How Ergon Energy keeps the lights on for 850,000 customers... with HyperFlex
For decades, the on-premise server & SAN model has been the go-to solution for businesses with expansive networks that require exceptional uptime and security. And Ergon Energy definitely considered that model.
But having maintained numerous server & SAN infrastructures in the past, they knew from first-hand experience that it’s a model that requires an inordinate amount of management. They also knew that it would require them to work with four or more independent vendors to design, cost and implement the solution.
So rather than simply running with the default option, they decided to investigate a more contemporary alternative: hyperconvergence - a software-driven architecture where all computing, networking and storage is managed by a single box, provided by a single vendor.
According to Ergon Energy’s Manager of Operational Technology, Simon English, hyperconvergence appealed to the organisation because it promised all the speed, security, redundancy and scalability of a traditional server & SAN solution, but with a fraction of the hardware investment and maintenance overhead.
English said they looked at several hyperconvergence solutions from different providers, but Cisco’s HyperFlex stood out from the crowd: “Everything else we looked at either didn’t fit the bill or was going to be a very complicated solution that would require a whole lot more work on our part.”
What’s more, Ergon Energy already had a very high opinion of Cisco’s innovation and customer service capabilities: “Cisco has driven our business communication for 12 years. We already had a range of their solutions in place, and an excellent relationship with them. They’ve always taken the time to understand our needs and tailor intelligent solutions to meet them. Plus they’re always there when we need support. So HyperFlex made sense from more than a technology standpoint.”
So after 3 months of due diligence, English decided HyperFlex was the way to go, and he and the Cisco Queensland team set about designing exactly the solution Ergon Energy needed.
It was a complete system with Servers, Storage, Hypervisor, VMware, Networking and Automation from a single vendor. That solution took just a couple of weeks to integrate. “We commissioned each cluster in less than a week, plus a bit of commissioning on site,” said English. “From go to woe, it took us about two weeks to set up. And we didn’t have to be Cisco-certified to be able to do it.”
By way of comparison, according to English, a traditional server & SAN implementation would have taken four to six months. “We would have multiple racks full of equipment, and all of it would require patching and wiring. We’d have needed three additional groups involved in that process, to build patch cables, do drawings, and connect all the pieces together, then commission all the parts from all the groups. Just putting the pieces together would have been months of work, let alone commissioning the VMware. With HyperFlex, we got a single system, we put it in a rack, and we were essentially done.”