References

SAN Volume Controller Provides More Flexible Storage Infrastructures

GAVI mbH, Mannheim

GaVI mbH is the central contact in the IT sector for public law insurers. As a skilled partner it understands the insurers’ special requirements and offers efficient, technical solutions. GaVI has been receiving support from FRITZ & MACZIOL for a long time in the optimisation of IT strategies and technical system maintenance – also as concerns the conversion of the IT infrastructure at the two independent locations, Münster and Munich, because of increased requirements.

A virtualisation concept for the storage infrastructure was developed, based on the SVC with four IBM SAN Volume Controllers (SVC) for graduated storage, Information Lifecycle Management, central management and unbroken data migration. Six disc DS4800 subsystems with more than 110 TB for the high-end and mid-range systems and two 3584-Libraries are the core of the modern storage environment. The integration of the Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) for the backup in the solution in use since autumn 2006 and the Tivoli Productivity Center (TPC) for the integrated central management are currently planned as a further stage.

One of the decisive arguments in the decision making process in favour of the proposed solution was the more flexible storage infrastructure achieved through the SAN Volume Controller. This allows the customer to run central data management for the decentral storage environment. A further important point for GaVI though was that this virtualisation concept facilitates unbroken migrations and, moreover, reduces the time for backup and recovery to a minimum. The quality of the project was also demonstrated by the tight time frames: there were only six months between conception with project planning, requirement analysis on all levels of the IT infrastructure, development and individual cost-benefit analysis of a reference architecture based on the identified requirements, to successful implementation.