Helping Production Stay on Schedule with Fast, Highly Available Storage

Overview

Challenge

• Expand capacity to keep pace with business growth and ensure projects run smoothly by increasing storage performance and scalability.

Solution

• Install a new Hitachi VSP One Block 26 storage system at Kratos’ Jerusalem data center and redeploy existing arrays to boost capacity at its Kibbutz Eyal site.

Outcome

• Ensure zero downtime and high performance to give users 24/7 access to the applications and data they need to meet project deadlines.

Challenge

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions is a technology, products, system and software company addressing the defense, national security and commercial markets. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, the company develops and manufactures jet-powered unmanned aerial drone systems, hypersonic vehicles and rocket systems, spacecraft and launch systems, microwave electronic technologies for defense and space use cases, C5ISR solutions, and virtual and augmented reality training systems.

In recent years, the Israeli subsidiary of Kratos has won several major contracts with governments and corporations. The company knew that these new projects would generate large amounts of data including schematic diagrams, technical documentation and compliance information. Employees at Kratos’ production facilities need instant access to these documents to work effectively, and any delays or downtime at its data centers in Jerusalem and Kibbutz Eyal risk impacting project timelines.

In parallel, the Hitachi Vantara Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) G350 arrays at Kratos’ data centers were coming to end of life after five years of reliable service. To reduce the risk of reliability issues, boost performance and increase capacity, Kratos set out to upgrade and expand its storage capabilities.

Solution

Kratos reached out to its long-standing partner, Belocal, to find a solution. The Belocal team helped the IT team explore several options, ranging from expanding its existing arrays with additional disks, to migrating to a new, state-of-the-art platform: Hitachi VSP One Block 26. “The high performance of the VSP One and Hitachi’s 100% data availability guarantee were really important for us,” says Gil Amir, System and Security Manager at Kratos. “We also liked the cost-to-quality ratio compared to other vendors.”

Kratos then worked with Belocal to design and deliver a comprehensive upgrade plan. Together, they installed a new Hitachi VSP One Block 26 array at the Jerusalem production site and redeployed the company’s existing VSP G350 arrays to add capacity at the Kibbutz Eyal data center at no extra cost.

Raanan Sitton, VP of Sales at Belocal, comments, “Getting the sizing right was very important. The VSP One has adaptive data reduction (ADR) features that typically deliver at least a 4:1 data compression and deduplication ratio. However, the bulk of Kratos’ data is stored in file formats that are already highly compressed, so we couldn’t rely on ADR alone. We needed a platform that can scale easily, and the VSP One’s dynamic drive protection (DDP) capability enables that. As capacity requirements grow, Kratos will be able to add individual drives as and when they need them, instead of purchasing an entire RAID group, which is a much more expensive option.”

Together with the local Hitachi Professional Services team, the partner helped to ensure zero downtime during the migration process, ensuring that business-critical documents remained available for employees throughout the project.“We get consistently good service from Belocal and the Hitachi Israel team,” says Amir. “This time was no different. The deployment and configuration processes were quick and excellent.”

Outcome

With the new VSP One Block 26 array deployed at its Jerusalem data center, Kratos now has a reliable, high-performance platform to continue delivering aerospace and defense projects for clients’ mission-critical needs. The VSP One’s NVMe drives have significantly boosted storage performance, helping users across the business access critical data without delays.

“If you’re responsible for IT infrastructure, you know that if your systems become slow or unreliable, you’ll spend all your time dealing with complaints,” says Amir. “With the VSP One, I can sleep at night, knowing that performance and availability are not going to be an issue. You immediately feel how much faster everything is with VSP One. Even the terminal servers, which always used to give us trouble, are now running well.”

With 1.8PB of capacity in a compact 2U footprint, the VSP One also gives Kratos significant overhead for future data growth. And when the company needs to scale up further, the DDP capability will enable flexible, cost-effective upgrades. As Kratos looks towards the future of its storage infrastructure, it will continue working with Hitachi and Belocal. The next stage of the company’s storage evolution will probably involve retiring the old VSP G350 arrays when they reach end-of-life and installing VSP One at the Kibbutz Eyal data center, too.

Amir concludes, “To the best of our knowledge, this was the first VSP One Block 26 deployed in Europe, and the project has been a great success. We are excited to continue working on pioneering projects for our IT infrastructure together with Hitachi and Belocal.”