Serving The Storage Platter

Hero Honda



Hero Honda, the revolution on two-wheels, landmarks with the best in the

automobile world. It is not much behind when IT deployment across the

organization is concerned, especially with regards to storage infrastructure.

The electronic storage of documents in Hero Honda has helped the company save

considerable space, and has made access easy. Frequently accessed documents are

stored centrally using document management software (Lotus Domino) while the

others have been microfilmed and stored separately.

Considering the security implications coupled with the

rapid growth of data, the simple storage device (SSA box) in Hero Honda has

given way to Enterprise Storage System (ESS F-20). The crucial need for backup

of the servers and the demand for their 24x7 availability made Hero Honda adopt

Tivoli Storage Manager, which reduced the downtime from 18 hrs/week to

30-mins/week by using the flash copy feature of ESS. The automobile specialist

has also simultaneously upgraded its servers based on LPARs and blade

technology.

Spice Telecom



Spice Telecom, the leading cellular service provider in Karnataka, has

become the first GSM operator in India to deploy IP SAN for superior data

management and Disaster Recovery solution. Spice Telecom currently stores its

core enterprise database applications related to customer billing, business

intelligence, demographics and other administrative information on a FC SAN box.

With data volumes peaking on the FC SAN box and the growing pressure to quickly

implement a comprehensive DR solution for database application, Spice Telecom

has installed an Intransa IP SAN solution.

The offering is based on Intransa's IP SAN IntraStor

architecture-a three-tiered architecture that allows for independent capacity

and performance scaling-and Intransa patented StorControl software. Using

Intransa's StorControl software, Spice Telecom can easily add an additional

storage controller or disc enclosure on the fly-without-disrupting performance

or system availability. Since cellular services are characterized by constant

product innovation and high availability of network and data services, the

implementation of a cost effective, scalable and highly available IP based SAN

infrastructure is a definitive step forward for Spice Telecom in the way it

manages and protects its growing data volumes.

Bajaj Auto



Bajaj Auto has deployed IBM eServer pSeries (Unix Servers) that function as

its production database servers for SAP R/3, and also act as application

servers. The servers are configured in a three-tier environment that allows

response times of less than two seconds for 550 R/3 and 200 Portal users. The

servers are connected via HACMP to ensure automatic takeover in the case of

disaster or system failure. This server environment is backed up to ten 7133-D40

SSA Disk Subsystems with a total of 144x72GB hard drives. A 3583 Ultrium

Scalable Tape Library with three LTO drives acts as the central backup tape

library, backing up close to 100GB/hr uncompressed.

This storage infrastructure is part of Bajaj Auto's

PROJECT 110 percent whose main goal was to facilitate and support the

company's business objectives, mainly in terms of improving forecasting, sales

planning and distribution to dealers, enhancing production and vendor

performance, reducing inventory levels across supply chain, and reducing

non-value-added activities and costs. Bajaj Auto is today clearly reaping the

benefits of implementing IBM's storage-on-demand vision.

Central Depository Services



Central Depository Services (CDSL) is promoted by BSE, SBI, Bank of Baroda

and Bank of India. It handles demat accounts of investors in shares and

securities. The company has grown six times in volumes, with the number of

investor accounts having increased from 1 lakh to 6 lakh in just three years.

With this kind of growth, its existing storage setup wasn't able to scale up

to handle the load. So, the company decided to implement centralized storage.

It already had a DR center at the Reliance Data Center,

which earlier acted as the backup site, but has now been made online. So if the

primary system fails, the system at the DR center can take over within 30

minutes. The primary setup consists of two EMC NAS devices for storage-Oracle

for application server and Tuxedo as the middleware. The DR center has a similar

setup. Future plans include implementing an information-lifecycle management and

business-continuity planning solutions. 

AC Nielsen ORG-MARG



AC Nielsen ORG-MARG, one of India's leading market research agencies, has

deployed the Unified Storage solution from NetApp across its six key locations.

FAS 270 with 3TB each was deployed at Mumbai and Baroda, FAS250 with 1 TB was

deployed at Chennai, Delhi and Kolkata and two at Bangalore. The solution also

included NFS, CIFS and iSCSI protocols. NetApp's SnapMirror software enabled

mirroring of mission-critical application data across sites. Other third-party

hardware and software products used in conjunction with NetApp solution included

Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Oracle 8i for Windows, Microsoft Exchange, and RMS

Factory.

The total volume of data stored on the system is approx 300

GB with monthly updates. Before the new system went live, all users were first

asked to transfer their data (on local PCs/servers) to the NetApp filers via NAS

protocols. Mirroring was implemented, once all the user data was transferred to

the filers. The solution helped AC Nielsen operate efficiently and effectively

in line with its aggressive business goals. File sharing, database, and

messaging applications that are critical to enterprise operations, are supported

by reliability, performance, and scalability. Back up processes are now simpler

and more reliable. The solution has enabled hierarchical data access; with

access rights as per the user's authorization level. Centralized storage of

data has saved a lot of time for users.

Rajneesh De



rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in