Requirement - Data Protection, Consolidation, Storage Networking

Information Technology Specialists for Hospital

EnvironmentsWith more than 30 years´ experience, the SAP Partner T-Systems SFH GmbH, provides several hundred hospitals, clinics and related institutions in Germany with the systems they need to manage and run their organisations. More than 10% of hospitals in Germany benefit from the solutions developed by T-Systems SFH in both the classical R/3 areas of e.g.Financial Accounting (FI, FI-AA, CO) and Human Resources as well as in the more specialised areas of the R/3 modules IS-H for Patient Management (Registration, Ward Usage, Medical Subsystems etc.) and ITB.MED / IS-H *MED for Treatment and Care. The Patient Management system IS-H was developed in cooperation with SAP and is used by a number of large organisations charged with operating these institutions. The applications themselves can either be implemented in the user´s own IT environment or can be accessed remotely at the T-Systems ASP data centre in Düsseldorf.

Data Protection under Windows to Mainframe Standards: The Recipe - best-of-breed Software, first-class HardwareFor enhanced data protection, T-Systems opted for the COMPAREX proposal of implementing Legato´s NetWorkerTM software with its interface to SAP R/3´s Backint. This solution, in conjunction with  the SAP Scheduler DB13, enables online automated backups to be carried out non-disruptively. Fast backups of the 1,5 TB of data carried out daily is achieved via a dedicated Gigabit connection. Apart from the necessary maintenance required by NT (approx. 10 minutes every two weeks), users can now avail themselves of a system providing smooth backups of their data whilst enjoying around-the-clock (365 x 24) application availability.

COMPAREX installed a state-of-the-art LTO Ultrium tape library to archive data. The system features 15 MB/s fast, parallel data transfers to the drives as well as a high cartridge capacity for investment protection. The archival times recommended by SAP for R/3 data are monitored and maintained by Legato NetWorker´s Cloning feature which enables fast data duplication. T-Systems carries this out at weekends. In order to protect the data physically one copy remains in-house whilst the second copy is stored in a protected vault.

Consolidation enhances Economics whilst improving Protection

Decentral systems generally mean increased costs as a result of more labour-intensive management and support requirements for the servers, storage and networks. In order to increase efficiency and reduce costs the decision was taken to consolidate both servers and storage devices via the implementation of a Storage Area Network. During the initial analysis phase prior to implementation a number of companies were asked to present their solutions taking into consideration the particular requirements of T-Systems.

The decision was taken in favour of COMPAREX. Uwe Zass, Head of Production and Technology at T-Systems SFH, made the following comment "COMPAREX´ proposed design was both mature and convincing. It did not opt for either NAS or SAN but examined both of these complementary technologies in some detail. The design also took into consideration our requirements concerning data protection. Also, as a general contractor, COMPAREX was able to offer a single-stop shopping concept so that we did not have to start dealing with innumerable vendors. Also, as far as the debate SAN or NAS is concerned, as a large user of SAP R/3, we have to consider the fact that there were no NAS devices certified at the time." The distances which can be bridged with Fibre Channel technology mean enhanced protection for the SAN components themselves: servers, switches, storage systems und the tape library are all housed in physically separate areas.

Servers and Storage

COMPAREX consolidated a large number of smaller servers to a small number of larger, more powerful ones and, apart from internal system disks, all of the existing storage was consolidated onto 3 CLARiiON FC 4700TM systems. The 17 servers integrated in the SAN were able to access approx. 1,7 TB of data. In March 2002 in addition to the servers the file servers were also attached to the SAN accessing a total of 2.3 TB of data stored either in RAID-1 or RAID-5 configurations in accordance with SAP specifications.

Rapidly networked

Particularly noteworthy is the speed with which the migration to a Storage Area Network was undertaken. The vendors were asked to submit their proposals in March 2001 and the COMPAREX networked storage solution was already up and running in full production by 1.7.2001. Only 4 months: from the drawing board to implementation! T-Systems SFH is extremely satisfied with the solution and according to their own SAP specialists the implementation indeed provides for 100% of the planned availability!

Next Steps

The steps taken so far contain a great deal of potential for the future. The selection of Legato is particularly advantageous where the availability of the system is concerned as, in a worst case scenario, NetWorker´s Recovery Manager can drastically reduce the preparation time required by the operating system from about 4-5 hours at present to 20 minutes. It is also planned to install a dedicated server in order to carry out regular Recovery Tests using Legato´s backup software. CLARiiON´s  "SnapView" feature is also important in this context as the software enables "Snapshot" copies of data to be made on the fly. Together with COMPAREX, a competent and reliable partner, service provider T-Systems approaches the future with confidence.