Telenet Group is the largest provider of cable broadband services in Belgium. Its business comprises the provision of analog and digital cable television, fixed and mobile telephone services, primarily to residential customers in Flanders and Brussels.

COMPANY STATS

Solution Components

Software-Defined Storage

• Scality RING
• REST storage interface
• Two Tier / Geo-Redundant

Storage Hardware

• 10k SAS disks in Tier 1
• 7.2k SATA disks in Tier 2

Third-party Applications

• Zimbra Collaboration Suite

Belgium’s #1 Service Provider Relies on Scality RING for reliable email storage

Telenet’s email Architecture

Telenet serves more than 4.9 million subscribers, of which 1.6 million use its Internet services. Since 2010, the company has used Scality RING, expanding and upgrading its system (even replacing all of its hardware) with exceptional data durability and no service interruption. Stretched across two locations, the system currently has more than 24 billion unique objects.

INTERVIEW

Telenet’s Chief Engineer, Stef Van Dessel, shares what makes Scality RING valuable to the organization

“As our business has transformed and our user base has grown, our need for storage capacity has increased exponentially. However, scaling up hasn’t required any maintenance windows or any downtime”

“Because we use the RING, our data is protected by the RING software and completely unconstrained by hardware, so it has been a simple matter of adding and removing servers. We have faced zero risk of interrupting or impairing service, and our customer satisfaction has never once been compromised”

Bart Provoost Manager, Network Applications and Services, at Telenet

Email Storage Solution

Scality designed Telenet’s email Architecture end to end, including the customization of the Zimbra suite and the migration strategy for moving the user’s email from the legacy platform to the new one.

The infrastructure is distributed across multiple, geographically distributed data centers. This in combination with data copies across the RING’s nodes ensures highly predictable data resilience. So unlike a traditional NAS or SAN system there is no need for data backups (or the risks, expense and time expenditure that would be associated with them).

“I think that every company that has a requirement for deploying or hosting services that require mass data storage can benefit from the Scality RING solution. It will absolutely help them in delivering (their services) at a lower cost, and help them to offer them at a more competitive level (relative) to the others in the market. And with the evolution of cloud services ramping up, this will be seen more and more in the market in the near future”

Nick De Jonghe Manager, Network Strategy & Architecture, at Telenet

Digital Transformation 101

In 2010, Telenet was tasked with transforming its primarily hardware infrastructure into a digital business. Over a period of seven years, the company has added Internet and broadband services, interactive digital television and fixed and mobile voice services, along with email messaging services.

A key driver for a new storage approach was the competitive need to offer larger capacity mailboxes (multiple GBs) and greater connectivity. Scality RING enabled the company to adopt new hardware that would support its rapid growth while its data remained protected and available. Zimbra mail rounds out the solution.

Scality RING ensured that no special provisions needed to be made for ongoing growth. Hardware refresh and scaling up are just a simple matter of adding & removing servers – With no risk of interrupting or impairing Telenet’s service.

Primary Benefits of Scality RING