Building a gas pipeline connecting Britain and the continent proved
to be an enormous task but it’s proved to be a project built on
information as well as steel
Interconnector Limited was founded in 1994 by nine energy
companies to construct and manage an undersea gas pipeline running
between Zeebrugge in Belgium and Bacton in Norfolk. The project was
first started in the mid -1980s by the Department of Trade and
Industry, who felt there was a large European market for British
gas. The Interconnector Pipeline is the first pipeline to connect
both British and continental gas transmission systems and the first
bi-directional pipeline.
One of the company's biggest responsibilities is the operation of
the 24-hour Interconnector Shippers Information System (ISIS),
through which the import and export of gas is arranged, as well as
the business and information needs of the Interconnector project
itself. Terry Stevens, IT Specialist for commercial operations at
Interconnector explains the importance of high availability of the
ISIS system, "ISIS is a business- critical system. We're accounting
for gas on an hourly basis. The gas industry is a utility industry.
It's a non-stop industry. People want gas all the time to supply
power stations and for domestic use. We needed to make sure the
system was reliable and of high availability so we were looking for
leading edge technology for out IT infrastructure" Compaq was
commissioned by ISIS designers EDS to supply 14 ProLiant servers to
process this informationISIS runs across several nodes to provide a
large database of information for shippers. Interconnector
established their main data centre in Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire
and an additional disaster recovery centre at their London
office.The system supplies and receives information from 15
Interconnector shippers via a Wide Area Network. This information
includes estimates, forecasts, allocation and inventory.Currently
the ISIS architecture is built around three tiers. An application
server layer, that is accessed by users, an authentication layer
and a database layer.In order to ensure maximum availability of
ISIS, the system was based around three ProLiant 6500 servers
clustered together using Oracle Parallel server technology and ten
ProLiant 1600 running Windows NT.Clustering powerful servers in
this way ensures that ISIS is online at all times even if an
individual server fails.Project manager Sally Coghill says, "The
Interconnector shippers can now use the latest Web technology to
access ISIS.""We chose to work with Compaq as its ProLiant servers
are the ideal foundation for Oracle's Parallel Server Clusters, a
solution targeted specifically at customers who need high database
availability and scalability."Another major factor in choosing this
configuration of servers was the ability to expand the system
without replacing it entirely. Terry Stevens explains. "Because
it's a modular approach, it gives us the opportunity to add servers
within each tier of the architecture. If we had additional users
hitting the system, we could add application servers. If we had an
increase on the database, we could add extra nodes to the cluster.
It is the modular approach that gives us this scalability" Compaq
were also able to help with the designing the system and
implementing operating procedures. "Compaq allowed us the use of
their labs in Munich to set systems and procedures up" explains
Terry Stevens. "We were able to send system documentation out early
and train engineers centrally before sending out parts of the
system to their eventual destinations"