When Gerard Adriaan Heineken started a small brewery in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1863, he had no way of predicting it would lead to 18 million hectolitres of beer a year. And just what would he have made of a datacentre of Dell Compellent Storage Center SANs with Dell Fluid Data™ technology?

140 breweries in 70 countries later, Heineken’s IT infrastructure had grown too large to manage effectively. Like its founding father, the brewery is an early adopter of good ideas designed to make life a little easier: Heineken has already virtualized over 60 per cent of its infrastructure, and aims to achieve 90 per cent by the end of 2012. But with storage support costs of over €44,650 a year, and a system that was fast running out of space, it needed to find a more scalable, easy-to-manage storage solution. Enter Dell Compellent Storage Center SANs. Mike Robers, Senior Team Leader, Infrastructure Team, Heineken Netherlands explains: “We quickly came to the conclusion that Dell Compellent was the clear leader in terms of scalability and the lowest support costs.”

And so Heineken began its storage migration. Unlike the process of turning malted barley into an alcoholic beverage, installing the Dell Compellent SANs took just two days. Automated tiered storage dynamically moves data onto the optimal tier based on actual use. So Heineken can migrate infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage and cut costs. And with high-utilisation data on the fastest tier, employees enjoy optimal performance.

With Dell Compellent CoPilot Support, Robers’ small IT team can tap into 24/7 expert support, and rest assured that their system will stay up and running. Cheers!

Read more about the Heineken story here.