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Acquisition speeds need for storage: a SAN fills the need for ensuring customer data is safe from harm - Special focus: storage technologies

Communications News, May, 2003 by Maggie Kindt

Baltimore Technologies PLC, (Baltimore Tech) headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, helps businesses in diverse industry sectors meet their e-security challenges-including financial services, government, technology, telecommunications, utilities and healthcare. When Baltimore Tech acquired CyberTrust, a former GTE holding company located in Needham, Mass., it also encountered a need to build an inclusive enterprise network infrastructure.

Once the acquisition of CyberTrust was complete, the Needham office was left without a backup infrastructure. "One of the major issues that we had right from the beginning was enterprise backup. Data is our life and without data we have no life," explains Jeff Broitman, senior systems analyst at Baltimore Tech.

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The Needham office was originally built with a network infrastructure comprised of Microsoft Windows NT and UNIX servers, including Exchange, file, database and network servers. Most of the PC domain controllers are high-end Compaq and Dell servers. The UNIX boxes are all high-end SUN or HP servers and workstations.

The Needham office housed several critical business units for Baltimore Tech, which has more than 10,000 customers in more than 50 countries. Operators, programmers, executives, administration, sales and marketing all required secure file storage and protection. The total amount of data that needed to be efficiently managed soon reached greater than 1.4 terabytes.

When the GTE backup infrastructure was removed from Needham, the MIS department implemented a short-term solution that relied upon local back ups, and used local SHELL scripts and generic dumps into UNIX file servers. The Baltimore Tech team started looking for a long-term solution.

StorNet Inc., a nationwide provider of networked storage services, was selected to recommend and build a storage area network (SAN). A primary concern for Baltimore Tech was to ensure that the daily operations of more than 350 local users on a seven-server, 750-node network would not be interrupted.

StorNet specializes in addressing data-management, high-availability storage and backup strategies for most major operating systems and open enterprise environments. StorNet was able to provide Baltimore Tech with hardware and software recommendations, while taking responsibility for ongoing support of the storage solution after it became operational.

Initially, VERITAS Pro was installed on all individual clients, PC desktops and laptops. The master media server is a SUN 5500, with 6 GB RAM and 6 CPUs. It controls the overall backup function to the tape library using VERITAS Global Data Manager software.

The SAN was set up between the master media backup server, the main SUN server, a 3500 SUN server and the StorageTek STK L180 tape library--with eight DLT8000 tape drives and 140 tape slots. Each server is attached to the tape library via dual Brocade Silkworm 2800 fiber and 6509 Cisco switches. The Baltimore Tech SAN combines master controller machines that have the ability to dump large volumes of data into the larger tape library.

"With the SAN, we now enjoy a high-speed, flexible, reliable and scalable network-type infrastructure that handles data storage chores such as backup and recovery," Broitman says. "Our storage network includes fewer storage devices, simplified storage management, and more accessible LAN bandwidth."

Other advantages of the SAN, according to Bloitman, include its rapid scalability (without interference to users), centralized control of data storage and back up, failover protection and fault resiliency, and increased bandwidth for faster transfer of stored data. "Anyone who runs without a proper backup is taking their life into their own hands," says Broitman.

For more information from StorNet: www.rsleads.com/305cn-252

Kindt is a freelance technical writer located in Coatesville, Pa. She can be contacted at MaggieKindt@hotmail.com.

Technology Industry

Acquisition speeds need for storage: a SAN fills the need for ensuring customer data is safe from harm - Special focus: storage technologies

Communications News, May, 2003 by Maggie Kindt

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