The Holiday Inn Express brand, part of the IHG Group, recently opened a 305 room hotel located in the heart of the largest international airport in France, Roissy CDG Airport. The hotel is set to see hundreds of visitors each day and is in a prime location near Terminal 1, while a free shuttle service to the remaining terminals is only steps away. The hotel opened to the public in January 2018 and is committed to delivering outstanding hospitality, with a focus on providing the highest quality of service to its customers.
IT challenges
IT has a critical role to play in supporting the day-to-day operations of the hotel and with the need to deliver a 24/7 service, it was essential the hotel could implement a robust IT infrastructure. Typically, hotels within the IHG group opt for a local storage solution, however, the cost of hosting the Proprety Management System (PMS) was extremely expensive in the airport area. The company needed a cost-effective solution that would meet its requirements. In addition, as a new hotel it had the added flexibility of being able to design the entire architecture without working around an existing platform.
Cyril Gilgenkrantz at The Holiday Inn Express at Roissy CDG Airport, commented: “It was essential that any new solution we opted for would be cost-effective. We turned to our trusted partner, IT Guard, looking for advice and guidance on the best approach to take. As a new hotel, we had the opportunity to construct an entirely new platform but we were restricted by the expensive hosting costs due to our location.”
Alongside cost savings, the hotel wanted a solution that would be able to simplify virtualisation, meet performance requirements and cater to any future demands. Ensuring real time recovery was also a priority as the hotel needs to be able to keep services up and running 24/7.
Evaluating the market with trusted partner, IT Guard
After evaluating the market and looking at a number of alternative solutions, the hotel opted for Scale Computing’s HC3 cluster on the recommendation of IT Guard. The technology was a smooth fit and had no additional software to license or expertise needed.
“With the help and advice of IT Guard, we decided to opt for Scale Computing’s robust, flexible and secure computing system,” said Gilgenkrantz. “We evaluated the market extensively and after several testing scenarios, we opted for Scale Computing as it met our full criteria. We didn’t have to compromise on any of the features.”
Hugues Bonnefont, Co-founder at IT Guard, commented, “Scale Computing seemed like a natural fit for the hotel. The company needed performance, simplified management and disaster recovery rolled into one solution that was cost-effective. Not only does Scale Computing cater to the hotel’s current needs, but the technology is future-proof – with the ability to scale-out on-demand the hotel now has peace of mind that its requirements will always be met.”
The Scale Computing deployment
With the help of IT Guard, the hotel opted to install Scale Computing’s HC3 cluster on site to support its IT operations. The solution offers disaster recovery, high availability, cloning, replication and snapshots providing complete business continuity, an essential IT component needed for the hotel.
Gilgenkrantz added: “We didn’t opt for a proof of concept as it was clear through our testing and market research that Scale Computing would meet our needs. The deployment was smooth sailing and both IT Guard and Scale Computing were on hand throughout the entire process, from pre-sales right through to the final set up and deployment. The technology truly is simplified and easy to use, it took less than a day to deploy the platform, configure the machines and get up and running.”
Increased performance and speed – Scale Computing’s HEAT feature
One of the main benefits the hotel experienced was the immediate high performance with SSD, enabling the company to access databases and critical applications at speed. With Scale Computing’s native HEAT feature, the company can increase speed and performance on demand. The technology monitors data access and creates a dynamic mapping of active data blocks, moving these onto SSD storage tiering to create the required performance needs.
Business continuity
In addition, with business continuity of paramount importance to the hotel, the company has been enjoying the replication, snapshot and disaster recovery features within the HC3 cluster. “One of the first things that appealed to us about Scale Computing was the ability to manage the environment remotely,” said Gilgenkrantz. “We have a business that runs 24 hours a day and we need to have a plan in place in case of downtime, to ensure we are fully automated and can recover. Scale Computing is perfect for this.”
Gilgenkrantz continued: “Everything with Scale Computing works perfectly, we have value for money and the solution meets all of our requirements in terms of business continuity and disaster recovery. It’s also an added bonus that we don’t need a dedicated person on site to manage the solution. It simply takes care of itself.”
Scale Computing’s single node deployment is designed to store and create digital file copies ensuring a replica of all critical workloads is immediately available and ready to run from another location, should a disaster occur. Live virtual machine (VM) migration is also available on the HC3 clusters which allows VMs to be non-disruptively migrated between nodes without any downtime.
Simplified management and cost savings
Scale Computing’s appliance-based approach ensures the IT architecture is simplified and easy to manage and maintain. The HC3 cluster combines servers, storage and virtualisation into one easy to use platform with automated management, saving organisations both time and money. Streamlining on costs and resources, the HC3 cluster requires no additional training or certification and there is no additional licensing requirements.
Gilgenkrantz added: “We worked with IT Guard to implement Scale Computing and since the deployment the technology has met all of our expectations and needs. IT Guard has been instrumental in helping us throughout the entire process, with expertise and knowledge on both specific software environments and the hotel industry. We now have a business continuity plan in place, high-performance, simplified management and the added bonus of value for money. We are extremely pleased with the entire process and look forward to being able to grow with the Scale Computing technology.”
