Food Giant JBS Supports Data Growth with Virtualized All-Flash Storage from Hitachi Vantara

Overview

Challenge

• Update to a modern storage solution that fits the budget and reduces data center footprint.

Solution

• Migrate and consolidate onto Hitachi all-flash storage.

Outcome

• Reduced data center footprint
• Higher performance
• Greater resilience
• Scalability to support company growth

Challenge

Support Business and Data Growth

Founded in 1953, JBS S.A. is a Brazilian multinational and one of the world’s largest food companies. Headquartered in the city of São Paulo, the company is present in 15 countries and has more than 250,000 employees.

The company has a diversified product portfolio, which extends from fresh and frozen meats to ready-to-eat dishes. Its renowned brands in Brazil and abroad include Friboi, Swift, Seara, Doriana, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Primo, among others. It also has related businesses such as leathers, biodiesel, collagen, hygiene and cleaning, transport and waste management solutions.

With ever growing data, JBS refreshes its technology every five years. In 2020 more data storage was required across all business departments, including administration, sales and marketing.

The company needed a high-performance solution that would fit its budget and reduce its data center footprint while meeting its growing data requirements. In addition, they needed to find a solution that is compatible with Cisco.

Solution

A Virtualized Storage Platform

JBS was introduced to Hitachi Vantara through their long-term partner StarLink and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) F1500 was chosen.

It was vital that the project avoided causing disruption to production processes and JBS employees, suppliers and customers. JBS experienced minimal downtime, and even gained time for the IT team to focus on more strategic activities.

The virtualization feature of VSP F1500 made it possible to migrate other disks to the new system quickly, simply and safely.

“Our IT team ran tests for 3 weeks, and in mid-November 2020, we finished implementing Hitachi Vantara storage. Since the implementation, we have gained more speed in our operations,” said Danilo Areco Molina Bettez, Infrastructure Analyst at JBS.

Outcome

Greater Storage Capacity, Performance and Resilience

Hitachi VSP F provides JBS with faster response times, a reduced data center footprint, better performance and greater resilience. “As a multinational company, JBS generates a huge amount of data on a daily basis,” says Bettez. “In the past, data updates caused system downtime, but with the Hitachi solution, we no longer have this issue.”

“The new Hitachi infrastructure requires less administration, while providing greater capacity for expansion,” comments Bettez. “The solution is designed to meet the growing storage requirements of the business for the next five years, which will help us continue to meet our objective ‘to provide the best possible service, selection and value to customers’.”