Ensuring Sustainable, Safe and Efficient Water Treatment with a Resilient Storage Infrastructure

Overview

Challenge

• Support the smooth running of complex wastewater treatment processes with a reliable, efficient IT infrastructure.

Solution

• Upgraded from hybrid storage to all-flash Hitachi VSP One Block arrays, delivering 30,000 IOPS and 4:1 data compression.

Outcome

• Improved storage performance, efficiency and availability help to minimize risk and optimize plant operations.

Challenge

Aquiris plays a central role in safeguarding supplies of clean water and protecting the natural environment in Belgium. Owned by utilities group Veolia, the company manages the largest wastewater treatment plant in the country, located north of Brussels. Every year, Aquiris removes chemicals, bacteria and other contaminants from 110M cubic meters of wastewater, before discharging clean, safe water into the river Senne.

Juan Ochoa, Managing Director of the Plant, explains, “We follow an extremely intensive, multi-stage process to purify wastewater and achieve the necessary quality standards. Using the natural gas and biogas produced during treatment, we also generate green energy, improving the sustainability of the procedure.”

The treatment plant represents a highly complex technical operation, running 24/7. To control, coordinate, and monitor the water purification process, Aquiris runs an extensive range of digital systems, collecting more than one million data points each day to enable the ongoing optimization and automation of plant operations. Naturally, the hardware infrastructure that supports these systems is mission critical.

Ochoa continues, “We simply cannot afford downtime. On the one hand, this would cause severe delays to the water treatment process, but we could also incur significant financial penalties. So, when our previous storage environment was approaching the end of its service life, we looked for a solution that would deliver the performance, scalability and resilience we need to minimize risk and ensure our operations run smoothly round the clock.”

Solution

For several years, Aquiris has outsourced management of its storage environment to Hitachi Vantara channel partner Aretech. After working with Aretech CEO Ives Wertz to assess the latest storage solutions on the market, the company selected a Hitachi VSP One Block system. The Hitachi solution will serve as the primary storage system for Aquiris, with the previous arrays moved to a second on-site data center and used as a backup target.

“Of all the solutions that we considered, the VSP One Block solution was the real standout,” notes Juan Ochoa. “For example, the 100% data availability guarantee from Hitachi was extremely appealing, along with the 4:1 data compression ratio, which will help us to improve data center efficiency. Ultimately, we felt that Hitachi Vantara offered much better value for money than any of the other leading storage vendors.”

Aquiris and Aretech are now completing the implementation of the VSP One Block solution, using VMware vSphere vMotion to migrate more than 50 virtual machines onto the new storage platform. When fully deployed, the Hitachi solution will support the company’s IT administration and operational systems, including the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) applications that help to monitor, manage and optimize plant processes.

Juan Ochoa adds, “Working with Ives and Aretech has been an excellent experience once again. When we consult the Aretech team, they always display great professionalism, expertise and efficiency. They have built a deep knowledge of the storage environment at the plant and the unique technical challenges and pressures that we face as an essential part of the civic infrastructure of Brussels and deliver first-class solutions.”

Outcome

With VSP One Block, Aquiris is well on its way to successfully upgrading and modernizing the storage environment underpinning its critical operational systems. The Hitachi solution will deliver a raft of benefits, including improved performance and scalability, and greater ease of management.

“The performance gains with VSP One Block will be significant,” Ochoa said. “Previously, we were using hybrid arrays, but with VSP One, we have a full-flash system that delivers more than 30,000 IOPS. We are constantly collecting data, tracking KPIs and monitoring our purification processes. The improvement in storage performance will help us to respond quickly to issues and optimize our plant operations.”

Furthermore, the compression and deduplication capabilities of the VSP One Block solution will enable Aquiris to operate more cost efficiently, managing growing amounts of data without having to invest in additional capacity. “Much of the data that that we collect is textual, and can easily be compressed,” adds Ochoa.

Most importantly, perhaps, VSP One Block gives Aquiris confidence that its operations will run without incident. “At peak times, we have 15 cubic meters of water passing through the plant every second and we simply cannot afford any kind of outage or disruption,” Ochoa explains. “The resilience and high availability of the VSP One Block solution will help us to reduce risk and maintain continuity of service in our plant operations.”

Ochoa concludes, “We hand over management of the plant in 2027, and will recommend the next contract holder works with Hitachi and Aretech. Our partnership with Hitachi is helping us fulfill our goal of creating a sustainable process for safeguarding supplies of clean water and supporting the growth and development of Brussels.”