“We saved $159,000 on our System i Power5 (AS400), $76,000 on High Availability Software, $35,000 by retaining legacy peripherals, and migrated from 9406-800 with V5R3 to 9406-520 with V5R4 with NO downtime.“
Humble Beginnings to Thriving Business
“Jake’s Finer Foods is a full-line distributor that serves more than 1,500 foodservice companies and restaurants from its 180,000-square-foot warehouse in Houston, Texas. In 2009, the family-owned company had $80 million in sales. That’s a long way from the company’s humble beginnings in 1946, when farmer Kevin E. Jacob came back from World War II and decided to distribute his farm’s eggs himself. The company has been growing every year since. These days, Jakes sells one million eggs weekly,” says Armand Page, Former Vice President of Operations and IT at Jake’s.
But in 2008, Hurricane Ike almost brought the thriving business to its knees.
The immense hurricane caused $30 billion in damage where it made landfall in the US, from Louisiana to Texas to the Florida Panhandle.
Jake’s Finer Foods’ facility was physically unharmed.
Hurricane and Power Loss Points Out Need for Disaster Recovery / High Availability
“Not a pebble hit us,” says Armand. “But being without power for 12 days is never a good thing for a food distributor. Fortunately, the company was able to bring in enough generator support to keep Jake’s going, and has subsequently purchased its own generators to protect against future disasters.”
But the hurricane uncovered another hole in the otherwise rock-solid company: The lack of an adequate High Availability/Disaster Recovery system. Before the hurricane, Jake’s was using a system familiar to many companies:
“It was called a wing and a prayer,” Armand says. “The company was religious about taking tapes off site. However, if the primary location was destroyed,” Armand says, “we’d have been SOL. Hurricane Ike changed how we looked at disasters.”
As a 24 x 7 Operation – NO Time for Downtime
If any of the company’s many Retalix applications went down, it would be a disaster of another kind. Jake’s Finer Foods uses the Retalix applications for operations management, supply chain management, business management and customer relationship management.
“We’d be dead in the water. We couldn’t operate,” says Armand. “We wouldn’t be able to receive, put away, enter orders. We’d have a warehouse full of products going nowhere.” That 2008 hurricane made Jake’s top brass realize it was time to forge ahead with the purchase of an HA/DR system.
Our Traditional IBM Server Providers’ Prices Were Sky-High
“Initially, our software vendor was proposing a new $180,000 POWER6 Enterprise iSeries AS400 server. And their High Availability solution was $120,000”, Armand continues. “I had to keep reminding them that Jake’s was a small food distributor. We only had 80 users on a 9406-800. $180,000 was way out of the ballpark. Even when they came down to $120,000, I still thought it was too much.”
I Get My First of Many Letters from Source Data Products, Inc.
Armand reflects, “It was about that time I got my first of many letters from Source Data. We got letters that told us we could save money on an IBM AS400 server as well as get High Availability. We had been talking to our software vendor about a new AS400 and High Availability at the time, so we thought we would also talk to Source Data.”
“Frankly I was surprised when talking to Source Data about my needs. I mean, they actually took the time to understand my business and computer workloads. We discussed many options. Then they determined an IBM Global Finance off-lease 9406-520 POWER5 had more than enough capacity and performance – and I did not have to buy any user licenses.”
The user license savings alone was over $20,000.
SDP Seemed Too Good to Be True…at First
“I was skeptical at first,” explains Armand. “This off-lease server was $64,000 less expensive than the lowest- priced AS400 my software provider had suggested. I was wondering, ‘How can these guys keep their doors open selling an IBM server so cheap?’
“Then SDP explained that the 9406-520 POWER5 chassis also supports my (6) Twinax line printer and LTO-2 tape drive – something the new POWER6 could not do. Wow, these guys just saved me the cost of new printers – about $35,000. It just seemed too good to be true.”
SDP Proved to Me They Really Know Their Stuff
Jake’s and SDP conducted a series of conference calls to analyze Jake’s data processing requirements and migration plan. “After several meetings, I became more comfortable that Source Data really knew their stuff. Mark Breisacher amazed me with how much he knew about the AS400 and made me feel comfortable that he could get us from our 9406-800 to the 9406-520.”
