CASE HISTORY

TOSCANA AEROPORTI CONSOLIDATES DATA CENTERS TO INCREASE SCALABILITY AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY

Objectives

To consolidate the ICT infrastructure after the merger between the management companies of the Pisa and Florence airports, ensuring business continuity, scalability and flexibility for future developments.

Achieved results

70% reduction in energy consumption of ICT facilities.
Reduction of operating costs of the infrastructure
Centralized systems management

HPE Products / Services

HPE ProLiant BL460 Gen9 Server
HPE 3PAR 8400 Storage
HPE SN3000B switch
One View Software

Toscana Aeroporti was born in June 2015 from the merger of the management companies of the Florence airport and that of the Pisa airport. The merger between the two companies is the fundamental step for the construction of a single Tuscan airport system, in line with the National Airport Plan approved by the Italian Ministry of Transport. Thanks to the synergies between the two airports and the complementary nature of the system's offer, it will be possible to increase the number of destinations reachable by the two airports and by the airlines present thanks to the adaptation of the respective infrastructures.

Over the long term, Toscana Aeroporti aims to reach more than 130 destinations worldwide by 2029, serving 45 airlines and offering 160 frequencies per day. The two airports will maintain their specificity in the specialization of air traffic: Florence's Vespucci airport will continue to develop business and leisure traffic through full service carriers, linking the main European hubs; the Galilei airport of Pisa will favor the tourist traffic managed by low cost carriers, the cargo flights and will also work on the development of intercontinental flights.

As configured now, the pole serves over 7 million passengers.

“To tackle the IT architecture consolidation project we wanted the best that the market could offer. HPE has succeeded in proposing the most convincing solution at the technological level at the best price among the vendors that participated the tender”

Ing. Stefano Caioli, CIO, Tuscany Airports

After the merger between the management companies of the airports of Florence and Pisa, Toscana Aeroporti has internally designed a project to optimize the IT infrastructure, entrusting TT Tecnosistemi for implementation using HPE technologies. The result is a net saving in terms of management and energy costs and greater flexibility for future developments at the airport hub.

The idea that led in 2015 to the merger between the management companies of the airports of Pisa and Florence is to create an effective and winning Tuscan center in the service to private passengers (whether they are traveling for leisure or for work) and transport of goods. After the merger, however, as often happens, it was necessary to modify the organization and the infrastructures in order to achieve the efficiency necessary to best serve customers and carriers. ICT has not escaped this rationalization, also because technology has always been a critical factor for management companies, which must be able to give quick answers to passengers and airlines.

"It was immediately evident", says Stefano Caioli, CIO of Toscana Aeroporti, "as if it were necessary to proceed with the rationalization of the infrastructures, which were completely heterogeneous in terms of technology between the two management companies. With the occasion of the architectures renewal, searching for greater scalability, flexibility and operational continuity, we have rationalized the data centers reducing them from 4 to 2 using a dedicated fiber link between the two airports with DWDM technology ".

In summer 2016, the ICT department of Toscana Aeroporti began a first phase of analysis of the requirements and study of the solutions available on the market. Immediately afterwards, a public tender worth about one million euros is launched, this tender was won by HPE and TT Tecnosistemi, which showed the most convincing and innovative technologies at the most favorable price.

"The complexity and timing of the DR & BC project conceived by Toscana Aeroporti required a high level commitment to implementation. TT Tecnosistemi has proven to be able to manage the implementation with professionalism and effectiveness "Ing. Stefano Caioli, CIO, Toscana Aeroporti

Consolidation first of all

"We analyzed what were the best solutions already implemented at the data centers in Florence and Pisa and what the market offered", says Caioli, "but we had in mind especially the reduction of operating and energy costs and a general improvement of processes. All this, of course, in order to have at the disposal, at the end of the project, a scalable and flexible infrastructure, able to support the growth of our reality ".

The CIO of Toscana Aeroporti, Ing. Stefano Caioli, chooses to completely renovate the infrastructure, equipping the two data centers (one in Pisa and one in Florence) with new and technologically advanced architectures. On the server front, the choice falls on a cluster of nine HPE ProLiant BL460 Gen 9 blades (2 CPUs per blade, 14 cores per CPU) for each site. On the storage front, instead, HPE 3PAR 8400 full flash is preferred (with 138 TB of disk space for each data center). Also the networking devices are marked HPE, with SN3000B switches for each location.

"Looking to integration and interoperability", continues Caioli, "we also put great importance on the management software, which should have centralized not only the monitoring and configuration of the servers, but also that of the entire infrastructure. With HPE's One View we can manage all the systems from a single dashboard, with considerable savings in terms of management costs and simplification ".

Less energy, more performance

After the closing of the tender, in April 2017, the arrival of new materials began already in the first days of June, and the implementation, scheduled within a few weeks and followed jointly by the staff of Toscana Aeroporti, HPE and TT Tecnosistemi, ended in August. "Even if the new configuration has been inaugurated very recently", explains Caioli, "we have already recorded tangible benefits, first of all the possibility of unified and centralized management guaranteed by One View: with HPE software we can control both servers and networks, with many different functions that allow to have a global vision of the infrastructure and a series of sophisticated and effective alarms ".

Perhaps the most impacting aspect of the new project, even if not a priority one, is related to the energy consumption. Already the reduction from 4 to 2 data centers has ensured significant cost savings (not only related to the consumption of IT equipment but also to all the surrounding plants such as air conditioning), the use of latest generation rack solutions, and less space occupation, has allowed to achieve an estimated saving of 70%, to which is added the availability of the premises.

"To the tangible advantages already highlighted", concludes Caioli, "to which I would add the satisfaction of the business requirements highlighted in the BIA (Business Impact Analysis) document, the new Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity system guarantees great margins of growth thanks to new technologies, which are by their nature more scalable and flexible than the previous ones. The new infrastructure allows to fully support the recently introduced SAP management system and the use, in the near future, of a part of the calculation and storage resources to provide multimedia services to the passengers of the two airports".

"The strong internal expertise found in Toscana Aeroporti allowed us to select the best technological solution on the market. In addition, the professionalism of the people in the IT department has allowed us to quickly install and configure the solution identified." Gabriele Tani, Sales Account Manager TT Tecnosistemi for Toscana Aeroporti