Celepar improves user experience in the State of Paraná with state-of-the-art Hitachi Infrastructure

Overview

Challenge

• Provide a high-performance IT infrastructure through a single system capable of meeting critical demands while reducing footprint.

Solution

• Consolidate over 100 servers onto Hitachi All-Flash storage to provide greater performance and efficiency.

Outcome

• Reduced footprint and operating costs
• Maintain online services to citizens of Paraná State during non-disruptive migration
• Faster response times
• Improved data security

Challenge

Offering flexibility and consolidation for critical loads by modernizing IT infrastructure

A pioneer among public information technology companies, the Paraná Information and Communication Technology Company (Celepar) is a privately held mixed-capital company, the largest shareholder of which is the State of Paraná.

Founded in 1964, Celepar is focused on providing digital solutions for society. For over 50 years they have been transforming the State of Paraná into a streamlined, intuitive, digital service provider, by optimizing processes and eliminating bureaucracy.

With the advance of the digital transformation, Celepar needed to modernize its IT infrastructure with enterprise-class infrastructure that would meet its Data Center's heaviest critical data loads, including its Mainframe and RISC environments.

The company's mission is to promote a better quality of life for the state's citizens, by connecting people to the Government more quickly and securely. Hence, it was vital to update their storage, as it was e no longer meeting growth expectations.

Existing infrastructure was obsolete, and the challenge was to find a solution that would meet demands through the next 4-5 years. It was essential to move to an infrastructure that was able to house the existing LPARs, supporting the databases with a large volume to achieve scalability and a complete tech refresh.

Space is also a priority for Celepar since the company has had a secure data room since 2015, where Paraná state government and citizen data are stored. The secure data room has a 270 m² data center that operates 24 hours a day and has one main area and an area used exclusively for digital certification services. Therefore the new storage solution also needed to reduce footprint.

Solution

Services optimized for Paraná's citizens through server migration

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) F1500 was chosen through a careful bid process, since Celepar needed to consolidate its most critical data loads onto a single machine to migrate the RISC platforms also the Mainframe. For this reason, the company selected the most modern and efficient hardware available, which would be capable of providing data efficiency and a 500-terabyte disk capacity, able to exceed one petabyte in operational volume. Plus, the Hitachi Ops Center software allowed Celepar to monitor the new environment and proactively optimize performance.

350 terabytes out of 500 have already been migrated and the system is so stable that there has been no impact on end users. `This is essential as these solutions make daily life easier for the state's citizens to obtain faster access to state services. Detran Fácil, for example, was a portal developed to prevent users from needing to spend hours waiting in lines for in-person service.

Celepar migrated 100 State of Paraná servers, including Safety (Department of Public Safety and the Vehicle Service and Dispatch Center); Health (Department of Health, SAMU—The Mobile Emergency Service, and the Government Healthcare [SUS] Management System), Administrative activities (State Payroll, Integrated Services with Federal Revenue and Detran PR—Paraná Transportation Department).

"Celepar has become a model of e-government thanks to the efforts of its employees, and all the investments made in companies committed to offering the best technology solutions, allied with the deep knowledge of their technicians. We are very proud to be able to provide quality services for the people of our state," said Dario Kuceki Knopfholz, Data Systems Infrastructure Technology Coordinator.

Outcome

Fast, secure digital solutions for increasingly connected and demanding citizens

The new VSP F1500 arrived at a very opportune moment for Celepar, because with the increase in demand for digital services the company needed a solution capable of meeting new requirements.

Since the consolidation of the most critical loads, Celepar has seen better response times, greater data security, footprint reduction—with one petabyte in a single half-rack—and significant space savings in the data center.

VSP F1500 virtualization made it possible to migrate Celepar's other disks to the new system quickly, simply, and safely. This operational ease is due to Hitachi Vantara's matrix handles the most critical loads with excellent compatibility. The encryption features of the VSP F1500 protects sensitive data against breaches and preventing unauthorized people from accessing Celepar data.

Disc formatting was completed in 30 minutes, and the entire project was completed in 2 months, which generated time to market savings and surprised even Celepar's experienced professionals. Several tests were conducted during migration to the new storage setup, with the equipment achieving a capacity of 400,000 IOPS (it didn't hit even higher numbers only because the server infrastructure wouldn't support it).

"Digital transformation requires solutions be more practical and less bureaucratic, which is why Celepar is concerned with staying up-to-date to provide the best customer experience for the citizens of Paraná State. We work tirelessly so that people have secure access to administrative, healthcare, and safety services." explains Knopfholz. "2020 was a crucial year, it reinforced the importance of our digital services. With our migration to All Flash, we gained better response time. Now we can provide better agility in our services and optimize the customer experience." concludes Knopfholz.