Achieve performance, scale, and security with less risk
Leaders in database migrations are achieving the performance they need. Read the eBook below (no strings attached) to uncover their secrets to success.
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Abstract
No one said database migration was easy—but hanging back is not an option. While migration challenges are real, they can be overcome with the right process, people, and technology. High-profile companies worldwide are using Azure NetApp Files to help them successfully migrate and operate their databases in the cloud.
Stories of database leadership
Migrating databases to the cloud offers organizations clear benefits—lower costs, better data security, and higher performance among them. But these major transitions can also raise the scary specter of risk.
High-performance applications need high reliability and availability to keep business-critical functions humming. Organizations want to avoid the horror story of disruption at all costs, but cloud infrastructure doesn’t always offer the total solution needed for peace of mind.
At NetApp, we understand these challenges inside out and have vast experience in helping companies solve them. Azure NetApp Files provides high-performing, scalable file services that make it easy to store and protect data while managing business continuity risk—all in a Microsoft first-party enterprise service in Azure.
Global success stories
Azure NetApp Files offers you the confidence to migrate even your most complex databases to Azure. Organizations around the world have relied on it to fully realize the transformative benefits of moving databases to the cloud. Here are a few of their stories.
SAP: Faster deployment and fewer outages
As the world leader in enterprise software, SAP hardly needs an introduction. The software giant chose to run its HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) in Azure on Azure NetApp Files. The solution offers SAP customers performance, reliability, and lower total cost of ownership (TCO)—all of which help customers achieve better business operations and a faster time to market.
SAP customers seek premium cloud performance, and Azure NetApp Files delivers. It allows users to seamlessly scale both performance and capacity up and down to 100TB per volume, with data in place and no time-consuming copies required. It offers 99.99% availability with the consistent performance required for database workloads. And it enables business-critical Oracle and SQL database applications to run on Azure with sub-millisecond response times (over 300k IOPS).
With Azure NetApp Files, SAP also offers customers powerful data protection. Data is online and durable due to highly available volumes, and it is encrypted at-rest and in-transit through a FIPS-140-2-compliant encryption mechanism for best-in-class data security. SAP also turns to Azure NetApp Files for business continuity support, using NetApp Snapshot technology for fast and reliable copies and recovery.
Azure NetApp Files plays a significant role in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) deployments for SAP, enabling customers to adopt the cloud more quickly. The process is simplified by the fact that Azure customers don’t need to buy or manage extra storage infrastructure.
With Azure NetApp Files, SAP is able to:
- Deploy environments 30% to 40% faster
- Reduce outages by 80% due to added stability
NetApp is our trusted partner. They deliver; they are a key to delivering a robust infrastructure-as-a-service environment, which is the backbone of any software that runs on top of it.
Lalit Patil, Chief Technology Officer, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud
Italgas: Speedier Oracle backups and lower infrastructure costs
Italgas, the leading gas distribution company in Italy, migrated its entire data center and Oracle databases to Microsoft Azure. However, the company wasn’t getting the performance it needed. It moved both production and development environments to Azure NetApp Files in order to gain greater control of database performance and network traffic and reduce costs.
Azure NetApp Files enables the company to quickly adapt storage to Oracle database workload needs. The company can hot-resize the volume to match size and performance needs, as well as change the volume tier dynamically, without service interruption. And it can choose to do all of this interactively or via automation.
It also helped Italgas eliminate storage bottlenecks, putting an end to compute overprovisioning and allowing the company to use smaller virtual machines (VMs). Now, it only buys the storage volumes it really needs and with the VM savings it results in savings of up to 60%. This flexibility and optimization have helped Italgas achieve new service level agreements (SLAs).
Italgas also adopted Azure NetApp Files snapshot-based consistent backups in place of classic disk-based backups. The company was able to reduce backup times from 15 hours to a mere 15 minutes, creating a more reliable production environment. Using SnapShot copies also sped up Oracle application refresh operations so that production databases can be moved to non production in hours, not days.
Italgas is also evolving its virtual desktop and container platforms, which are easily integrated to benefit from adoption.
Azure NetApp Files was a game changer for us. It helps us meet our mission of distributing gas safely, efficiently, and affordably.
Giuliano Caglio, Head of Cloud Service and Infrastructure, Italgas
CONA: Increased agility at substantial savings
When North American Coca-Cola bottlers need help with sales and distribution management, they turn to IT platform CONA Services. Coke bottlers run operations around the clock, and the 500 bottlers that CONA works with generate $24 billion in beverage sales. For CONA, that means huge volumes of data and extremely variable demand.
The challenges of this operation were magnified by the changes of 2020, and CONA decided to migrate to the cloud in order to get the faster, better data it needed to thrive. CONA teamed up with Azure and NetApp Files to migrate its SAP workload—one of the largest SAP HANA instances in the world—to the cloud.
The solution offered CONA high performance as well as the option to scale quickly to meet constantly changing business conditions. The company’s move to Azure and Azure NetApp Files greatly increased its agility and ability to rapidly generate insights from all that data.
The service also helped CONA save money, enabling the company to run fewer nodes and reduce runtime costs for its huge SAP investment. Even in extreme conditions, Azure NetApp Files helped CONA deliver for its bottlers.
2020 was a phenomenal year, with achieving cost savings, but also on the other side with important new business capabilities. Millions in savings but also millions of growth, based on the Azure NetApp Files environment.
Reinhard Meister, CEO and President, CONA Services
Lead the way to successful database migration
Digital transformation is no longer optional for organizations that want to remain relevant and competitive. Migrating databases to the cloud entails risk, but leading companies such as SAP, Italgas, and CONA have successfully utilized Azure NetApp Files to reduce those risks. And they’ve achieved that while enhancing performance and lowering costs. Find out how your organization can reap the same kinds of rewards.
