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Case Studies | Telecommunications
Business Solutions Powered by DataCore™
 SES Astra owns and runs the Astra satellite network, the largest digital and analogue satellite system in Europe with coverage of over 91 million European households. SES Astra became the first operator to supply repeater availability and improved transmission security by co-positioning commercial satellites in a single orbital position. The Astra satellite fleet is currently composed of 13 satellites and transmits over 1,100 analogue and digital TV and radio stations as well as offering internet and multimedia services.
A 100% subsidiary of SES Global, the world's number one satellite operator, SES Astra is able to provide the general public with easy access, for a single entry point, almost anywhere in the world. You can visit the SES Astra Web site at: www.ses-astra.com.
The Challenge
With an installed base of 36 servers running heterogeneous operating systems including Windows NT, Windows 2000, Solaris and Linux, SES Astra became aware of a real lack of capacity due to the increased saturation of its data storage resources. To improve the efficiency of utilization of its existing resources, and with a view to implementing an intelligent and integrated long-term storage strategy, SES Astra carried out a market study in 2001 to assess the solutions available. The company subsequently decided the way forward was to commission a scalable, open and centralised storage area network (SAN).
The Solution
After evaluating several potential solutions, SES Astra decided to implement a solution based around DataCore Software's SANsymphony™, a product the company had been monitoring and with which it was already familiar. SES Astra's market study confirmed that SANsymphony still offered the best open storage networking platform to provide the solution they were looking for.
Once SANsymphony was chosen as the central component of the solution, SES Astra drew up a specification of the general requirements and issued an invitation to tender to a list of pre-qualified integrators. SES Astra selected computersystems, a DataCore Elite partner in Luxembourg. Subsequent rapid deployment enabled the solution to go into production in mid-September 2002.
"We are pleased with our choice of SANsymphony, since it has allowed us to put in place a SAN that integrates our existing hardware and makes us entirely independent of the storage device manufacturers, offering us a solution that is capable of meeting our future storage capacity requirements. We will now be able to choose our devices independently from manufacturers and purely on the basis of the price, since the DataCore solution already entirely caters to our needs in terms of performance and functionality," comments Daniel Bonnans, Office Automation Coordinator.
An Interview with SES Astra
What problems were you looking to solve with a SAN solution?
We were running out of space and our storage resources were reaching saturation point. We needed to find a high-performance, scalable solution that allowed us to exploit our existing hardware and deliver an open system that was independent from storage manufacturers. We were also looking for a solution that helped simplify the administration of our storage installation, in particular by means of storage virtualisation. For a future second phase, the chosen solution also needed to facilitate a disaster recovery plan at a remote site, through data mirroring.
How did you learn about DataCore and which other solutions were considered?
We already knew the DataCore team and had attended a product presentation over two years ago. We turned to them once again when we decided to implement our SAN project in 2002 following our market analysis exercise. Besides the DataCore offering, we considered solutions from a number of major players in the storage market such as IBM, EMC and Veritas.
Why did you choose a DataCore solution?
The solutions available from the various suppliers are, despite initial appearances, very different and not necessarily comparable with SANsymphony in terms of the functionality. Also, some are still not quite mature enough to be considered for production use. SANsymphony on the other hand has been on the market for over two years and DataCore already has an impressive client portfolio. Furthermore, the solution fitted perfectly with our requirements and was an integral part of the general specifications that we included in the invitation to tender sent to integrators at the start of 2002.
What is your environment?
Our current solution includes 2 SDS nodes hosting SANsymphony Network Edition, running under Windows 2000, and 2 HDS 9200 storage arrays. We have Compaq application servers running the Windows NT, Windows 2000, Solaris and Linux operating systems and use 2 GB Brocade fabric switches. The data handled by our SAN is principally all the back-office applications for the company's office files. In particular we use Microsoft Cluster Server and Lotus Notes mail and databases.
The SAN currently includes 10 application servers. It manages a mirrored volume of 1.8 TB on two HDS 9200 storage arrays. The maximum capacity of the SAN is currently 5 TB, which offers us 3 years of growth, since we anticipate our requirements will double every year.
What do you think are the advantages of SANsymphony?
In addition to complete independence from the storage manufacturers, thanks to SANsymphony, we have noted a number of advantages. We have been able to migrate all the servers to a centralized storage pool through virtualisation, enabling rapid allocation of storage space through a highly user-friendly interface resulting in easier administration.
Automatic management of centralised volumes, using the unique Network Managed Volumes feature, provides automatic allocation of additional storage capacity required by strategic applications where it's needed, when it's needed. Through the use of alternate path and network mirroring technologies we can ensure high-availability of applications.
Moving forward the SANsymphony AIM (Asynchronous IP Mirroring) feature will guarantee remote site data security providing the disaster recovery capability we need.
What cost savings do you expect to realise through implementation of SANsymphony?
The DataCore solution has allowed us to consolidate our storage resources and to free space that will easily cover our needs for the three years to come. Simplified centralised management allows a single administrator to manage our entire storage environment with its current configuration of up to 5TB, reducing management costs significantly.
Copyright © 2002 DataCore Software Corporation. All rights reserved. DataCore, SANsymphony and Powered by DataCore are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Windows and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ASTRANE1
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