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RISING ABOVE RISK

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 7, Issue 7 - October 2007

British Airways has invested in SAN monitoring software from CA to mitigate DOWNTIME risk to critical systems

Like many organisations, British Airways cannot afford to have its critical business systems that are reliant on the SAN infrastructure exposed to the risk of downtime. And it is that imperative which has driven the company's recent investment in SAN monitoring software from CA.

BA has also purchased capacity planning software to help reduce the overall cost of storage and is now going through the full implementation process, with a target of end 2007 for completion.

Today, almost all of BA's critical business applications are supported by its SAN infrastructure, including catering, engineering, cargo and also ba.com ticketing information. Given the importance of the SAN, BA decided to invest in a monitoring solution that would enable the early detection of SAN degradation before it became a fault and resulted in the loss of service of these applications.

'What we had before equated to flying a plane without the core instruments you needed," states David Smith, infrastructure software manager at British Airways. "It was like flying without an altimeter or knowing how many engines you have running. Given the importance of the information on the SAN, if our back-end systems went off line, it would place our whole brand at risk,” he points out.

“We wanted detailed instrumentation and extra resilience to manage the SAN and enable the business to keep running, no matter what."

What has changed at BA, as with many large organisations, is the increased complexity and dependency associated with the growth of data storage and the systems that support the business. "Five years ago, we didn't really have that much by way of products that gave us any central disk monitoring at all," he explains, "as most of our mid-range servers had direct attached storage (DAS). Once we moved to a storage area network environment, however, with multiple systems using centralised and shared storage, we had to have the right monitoring capability in place."

The decision to take the SAN route itself was driven by two key considerations, he adds: TCO (total cost of ownership) and the requirement for greater flexibility in the delivery of systems. "For example, with centralised disk you can grow or expand your storage needs more easily. But the main driver was that we didn't want to have server interruptions to our key business. If, for instance, we were to have two component failures, we would have system outages, which is something we cannot allow to happen."

BA went in search of the best solution for its needs and eventually chose CA after its software had been evaluated and assessed, both in commercial terms and how well it performed. The key products purchased were CA Storage Resource Manager, CA SAN Manager, BrightStor SAN Designer, as well as CA XOsoft WANSyncHA, which was chosen to replicate and fail over the application. That means BA can now ensure early detection of any potential problems.

"By installing an agent on all of the servers, we receive alerts on our consoles that tell us of any problems and whether any components are about to fail, so we can take the necessary action," says Smith. "For example, if you were in heavy traffic in your car, and one route was blocked, you could take an alternative one. That is exactly what CA's solution does for us. The resilience is built in, so we can always ensure that both routes are kept open, so there are no outages."

Cost control is vital to BA and, for this reason, the organisation is undergoing a business transformation to make more of its services web-based and self service over the next three years. As a consequence, BA estimates that its storage needs will grow by approximately 15-20% during the next three years from its current level of 200 terrabytes. "We manage our growth very carefully," states Smith, "and the contract with CA allows for this, should we need to increase our requirements."

At the same time, CA's Storage Resource Manager tool will enable BA to adopt a multi-tier approach to managing information and to select the most cost-effective storage media, based on the importance of the data. BA expects to save 10-20% in disk purchases as a result of this strategy.

BA also anticipates cost savings from a CA capacity licence that enables it only to pay for the storage it actually uses. The organisation will also benefit from a much simpler approach to licensing, only purchasing additional software licences as the SAN grows.

Alan Banks, SVP northern EMEA area manager, CA, comments: "More and more customers are turning to CA to help them to manage the complexity of their enterprise IT environments. We are delighted to be working with BA to help address these challenges." ST