Engineering consultancy Arup has migrated from
direct-attached storage to a storage area network using a
centralised storage system from Network
Appliance.
The new consolidated storage infrastructure has resulted in
significantly less storage maintenance.
Arup had already moved some of its direct-attached storage to
tapeless back-up in 2002, but wanted to extend its server-based
system to cover all 2,000 staff at its London headquarters.
The company has implemented a system that uses a large storage area
network based on a single server, and two networked attached
storage devices.
It folds 80 direct-attached storage devices into a single 32Tbytes
filer with two tapeless back-up units, making savings in tape
purchasing and server and storage maintenance.
Arup was responsible for the engineering for buildings including
the millennium bridge in London, the Sydney Opera House and HSBC's
headquarters in Hong Kong. Its project teams collaborate with a
wide range of specialists, for example transportation engineers,
environmentalists and structural engineers. Developing a flexible
and reliable document storage infrastructure was therefore
essential.
"Our staff needed storage for a range of data including office
automation documents, Cad/Cam engineering files and large
spreadsheets," said Martin Cooper, leader of London IT services at
Arup.
"The existing systems required 16 separate back-ups and demanded a
high level of support. We wanted a product which would simplify
system maintenance, reduce costs, decrease support time and also
reduce downtime on data recovery."
Cooper said tape back-up was costly in terms of time and money.
"And backing up to tape is a murderous bore," he said.
Arup chose a centralised storage system, the Data Ontap operating
system from Network Appliance, which had remote management
facilities, enabling IT staff to work from home should any failure
occur outside office hours.
The system came with Snapshop, a facility that provided a mirror of
Arup's Microsoft Exchange environment. The aim was to restore the
mirror quickly whenever Exchange failed. Before the new system was
implemented, Arup said failures were occurring every six to nine
months with recovery times in excess of 24 hours. This put intense
pressure on network support resources and caused disruptions to
business and staff.
The initial system was put in place for Christmas 2002 and replaced
16 Dell direct-storage devices which served 600 users. Arup has now
gone live with the project to cover 2,000 staff.
Arup has seen success with the initial phase of its storage system.
"In the 24 months we have not had a single second of outage and
this is because of the simplicity of the system. It is just doing
one job, unlike a Microsoft server," said Cooper.
He added that Arup expected to see a 26-month return on investment
for the two tapeless back-up units, and said the centralised
network system was cheaper than the server it replaced.
"We have had good feedback from employees, particularly from
engineers using Cad/Cam, with many finding file access much
quicker," added Cooper.
"All our staff are now able to restore files directly from Snapshot
copies on the system - an improvement which has been positively
received. If someone accidentally deletes a file they can now
restore it themselves, whereas previously they may have been too
embarrassed to ask for help."
Following a successful go-live at the end of June, Cooper plans to
transfer all of Arup's 12 London offices to Network Appliance
storage within the next two years.