Grizzlyware – Sustainable products for a better experience

Context

Grizzlyware is a company that provides digital transformation services, bespoke software and custom product features. The company builds unique bridges across technology platforms to modernize digital systems, enabling clients to streamline and accelerate workflows and improve customer experiences.

Grizzlyware currently provides a central data network linked to a Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) converged network project. There are 120 virtual machines (VMs) (primarily domain controllers, file servers, and terminal servers) used by 600 employees, and migration traffic occurs live among these hyper-v hosts. It needs a durable fiber optic cable in the data center environment.

Challenge

• Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) traffic for four VMs is approximately 50TB in total. Each VM requires 4 links to the switch. Therefore, the switch must be highly stressed in terms of throughput, switching capacity and latency.
• Traffic will come from 4 virtual hosts with a mix of storage traffic (Microsoft S2D), management traffic, backup traffic and client inter-VM networking. High availability is essential, so each host will have at least one connection to each of the two switches.
• Management and nightly backup traffic must also be considered. Switches must meet the high data processing requirements and the inter-switch connection must be properly planned to ensure normal traffic.
• The data center environment is very difficult for long distance transmission.