Houtch deploys a hyper-converged infrastructure

Grenoble, June 9, 2021 – Hardis Group, a consulting firm, digital services company and independent software vendor, is working with transport and logistics provider Houtch to help the company upgrade its information system. The latest phase of the project involves deploying a hyper-converged infrastructure, with active-active redundancy, across two remote sites.

Since its foundation in 1965, family-owned company Houtch has expanded and specialized in six business lines: transport, distribution, logistics, co-packing, energy, and overseas. It employs 400 people and achieved sales of €59 million in 2019. The firm’s logistics arm operates out of 11 warehouses—totaling 220,000 sq m of space—in Hauts-de-France, the northernmost region of France. Since 2012, it has used Hardis Group’s Reflex WMS suite to manage these facilities. 

Houtch also regularly calls in Hardis Group’s experts to help it upgrade its IT infrastructure, including a system monitoring solution deployed in 2015, and an overhaul of its LAN and Wi-Fi networks in 2019. The firm turned to Hardis once again in May 2021 to deploy a hyper-converged infrastructure, as it looked to replace an out-of-warranty system that lacked the processing power to handle an increasing number of virtual machines. “The hyper-converged infrastructure will make it easier to manage and update patches, while delivering both automation and security gains,” explains Maxence Guerrier, IT Manager at Houtch. The company opted for Dell’s VxRail system because it offered the right balance between cost and features, and because its IT team already had experience in Dell and VMware environments.

The infrastructure, which was previously dispersed across several locations, has now been brought together under one roof. The 80 virtual machines are hosted at two remote sites with active-active redundancy, eliminating operational downtime should a system outage occur at one of the sites. “Aside from streamlining our infrastructure, the hyper-converged architecture will also boost system performance and resilience in the event of an incident,” explains William Herpsont, IT Manager at Houtch. 

In the coming months, Hardis Group will help Houtch set up a network infrastructure at a new logistics facility. “We've been working with Hardis Group for close to a decade now. They’ve become a trusted partner—always delivering on our WMS and wider IT requirements,” adds Guerrier.