With StrataScale automated server hosting, Photronics gets uptime, performance, and cost savings

The Challenge

Photronics delivers photomask solutions for customers manufacturing semiconductors, flat panel displays, optoelectronics and data storage components.  It is a world leader in sub-wavelength reticle solution technology as a result of its commitment to customer service, value, and quality.  Established in 1969, Photronics now operates nine manufacturing facilities around the globe strategically located near the world's leading semiconductor and flat panel display manufacturers.

Photronics prides itself on investing in state-of-the-art technology and pursuing cost effectiveness for itself and its customers.

From its IT infrastructure, Photronics demands:

›      Uptime(!)

›      Ability to transmit terabyte-sized files

›      Scalability (bring resources up quickly; manage resources on-demand)

›      Continuous improvements in system performance and cost savings

 

Solution

Photronics moved its entire data center operations on to StrataScale infrastructure, building and scaling IronScale Enterprise Automated Server Hosting environments.  The first phase was to move all externally-facing applications to StrataScale.  After uptime, performance, savings, and scalability proved even better than expected, the next phase was to move all internal systems over.

Configuration - dedicated server hosting infrastructure, featuring:

First Phase, Environment I

• one Level 1 IronScale Enterprise server: dual core, 70 GB storage
• one Level 3 IronScale Enterprise server: two quad cores, 770GB storage
• RedHat and vmWare ESX

Next Phase, Environment II

• one Level 1 IronScale Enterprise server: dual core, 70 GB storage
• five Level 3 IronScale Enterprise servers: each with two quad cores, 314GB to 1313GB storage range
• RedHat and vmWare ESX

The StrataScale IronScale solution features a web-accessed secure portal to view and manage - with full anywhere, anytime control - dedicated server and cloud hosting environments via the same UI.

Results

Dan Cahalane, Director of IT, Photronics

Cost Savings - "We migrated our entire data center on to StrataScale - we moved out a $.5M per year facility and dropped it down to about $100,000 - more than a quarter of million dollars savings.

Performance - Performance on the StrataScale systems far exceeded our thoughts.  We consolidated our data warehouse, a couple of global operational data stores, and Oracle financial systems on to a single server.  We went from 7 or 8 large pieces of iron to 1 or 2 virtualized systems - reducing costs, reducing management, and eliminating downtime. Virtualizing all of our data center on StrataScale's servers - it's been a superb arrangement for us.

Uptime - "StrataScale's autofailover: we've seen it in action. We've seen (hardware) pick itself back up in less than 2 minutes, all systems back up and running. So we've stopped using disaster recovery and Oracle Fast Failover - we don’t need them anymore - because StrataScale's SAN and failover take care of things for us. Running on the StrataScale Automated Server Hosting solution, we've eliminated downtime, the worries that go along with trying to maintain our own systems, the hassle of dealing with system upgrades - all of that is taken care of by StrataScale. We don’t even think about the management of the systems and that's almost invaluable.

Scalability - "We looked at leveraging StrataScale's internet circuits, which are far in excess of what we need, and to take advantage of the StrataScale storage capability - where we can scale up or down to deal with large files coming in from customers then going out to one of our sites (terabyte-size files that we need to move and transmit rapidly). So we are utilizing StrataScale's pipes and storage capacity to scale up to that terabyte level and send it back out - and it's been excellent.

What’s Next? - "What we've seen with StrataScale with the automated capabilities, with the ability to stand things up, with the ability of the systems to self heal - and the network capabilities and redundancies - in the next 12 months we look forward to virtualizing our desktop systems and moving them to StrataScale too."