Custom Storage Redefines Western Refining through Centralization and Virtualization
Western Refining is an independent oil refiner and marketer headquartered in El Paso, Texas. As one of the small business refiners in the United States, Western Refining operates primarily in the Southwestern and Mid-Atlantic regions. The Company’s refineries have a combined crude oil processing capacity of approximately 235,000 barrels per day, consisting mostly of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Western Refining (WNR) has been publicly-traded on the New York Stock Exchange since January, 2006.
From an IT perspective, Western Refining is a mosaic of interwoven and highly-networked systems as complex as playing “Connect the Dots” in a Dr. Seuss novel. Western Refining owns and operates refineries in Virginia, New Mexico and Texas, where it also maintains its headquarters. The Company has lubrication facilities in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and California, and terminals in four more states. In addition, the Company has 160 retail outlets (formerly Giant Industries) scattered all over the Southwest and a mixed combination of telelure (combination landline and cell tower) and satellite communications systems for pipeline and tank metering. Western Refining stores about 40 – 50 terabytes of information on a daily basis and operates about 400 enterprise systems that run a blend of Windows, Linux and UNIX. Western Refining’s IT department has ownership of all telecom, servers, databases and networks. Oh, by the way, Western Refining also is in the planning stages regarding construction of a new datacenter that will run and mirror applications with their other datacenter.
Enter Tom Cody, Director of Enterprise Infrastructure and a seasoned IT professional having spent the previous ten years with Sage Software as a Principle Systems Administrator. According to Cody, “We have a fairly small IT team, only 65 people. So, we have been working with Custom Storage representative Chris Krueger to help in the migration of our company from a decentralized IT model to a centralized model to maximize performance and minimize manpower.”
“Western Refining is a highly complex company with regard to its IT requirements,” said Krueger. “We have optimized existing hardware; deployed SANs to all major locations; revamped their entire back-up systems; and developed and implemented ‘cutting edge’ disaster recovery and virtualization strategies, allowing the Company to save money in a number of key areas, while also supporting Western Refining’s strategic business initiatives.”
“When I first arrived at Western Refining, we had no virtualization footprint. Now, in less than two years we are approximately 40 percent virtualized, and we are planning to be 80 percent virtualized by the end of 2009,” said Cody. Money Saved? “We have calculated a soft ROI projection of approximately $500,000 in annually savings taking into account reductions in hardware, OS licensing, support and maintenance costs, power and cooling savings, improved disaster recovery and reductions in manpower for both planned internal and outsourced resources.”
“Custom Storage has by far the highest quality engineers with the systems they support. Their approach to my business is not obscured because they are pushing a particular line of products, or they are worried about their quarterly financials. Custom Storage is my business partner that works with me to define and integrate the best products and systems to keep my business moving forward.”
