Fresenius Kabi Brazil projects 60% reduction of power consumption with Dell consolidation and virtualization solution

•  Power & Cooling•  Storage•  Virtualization 

“ The time we previously spent on administration and maintenance we can now devote to research and development for solutions to increase the value of the business. The Dell server consolidation and virtualization solution has been enormously successful.”

Leandro Fontana, IT Manager, Fresenius Kabi Brazil

  Benefits

•  Projected 60% reduction in  power costs 

•  60% gain in application performance

•  80% reduction in rackspace

•  60% reduction in cost of server administration and maintenance

•  Downtime reduced to zero

•  Refocusing of IT to research and development of new solutions to  add value to business 

Customer Profile

Company: Fresenius Kabi Brazil

Industry: Pharmaceutical

Country: Brazil

Employees: 1,200

Web: www.fresenius-kabi.com

Business Need Fresenius Kabi Brazil needed a hardware refresh in its secondary data center to improve the safety of data, strengthen the company’s business continuity strategy and encourage trust in the IT function as a principal support for the business.

Solution With the assistance of Dell™ Consulting Services, the company chose a server consolidation and virtualization solution based on Dell PowerEdge™ servers with Intel Xeon processors, Dell EqualLogic™ storage, Dell PowerConnect™ Gigabit Ethernet switches, a Dell PowerVault™ tape library and VMware vSphere Advanced virtualization software.

Today Fresenius Kabi is a leader in infusion and clinical nutrition therapy in Europe, Latin America and Asia/Pacific. It is one of the most important providers of generic intravenous medications for the North American market, focusing on the therapy and care of chronic and critical patients. Fresenius Kabi has more than 21,000 employees, a global network of more than 55 sales organizations and more than 55 plants around the world. In 2009, Fresenius Kabi had an income of more than 3.086 billion EUR.

Established more than 40 years ago, Fresenius Kabi Brazil manufactures an extensive line of quality, world-class pharmaceutical products. The company is based in the city of Barueri in the state of São Paulo, where it has its primary data center, which replicates data to another location in Itapecerica da Serra, ensuring data protection and business continuity.

Increasing safety and trust

Central to the company’s disaster recovery strategy, the Itapecerica site needed a hardware refresh to update the existing HP servers. The challenge was to increase the safety of IT operations and build the

company’s trust in the IT organization by implementing a powerful and efficient infrastructure.

Fresenius Kabi Brazil turned to Dell, which the company considers its partner in all its subsidiaries worldwide. “Dell was able to offer relevant products and solutions to all our project areas,”

“ We wanted to simplify the process of design, configuration and implementation and the Dell consultants helped us do just that. We described the scenario we wanted and they came back with precise recommendations that supported us throughout the project.” Leandro Fontana, IT Manager, Fresenius Kabi Brazil

Few companies have been in business for as long as Fresenius Kabi. Part of the healthcare conglomerate Fresenius SE based in Bad Homburg, Germany, the pharmaceutical manufacturer Fresenius Kabi has its roots in an apothecary in Frankfurt, Germany that was founded in 1426.

Technology at Work

Services

Dell™ Consulting Services

Hardware

Dell EqualLogic™ PS4000XV iSCSI SAN

Dell PowerConnect™ Gigabit Ethernet 6248 and 6224 switches

Dell PowerEdge™ R710 servers with Intel® Xeon® processors 5500/5600 series

Dell PowerVault™ TL2000 tape library

Software

VMware® vSphere Advanced

says Leandro Fontana, IT manager, Fresenius Kabi Brazil. “The fact that Dell consultants could execute the project in a fast and efficient fashion increased the value of Dell’s solution for us. Another reason we chose Dell as a partner was to have a single contact point for the acquisition of products and services, eliminating a significant amount of administrative time for us.”

Optimizing stability and reliability 

“With the help of Dell Consulting, we decided to consolidate and virtualize servers to maximize the stability and reliability of the services we provide to the business,” says Fontana. “We wanted to simplify the process of design, configuration and implementation and the Dell consultants helped us do just that. We described the scenario we wanted and they came back with precise recommendations that supported us throughout the project. Our expectations were completely fulfilled.”

For its server consolidation and virtualization solution, Fresenius acquired three Dell PowerEdge R710 servers with Intel Xeon processors 5500 and 5600 series, 11 Dell

PowerConnect Gigabit Ethernet 6248 and 6224 switches, one Dell EqualLogic PS4000XV iSCSI SAN, one Dell PowerVault TL2000 tape library and VMware vSphere Advanced.

“The PowerEdge R710 servers perform 10 times faster than the HP servers we had,” says Fontana. “Our applications are performing 60 percent faster and we have zero downtime.”

Projected 60% reduction in  power cost

Fresenius took 27 servers off the floor and virtualized and consolidated them on two Dell PowerEdge servers, with a third used for backup. “We used to have five racks, now we have one. The consolidation will make it possible to diminish our costs with maintenance and save on labor,” says Fontana. “We expect to reduce 60 percent of our power bill in the data center. The time we previously spent on administration and maintenance has been reduced by 60 percent, so we can now devote more time to research and development for solutions to increase the value of the business. The Dell server consolidation and virtualization solution has been enormously successful.”

“ We expect to reduce 60 percent of our power bill in the data center.” Leandro Fontana, IT Manager, Fresenius Kabi Brazil

Prior to the Dell solution, Fresenius had 27 servers and no storage. The main challenge in finding the right storage solution was consolidating all the company’s data and applications on centralized storage with minimum impact on production. “There were a lot of applications to migrate,” says Fontana. “Putting the whole project together took three months, and we stopped production for only five hours, which was considered extremely successful.”

Fresenius is using only 20 percent of the capacity of its Dell EqualLogic storage. “The performance of the EqualLogic storage is great,” says Fontana. “We were looking for flexible storage that we could bring online without causing a big disruption, and we found it with EqualLogic. It has the most complete feature set with the best cost/benefit ratio in the market.”

Availability and terms of Dell Services vary by region. For more information, visit: dell.com/servicedescriptions

© May 2011. Intel and Intel Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States or other countries. This case study is for informational purposes only. DELL MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS CASE STUDY. Reference number: 10009308

View all Dell case studies at: dell.com/casestudies

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