Hyperconvergence has enabled a leading South African printing company to improve performance, scalability and significantly reduced management time.
Kemtek Imaging Systems (Kemtek), is based in Johannesburg, South Africa and has over 30 years of experience in providing quality driven technologies to well established brands in the commercial and industrial print, 3D/additive manufacturing, auto identification, barcoding, and labelling industries.
The company’s focus is on the supply of fully integrated equipment solutions coupled with a highly skilled service and post-sales support philosophy. Through its portfolio, the company offers print solutions, rapid 3D printing, bar coding, and labelling solutions.
IT challenges
Providing leading technology services, it was fundamental to the company that it had a robust IT system in place that could meet customer demands. IT plays a major role in the day to day operations of the company, so when its existing environment began to reach the end of its lifespan, Kemtek saw this as an opportunity to upgrade.
As a growing business, it was essential that Kemtek could grow IT infrastructure when required without cost and capacity challenges. Alongside this, the company wanted to invest in a platform that offered performance, replication capabilities, and easy management – all at a competitive price point.
Andre Theron, IT Manager at Kemtek, said: “Our IT environment is pivotal to the way we work, and it’s important that any platform can support our customer demands. When our existing system reached the end of its life-span we wanted to take the time to ensure any new investment could not only meet requirements now but also in the future.”
“One of the main things we looked for was scalability, this was a major selling point for us. But it was also critical that we could benefit from flexibility and improved performance.”
Finding the right solution
Kemtek worked with its long-term partner Edgetec Systems to evaluate the market and find a new solution that would meet its requirements.
The company needed a solution that would provide high availability, was able to scale, offer performance and was easy to use. With this in mind, Edgetec Systems immediately understood a hyperconverged platform would be the ideal fit.
Price point was also a major concern, so the HC3 platform was highly recommended in this area because it offered all the requirements but at a competitive price for Kemtek.
“We wanted a simple out of the box solution and Scale Computing was exactly that,” said Theron.
“The appliance was easy to set up and use. Our performance has greatly improved and as a result, we have increased production, which is contributing to our bottom line. Previously the environment was slow and difficult to manage which at times held us up. The simplicity of Scale Computing has far exceeded our expectations.
“Everything with Scale Computing was so simple, we had a presentation on how the technology worked and were immediately sold. We knew it would be the perfect platform for us.”
Simplified management
The HC3 platform integrates storage, compute, and virtualisation layers of infrastructure into a single solution architecture. The technology is uniquely designed to eliminate complexity from the modern data centre, providing Kemtek with the required simplicity and ease of use. In addition, the product requires no additional licensing fees or certification. The simplicity of the solution includes rapid-deployment, automated management capabilities, and a single pane of management.
Improved performance and high availability
Alongside simplified management, HC3 has provided Kemtek with improved performance and high availability. The solution is designed for automatic failover and provides replication and snapshot capabilities. In the event of a complete node failure, applications are automatically restarted on other nodes to minimise downtime.
“Our performance has greatly improved – previously the environment was slow and difficult to manage which at times held us up,” explained Theron.
“The simplicity of Scale Computing has far exceeded our expectations. The replication and disaster recovery capabilities are also an added bonus. With a VM, if we have to restart, it’s seamless and easy.”
Scalability and affordability
The demand for a scale-out architecture was also a major factor in the purchase decision for Kemtek. With the HC3 product if more storage is needed, organisations can simply add additional nodes quickly and easily, which eliminates the need to over provision storage.
Nodes of different types can be mixed and matched in a single cluster, providing flexibility to build out the perfect infrastructure for applications.
Theron said: “Previously we had budget constraints, and limited scalability which at times could hinder our production time. Scale Computing has completely transformed this and offers a simple, cost effective and scalable solution. Its ease of use really is a big plus.”
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