Worldstream in Netherlands Selects Toshiba

• Industry: Focusing on the emerging IaaS industry and its associated storage requirements.

• Key challenges:
  • Ensuring operational reliability 24/7 without impacting the services provided to customers.
  • Balancing large storage capacity and high-performance benchmarks with cost-effectiveness.
• Solutions: Deployment of the ultra-reliable, high-capacity Toshiba MG-Series 3.5-inch format HDDs across Worldstream’s main data centre sites in Europe.

• Business outcomes:
  • Rapid and uncomplicated installation of Toshiba HDDs.
  • Trouble-free operation, with minimal maintenance or replacement work required.
  • Significant capital and operational cost benefits for Worldstream.

“At Worldstream, we rely on cutting-edge HDDs from Toshiba to deliver the high-quality services our customers expect. With Toshiba’s enterprise-grade storage resources, we can meet rising demands without sacrificing quality or affordability. Partnering with industry leaders like Toshiba ensures we have the resources we need to stay competitive and satisfy our customers,” said Lars Kleijn, purchasing manager, Worldstream.

Introduction
With facilities covering over 5,000 square meters and 15,000 servers in operation, Worldstream B.V. is a major player in the IaaS market. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company serves an international customer base that includes major financial institutions, as well as established brands in the industrial, broadcasting, enterprise, and agricultural sectors.

Customer needs always in focus
Worldstream offers a range of services to its customers, including public and private cloud, colocation, dedicated server infrastructure, and various storage solutions. It places an emphasis on providing value for customers and ensuring their data is fully protected from possible cyberattacks through the implementation of security measures. As the data requirements of Worldstream’s SMB, CSP, MSP, and enterprise customers continue to grow, effective storage technology is essential. The management team prioritizes the reliability and performance of their storage solutions to avoid downtime and keep up with demand, all while keeping costs in check. Rapid capacity scaling is also crucial to meet customer needs.

Partner needed
To meet their storage needs, Worldstream’s management team was seeking a vendor that could provide storage solutions that met specific criteria, including speed, longevity, small footprint, scalability, and attractive pricing. Each server needed to be able to incorporate at least 60TB up to a maximum of 200TB of storage capacity, with provision for as much as 300TB at a later stage.

Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH was selected due to their recording technology and the compact high-capacity HDDs they brought to market. Toshiba’s MG Series HDDs feature a 9- and 10-disk helium-sealed design that allows for heightened storage densities to be attained. These 3.5-inch form factor units feature capacities of up to 20TB and 18TB respectively, with a data transfer performance of 268MB/s and disks that rotate at speeds of 7200rpm.

Customer benefit from inventive technology
The MG Series HDDs come with either 6Gb SATA or 12Gb SAS interfaces included. Their long-term reliability, with a MTTF of 2.5 million hours, combined with low power consumption, delivers advantages to customers in terms of TCO. With their 3.5-inch form factor, these HDDs can be added into Worldstream’s server bays, providing large data capacities in a small amount of space. This has allowed the Worldstream engineering staff to make optimal use of the available space.

Trusted partnership
Toshiba has become the company’s go-to supplier for storage components. There are currently over 10,000 HDDs deployed at the Worldstream data centre sites in Haarlem, Naaldwijk (the Netherlands) and Frankfurt (Germany). These provide a total of 100PB of storage resources, and planned installations over the coming years are set to increase this still further.

“High reliability, quality and flexibility characterize the cooperation between Worldstream and Toshiba. Worldstream is a major player in the data centre and IaaS sector and Toshiba has decisively shaped the development of HDDs over the past 40 years with his pioneering spirit. Together, the 2 companies want to advance green technologies – for a future that uses resources sparingly and focuses on constantly improving the efficiency of products and infrastructures,” said Larry Martinez-Palomo VP and GM, storage products division, Toshiba.

Case study: Worldstream IT Infrastructures