Business need

After migrating its SAP system to

an open, end-to-end Dell platform,

Ameco Beijing needed to migrate

its business-critical production

system, as well as complete a

virtualization program.

Solution

The company worked with Dell

Services, which helped plan and

complete the migration through

the use of SharePlex. At the same

time, Ameco Beijing implemented its

end-to-end Dell infrastructure for the

virtual environment, featuring Dell

PowerEdge blades, Dell Compellent

storage and Dell Networking switches.

Benefits• Migration downtime for business-

critical system drops 85 percent

• Significant savings through

software term licensing for

migration

• Converged virtual environment

lowers capex by 50 percent

• Same infrastructure reduces opex

by 60 percent

• Virtualized solution delivers 99.99

percent availability

Solutions at a glance• Application Services

• Data Center Virtualization

• Infrastructure Consulting Services

• Database

Chinese leader in aircraft maintenance sees end-to-end benefits take offAmeco Beijing cuts downtime for production system migration by 85 percent while reducing capex by 50 percent and opex by 60 percent with a converged virtualized solution

Customer profile

Company Ameco Beijing

Industry Aerospace and Defense

Country China

Employees 6,000

Website www.ameco.com.cn

“ We calculated that we could lower capital costs between 40 and 50 percent by switching to a virtualized environment with Dell. This is good news for the business and IT – helping us align our infrastructure with the company-wide goal of greater efficiency.” Gan Desheng, Manager, Information Management Subdivision, Ameco Beijing

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“ Working with Dell Services, we continue to optimize our end-to-end Dell platform. It ensures that we realize the full business value of our IT investments.” Gan Desheng, Manager, Information Management Subdivision, Ameco Beijing

Ameco Beijing, a joint venture between Air China and Lufthansa German Airlines, gained a reliable end-to-end solution provider when it started working with Dell. The relationship got off to a great start when Dell Global Infrastructure Consulting Services (GICS) migrated the company’s SAP® ERP (enterprise resource planning) system from a RISC solution to a Linux-based Dell end-to-end platform. The project was a success. The switch to Dell and a platform based on Dell PowerEdge R720 and R920 servers featuring Intel® Xeon® processors, with Dell Compellent SC8000 storage system and a Dell PowerVault TL2000 tape library had an immediate impact. This included a 46 percent drop in total cost of ownership (TCO), 99.99 percent uptime, and a 3.5 times increase in the responsiveness of the SAP system. Liu Wei, Project Manager at Ameco Beijing, discussed how employees had gained greater efficiency through the improved performance of the ERP system.

An end-to-end IT relationshipWith the Dell platform in place and the SAP solution fully migrated, the Ameco Beijing IT team soon began to organize a series of additional key IT projects. This included the expansion of the Compellent solution supporting SAP with additional controllers. Plus, work on the final phase of a virtualization program saw the staged migration of administrative systems as well as the Ameco Aircraft Maintenance Information System over to a Microsoft® Hyper-V® platform. Gan Desheng, Manager, Information Management Subdivision,

Leading companies understand the value of end-to-end

solution providers. It’s as simple as having a trusted IT partner

that you can turn to for every IT project, big or small. A partner

that offers the solutions, the services and the software to

streamline deployments, minimize downtime, and deliver the

kind of technology that personnel need to be at their best.

Products & Services

Services

Dell Application Services

– SAP Services

Dell Global Infrastructure Consulting Services

Dell Compellent Copilot Support

Dell Support Services

– Dell ProSupport Plus

Hardware

Dell PowerEdge M620 blade servers

Dell PowerEdge M1000e modular blade enclosure

Dell PowerEdge R720 and R920 servers featuring Intel®

Xeon® processors

Dell Compellent SC40 and SC8000 storage with SC220 and SC200 enclosures

Dell Networking MXL and M6348 switches

Dell PowerVault TL2000 and TL4000 tape library

Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) with Lifecycle Controller

Software

SharePlex

Partner

Microsoft® Windows Server® 2012 with Hyper-V®

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of Ameco Beijing, says, “It was a busy period, one of many for the IT team. Work is constantly ongoing to improve our services.”

Upgrading storage quickly and easilyAmeco Beijing expanded the Dell Compellent environment supporting the x86-based SAP infrastructure with two Dell Compellent storage arrays. One of the arrays sits in the production environment and supports 10 400 gigabyte (GB) solid-state drives (SDD) and 10 300GB 15K SAS drives. The second storage array is located at the disaster recovery site and contains 10 400GB SSDs. Gan says, “Working with Dell Services, we continue to optimize our end-to-end Dell platform. It ensures that we realize the full business value of our IT investments.”

Completing the final stage of virtualizationWith the storage expanded, the Ameco Beijing IT team shifted its focus to the continuing server virtualization program. The company had gradually virtualized the environment supporting applications such as Ameco Aircraft Maintenance Information System, Microsoft SharePoint® Server and multiple desktop applications. Now was the final stage in the program, and the Ameco Beijing IT team worked again with Dell to complete the project.

Together, they migrated the remaining applications from Dell PowerEdge rack servers to two virtualized Dell PowerEdge M620 blades, running Microsoft Windows Server® 2012 R2 with Hyper-V, which today support around 90 virtual machines. The blades are located in a Dell PowerEdge M1000e modular blade enclosure and form part of an end-to-end Dell solution. The blade servers operate alongside a combination of Dell Compellent storage arrays with dual controllers, fibre channel connections, and up to 30 terabytes (TBs) of capacity. Furthermore, the environment also contains Dell Networking MXL 10 Gigabit Ethernet and M6348 switches for a fully integrated Dell infrastructure.

