Case Study — HIAG Data

HIAG Data is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS) provider based in Switzerland. It has two data centers, located in Biberist and Zürich, connected to customers via a carrier-independent L2 private fibre optic cable network.

Hybrid Cloud that Works

In Switzerland, regulations require that certain data types be kept within the country. HIAG Data assures compliance by storing these data types at its two Swiss-based data centres. Cloudian HyperStore has been implemented at those locations to serve as a fully S3-compatible storage service.

The Cloudian deployment consists of a two-petabyte cluster which is distributed across the company’s two data centres. Data is replicated across sites to ensure full redundancy.

Previously, HIAG Data had used an object storage solution from Ceph, but this was becoming increasingly complex to manage, generating significant workloads when adding capacity. To help identify a more scalable solution, HIAG Data drew on the cloud and hosting infrastructure expertise of IT partner, Zstor Schweiz, which has been working with HIAG since August 2016.

During the evaluation process, multiple storage options were considered. Daniel Künzle, Managing Director of Zstor Schweiz commented: “The biggest challenge HIAG Data faced was to identify a storage solution that would meet the firm’s needs for scalability and managability. Unfortunately neither Scality or Ceph were suitable solutions, as neither provided the needed multi-tenancy capabilities and S3 API compatibiltiy.”

He continued, “By contrast, Cloudian provided proven S3 API compatibility and a rich set of multi-tenancy features, including a self-service portal, quality of service controls, metering and chargeback capabilities, and bucket-level data management controls. In addition, Cloudian integrates storage tiering capabilities that support the hybrid cloud, as well as private and public clouds.”

The Cloudian Advantage

Hanspeter Tinner, Chief Operations Officer at HIAG Data commented: “We chose Cloudian HyperStore based on its full S3 API interoperability and ability to scale simply and without interruption, just by adding nodes. Now our customers can store their data where they need it, while they capitalise on our private network to ensure secure communications.” With Cloudian, HIAG Data provides customers with a hybrid approach that enables them to meet their government’s compliance requirements by retaining certain data within the country and storing other data in the S3 cloud.

Keeping it Simple

“HIAG Data has a very strong offering in Switzerland, based on the secure infrastructure that underpins their data centres,” says Jacco van Achterberg, Sales Director EMEA at Cloudian. “Selecting Cloudian HyperStore for their Tier 3 storage completes their model with highly-resilient, on-premises storage that scales quickly on demand.”