Sea.
During peak months of Tallink's seasonal business, booking volumes stressed the travel provider's IT infrastructure. The company's previous IBM XIV storage system could not scale performance and capacity quickly enough, resulting in slow application response times and complaints from business users.
Initially, Tallink evaluated traditional storage solutions from NetApp and Dell Compellent. Rather than follow a conventional big-box approach, the company chose a software-defined storage solution based on EMC® ScaleIO® software.
With ScaleIO, Tallink dramatically improved application performance, reducing data access times from 37 to three seconds. The company can scale practically on the fly by simply adding commodity servers to the software-defined storage in less than an hour, compared to waiting a month to implement conventional storage. With improved speed and agility, Tallink can more quickly develop and test advanced applications, as well as deliver highly responsive service to its customers, strengthening its competitive advantage.
ENVIRONMENT
Tallink replaced IBM XIV with a software-defined storage solution comprised of EMC ScaleIO software and commodity hardware, including HP Proliant DL360 Gen9 servers with Intel SSD 535 Series drives as the storage target. ScaleIO manages 150 terabytes of raw capacity across 42 servers in two data centers approximately 15 kilometers apart. Tallink virtualized 99 percent of the servers using VMware vSphere.
The ScaleIO software-defined storage environment supports production, test, and development environments. ScaleIO runs Microsoft and Linux applications, including Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Micros OPERA Enterprise Solution (OES), and other custom-developed applications for booking, property management, and additional travel-related functions. Citrix XenApp presents a virtualized application environment for users.
READY FOR HIGH SEASON BOOKING VOLUMES
ScaleIO solved Tallink's performance and scalability issues, enabling the company to handle peak loads during high season with ease as the business continues to expand. In fact, during performance tests leading up to production rollout, ScaleIO delivered data access times more than 10 times faster than IBM XIV.
With Tallink's core booking system and Opera running on 70 virtual servers in a test cluster with six ScaleIO nodes, data access times during peak loads were just three seconds compared to 37 seconds on XIV. Write latency for the web server at peak load improved from 203 to three milliseconds, with average write latency on ScaleIO a mere 0.48 milliseconds.
Liivo Liivrand, Tallink's core infrastructure area manager, comments, "We achieved much better response times under heavy loads with ScaleIO than our previous storage. So now our critical applications run faster and we've eliminated the user complaints from before. We're totally ready for the high season."
"During high season we need to scale quite fast. With ScaleIO, if we need more speed or storage space, we just add servers on the fly…The storage is unbelievably dynamic."
Kalev Noor, Head of IT Operations and Infrastructure Division, AS Tallink Grupp
DYNAMIC STORAGE EASILY HANDLES PEAK LOADS
Tallink also attained a new level of scalability and agility. Instead of taking a month to acquire and install a large storage system, the company can simply deploy additional commodity servers in less than an hour. ScaleIO automatically recognizes additional capacity and absorbs it into the software-defined storage environment.
Kalev Noor, head of IT operations and infrastructure division at Tallink, explains, "During high season we need to scale quite fast. With ScaleIO, if we need more speed or storage space, we just add servers on the fly. There's no downtime or data migration as with a big storage implementation. When the peak is over, we can remove the servers from the ScaleIO environment and use them elsewhere until the next time they are needed. The storage is unbelievably dynamic."
HIGHER QUALITY OF SERVICE FOR CUSTOMERS
Because ScaleIO enables Tallink to use commodity hardware to build and scale its storage, the company also lowers costs.
Liivrand notes, "Compared to purchasing a branded storage box with flash, we can get the same performance at a fraction of the cost using ScaleIO and commodity servers. We don't have any vendor lock-in so we can choose any hardware that offers the best value."
By gaining higher performance and massive scalability while saving time and money, Tallink has transformed its storage infrastructure to support business expansion.
"Our customers expect the best from Tallink because we are the market leader," says Noor. "So IT must deliver the best possible services to our business users.''
"By adopting ScaleIO software-defined storage, we can run our booking system faster, which means we can serve more customers during the high season. We also can develop and test sophisticated new customer intelligence applications faster and more efficiently. That's critical to our competitive advantage and business growth."
Noor concludes, "Tallink had its best year ever last year. With ScaleIO, we're prepared to help make this year even better."