The MXL switches can provide high performance and high-efficiency transmission flow for local exchanges within the chassis for the virtualization workloads, thereby reducing TCO. Finally, a Dell PowerVault TL4000 tape library completes the architecture. Says Gan, “It’s been a steady process, supported along the way by Dell. Now that it’s finished, we can see some very clear business benefits from virtualization.”

Capital cost reductions of up to 50 percentAs a result of fully virtualizing its administrative systems, Ameco Beijing has nearly halved costs for this environment. The organization can scale the infrastructure supporting email and desktop applications without the constant need for more physical servers. “We calculated that we could lower capital costs between 40 and 50 percent by switching to a virtualized environment with Dell. This is good news for the business and IT – helping us align our infrastructure with the company-wide goal of greater efficiency,” comments Gan.

He adds that the tiering functionality in the Dell Compellent storage also cuts costs. “The automated tiering in Dell Compellent effectively lowers the number of SSDs that we need to buy, thereby saving resources,” he says. In the case of the Dell Compellent environment supporting the SAP solution, the company has seen important savings. Gan explains, “Currently, disk utilization is just 15 percent on the SSDs and 85 percent on the slower SAS drives, which are now the bulk of our purchases.” He says that before data tiering, the company bought far more SSDs, and that Ameco Beijing has saved around US$70,000 (440,000 RMB) since 2013 by switching purchases to SAS.

Slashing operating costs by 60 percentAs with capital costs, operating costs have also been reduced. Gan says the environment is now easier to manage and involves less manual work with more

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administrative tasks now automated. The team uses a combination of Mocha BSM and the integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) with Lifecycle Controller. “We estimate that management savings are in the region of 60 percent because of virtualization,” he comments.

Gan is particularly pleased with the management savings from Dell Compellent. He says, “We spent an average of one to two hours per week on storage and management. Now with our Compellent storage solution, we spend less than two hours each quarter.” Furthermore, he believes easier management has helped Ameco Beijing avoid the cost of additional IT personnel. “Based on our current rate of IT expansion, we would have had to employ two more administrators if we hadn’t virtualized our IT with Dell,” comments Gan.

Enterprise-class uptimes over the long termThe IT team is pleased with the virtualized environment’s availability. Today it’s delivering 99.99 percent uptime, and Gan expects the performance to continue through the performance of the equipment and the services support of Dell. Ameco Beijing has Dell Compellent Copilot Support and Dell ProSupport Plus, which among other advantages provides a Dell Technical Account Manager (TAM). The role of the TAM is to work closely with the customer to improve the support process and oversee support requests. “We’ve been working with a TAM for a while now,” says Gan. “He knows our IT landscape in detail and is very available. It is easy to communicate with the TAM, and he escalates our requests rapidly within Dell. He adds a lot of value to the Dell proposition.”

A challenging migration After completing virtualization, Ameco Beijing had the task of migrating the Ameco Aircraft Maintenance Information System over to Dell. The migration of the maintenance system was particularly challenging. The system, which includes a 400GB Oracle® database, was built in-house, adding complexity to the migration. In addition, Ameco Beijing couldn’t afford any significant downtime because 2,000 engineers needed access to the environment, with up to 800 concurrent users at any one time. Says Gan, “Our engineers depend on this system to assign work on the aircraft that come in to work. The system carries the aircraft documentation and history of the repair work previously carried out. It lists all the work that needs to be done, and the engineer updates the system once work is finished. It’s critical to our operation.”

Initial estimates saw downtime lasting up to a day during the migration. “This wasn’t possible,” remembers Gan. “If the situation didn’t change, then the project couldn’t go ahead. We needed a solution.” Gan and the IT team discussed the issue with Dell Services personnel, who came to the conclusion that they could safely migrate the data with considerably less downtime using SharePlex.

Ameco Beijing pressed ahead with the migration in collaboration with Dell. A backup copy of the data on the UNIX platform was transferred to the Dell infrastructure and was tested. Engineers continued to access the data while the IT team updated the Dell infrastructure with the most current data. Using SharePlex, the IT team was able to replicate the data in real time as it moved from the UNIX to the Dell platform for added security. Gan says, “We completed the process successfully. Downtime, when engineers couldn’t update the system, was no more than 3.5 hours – around an 85 percent

reduction on our original estimate. Senior managers at Ameco Beijing were very happy with our work and the support of Dell.”

Significant software savings with term licensingIn addition to significantly reducing downtime, Ameco Beijing made important savings in migration costs. Gan explains, “We were able to enjoy flexible term licensing of SharePlex, and received good support from the Dell Services team who thought outside the box and proposed a cost-efficient alternative.”

Dell, the Dell logo, Dell Compellent, Dell ProSupport, PowerEdge, PowerVault and SharePlex are trademarks of Dell Inc. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Availability and terms of Dell Software, Solutions and Services vary by region. This case study is for informational purposes only. Dell makes no warranties – express or implied—in this case study. Reference Number: 10021068 © May 2015, Dell Inc. All Rights Reserved

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“ We’ve been working with a TAM for a while now. He knows our IT landscape in detail and is very available. It is easy to communicate with the TAM, and he escalates our requests rapidly within Dell. He adds a lot of value to the Dell proposition.” Gan Desheng, Manager, Information Management Subdivision, Ameco Beijing