German Government State Finance and Tax Revenue Services Office in Koblenz Relies on DataCore for Storage Virtualization
DataCore's storage virtualization software delivers high
performance storage for financial administration - SAN comprises part
of "EOSS" project
MUNICH, Germany and FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida - June 9, 2009 -
DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization,
business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today
announced that the chief finance office in Koblenz, which oversees 26
revenue offices in the federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz, depends on
storage virtualization from DataCore Software. DataCore partner SHE
Informationstechnologie AG replaced the existing storage area network
(SAN) with Dell hardware and SANsymphony(tm) storage virtualization
software from DataCore.
Destined to unify and simplify financial administration in Germany,
German fiscal authorities have introduced a uniform IT platform for
their 650 revenue offices around the country - standardizing on EOSS
(Evolutionary Oriented Tax Software). The SANsymphony implementation at
the main revenue office in Koblenz was part of the EOSS project. A
rollout of this size will take until 2012 to complete and is expected
to cost federal government hundreds of millions of Euros.
In the past, each upgrade of the EMC Symetrix DMX 1000 disk
subsystem required significant budget and had to be accompanied by an
official, open "call to tender." Over time, the SAN system had grown to
16 terabytes, which represented the final stage of expansion. The
required next phase of storage expansion needed not only offer
additional capacity for the migration of EOSS, but also provide SAN
virtualization and hardware independency. Plus, the team faced a short
implementation window - the entire project needed to be concluded
within three months.
IT service provider SHE Informationstechnologie AG, a DataCore
partner, was awarded the contract for its virtualization proposal. In
the first stage of expansion, four Dell MD1000 systems with 15 SAS hard
disks apiece and a net capacity of 10 terabytes (TBs) was implemented.
DataCore's SANsymphony 6.0 runs on two Dell R900 storage domain
controllers. The hardware is located in two data centers and
redundantly connected via Fibre Channel. Surprisingly, the combined
costs for both hardware and software for the project came below the
budget threshold and so did not cause the necessity for an official
call to tender to be released - dramatically decreasing the project
time frames.
SANsymphony: A Central SAN and Universal Storage Management Controller
"SANsymphony is a stable and flexible SAN platform, which turns
cost-efficient standard hardware into high-performance machines
suitable for data centers," says Klaus Schulz, Chairman of SHE
Informationstechnologie AG. "Combined with server virtualization, it
provides for a very fast and highly available infrastructure with
enterprise features, which many organizations could hardly afford when
implemented with the traditional SAN hardware. We are happy that we
could support the regional finance office of Koblenz with the
successful storage virtualization during the time-critical
implementation of EOSS."
As the central SAN virtualization and management controller,
SANsymphony generates a virtual storage pool out of the available hard
disk capacity, provides the virtual VMware ESX server farm with virtual
storage capacity from a central location, and guarantees high
availability by synchronously mirroring the data between the data
centers. DataCore's automatic failover/failback technology is certified
for use with the high-availability features of the virtual machines
(VMs). Thus, manual intervention in the restoring of failed or migrated
VMs is eliminated. In addition, the dynamic storage space allocation,
Thin Provisioning, optimizes the capacity utilization of the SAN
hardware. By adding further storage domain controllers according to the
n+1 principle, the performance can be scaled freely.
Delivering Cost Savings for the Long-term
The flexibility in expanding the storage capacity is a long-term
advantage. SANsymphony integrates disk systems independently of
manufacturers, hardware and technology, and equips them with SAN
services on a network-wide basis. The regional finance office of
Koblenz plans to expand the SAN infrastructure to 30 TBs in further
stages of expansion, showing a mixture of SAS and SATA disk storage
systems, which then are addressed hierarchically.
"Thanks to the competent consultation and support provided by SHE
Informationstechnologie AG, the configuration, hardware relocation and
data migration during operation was smooth," summarizes Dieter Deffner,
Windows Server team leader at the regional finance office Koblenz.
"DataCore's SANsymphony is a robust and high performance solution,
particularly in terms of dealing very well with the high-availability
functions of VMware ESX functions. Pure SAN hardware solutions would
have required higher investments for providing the same or less
functionality. Moreover, with SANsymphony we also consistently profit
from the advantages of the storage virtualization, such as hardware
independence and the flexibility that delivers - enabling us to expand
the SAN infrastructure exactly according to our needs and
possibilities."
About DataCore Software
DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization
SAN software, fundamentally changes the economics of managing storage
with innovative software that combines advanced functions and services
with the agility and savings of hardware independence. DataCore lowers
the cost and complexity of IT by making storage efficient, fast,
flexible, fail-safe and virtual. DataCore's portable storage server
software simplifies and automates capacity expansion and centralizes
storage management for Windows, UNIX, Linux, MacOS and NetWare
operating systems as well as hypervisors from VMware, Citrix, Microsoft
and other suppliers. DataCore is privately held and its corporate
headquarters are in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. For more information, call
877-780-5111 or visit www.datacore.com.
DataCore, the DataCore logo and SANsymphony, are trademarks or
registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore
product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of
DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company
names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.