Armand remembers, “Mark also explained that the 9406-520 was expandable. We could add disk and memory beyond our initial configuration if we needed to. The POWER6 we had considered was very limited in growth.”
“It became pretty clear this 9406-520 was going to save us a lot of money. Of course, I didn’t tell Source Data that at the time,” confides Armand.
AS400 High Availability Solution — Better Functionality and Highly Affordable
“The next phase of our evaluation was to checkout SDP’s High Availability solution – Maxava,” continues Armand.
Armand had been shopping around for an HA/DR system for years and had done rigorous comparisons with the leading High Availability providers. “After two full-blown demos, it was pretty obvious that Maxava was definitely the way to go,” he explains.
“Normally I don’t select the lowest cost option, but Maxava’s functionality and performance was what we needed. It was also great it was $76,000 less than the next cheapest solution. After awhile, it was easy to see that Source Data Products, Inc. was the hands-down winner of our business.”
The “No-Downtime” Migration – a REAL Solution, Not a Power Point
A traditional version upgrade or migration to a new server generally takes 15 to 25 hours. That is in addition to a complete system backup which can take up to 8 hours.
Because Jake’s planned to install Maxava at the same time as the 9406-520 with V5R4, SDP recommended a “No-Downtime” migration.
“SDP’s Matt Staddler first explained to us that Maxava could replicate our Retalix system from our 9406-800 on V5R3 to our new 9406-520 with V5R4 without the need for a complete backup or downtime. This way, we just role swap production from the 9406-800 to the 9406-520. There’s no downtime. The only difference the users see is that everything suddenly runs faster,” Armand explains. “For example, a query that used to take 1-2 minutes completes in a second.”
Smooth Implementation – Even with the Unexpected
Armand and his staff were thrilled with the ease of implementation, and the results. During the transition, Armand says SDP was there every step of the way.
“Matt Staddler working with SDP was a guru not only about Maxava HA, but the 400, inside and out. I was really impressed with his knowledge, patience and overall good demeanor. He helped us through some tough spots. He is clearly one of the best IT support personnel I have had the pleasure to work with,” says Armand. “I was impressed because Matt worked hard for us – just like he was a Jake’s employee.”
Jose Briones, business process analyst at Jake’s, was relieved at Staddler’s knowledge and availability. “He had a solution for everything we were facing. To him, it was no big deal. One, two, three, it’s solved,” Jose says. SDP helped Jake’s install the new IBM i520 hardware as the source HA system while moving the IBM 9406-800 machine to the target HA environment.
Some of the more important matters for Jake’s have involved the company’s Retalix software. “Matt just rolled up his sleeves and took it on,” Armand recalls. The staff at Jake’s finds Maxava documentation simple and helpful, but they tend to go to Staddler rather than dig into the documentation. “He’s always been right there to help make us self-sufficient quickly,” says Armand.
It took a total of 90 days before the company was up and replicating everything live. “We were as green as we could be going in, and to have this quick a result is unimaginable,” says Armand.
Role Swaps Made Easy – in Less than 5 Minutes
“We do role swaps to make sure everything is working, every three months. The role swap runs in less than 5 minutes — just as modeled and projected by SDP. It’s very easy to do. We created scripts to do the bulk of it. It’s really nothing more than doing a role swap from the source machine,” says Armand.
“It took a near disaster for Jake’s Finer Foods to batten down the hatches. Now the company is prepared to weather whatever storm comes its way. “We don’t ever lose sleep anymore about backup. The tapes are there. Within 30 seconds of a change being on a production box, it’s sitting on the other box. If we do a mass update, our end of day routines may take 30 minutes for it to get across, at most.”
Source Data Products, Inc. Delivers as Promised. We Couldn’t Be Happier.
“We could have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with another company and it may or may not have turned out well,” says Page. “Source Data Products, Inc. delivered everything they said they would, with no loose ends. They made it simple – and powerful. We couldn’t be happier.”