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BASF IT Services Implements High Availability McDATA SAN Solution

McDATA Corporation, a the worldwide leader in open storage networking solutions, in cooperation with IBM and Comparex has designed and implemented two storage area networks (SANs), at BASF IT Services, a subsidiary of worldwide chemical giant BASF. The BASF IT-Services data center is spread over two locations in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

BASF IT Services chose McDATA Intrepidä 6000 Series Directors and Sphereonä 3000 Series Fabric Switches to meet its requirements for availability, data security and online upgradeability and activation (McDATA's HotCAT technology). BASF IT Services also selected McDATA's award-winning SANavigator to manage the SAN because of its ease of use and comprehensive management. According to BASF IT Services, the McDATA SAN solution is delivering significant savings and is enabling BASF to optimize its storage resources. Moreover, the solution ensures higher data security and reduced administrational efforts.

Rapidly growing disk storage needs led to increasing administrative efforts in the disk storage sector. The McDATA SAN enables BASF IT Services to offer its customers the exact disk storage capacities they need, while reducing management costs. It also allows BASF IT Services to easily and costeffectively scale as its storage needs evolve, where the prior configuration allowed only large, expensive storage extensions.

"The benefit to our customers and to ourselves is obvious," explains Ekkehard Holzapfel, Director of European Data Centers at BASF IT Services. "Customers are only charged for the capacities they individually need at any given time. By being able to scale our SAN incrementally, we are better optimizing our IT resources."

BASF decided against a SAN solution built of 16-port switches, which lead to a high loss of useable ports.

"The utilization of high availability Directors is key to a stable performance in the data center," says Christian Popp, System Architect Storage Area Network at BASF IT Services. "For the same reason, McDATA's HotCAT technology, which provides the ability to install and activate upgrades online without disruptions, is a very important feature for us. Regarding these criteria, McDATA was the only choice."

"We also chose SANavigator to manage our SAN. Besides monitoring the online performance, SANavigator can also document and graphically show the history of the utilization. As a result, we know which devices are utilized, how they are being utilized and how far any fibre can be utilized to support additional traffic," added Popp.

SANavigator is an efficient, open-system platform that provides a comprehensive, intuitive set of management tools, allowing IT administrators to optimize the capabilities of their storage networks while simplifying many of the day-to-day management tasks.

The disc SAN was implemented stepwise during running operations. In the beginning of 2002, a data center spreading backbone was integrated into the SAN using four Intrepid 6064 Directors. According to demand, the disk capacities are migrated to subsystems in the SAN and via Sphereon Fabric Switches connected to two separate fabrics. At present, all Netware servers, Clariion subsystems, about 30 IBM and Sun servers, the backup servers, as well as the IBM ESS storage subsystems are already consolidated into the SAN. BASF IT Services plans to consolidate the disk and tape SANs.

In the tape storage sector, the backbone consists of four Sphereon 32-port Fabric Switches, two in each location, which comprise two fabrics. To connect the tape drives, BASF IT Services uses McDATA 1000 Series Loop Switches. By this consolidation in the tape sector BASF IT Services was able to reduce the data security servers from 20 to four and reduce the IBM Magstar Tape Libraries from 12 to six.

The two data centers of BASF IT Services in Ludwigshafen provide applications and resources to more than 50,000 users all over Europe. The IT landscape contains 800 Unix-, Windows NT/2000- and Novell Netware servers. The UNIX platform contains IBM pSeries (AIX) as well as SUN, HP and Linux servers. Numerous applications are used in this landscape, among which the SAP R/3 applications are the most important. Also used are Lotus Notes mailing systems, several database systems, Netware systems, and numerous infrastructure servers like DNS and NFS, Gateways, monitoring and print servers. By the end of 2002, capacities of about 90 terabytes will be available.

About BASF IT Services

BASF IT Services operates European-wide. With a staff of 2,000 and more than 400 Million Euro in revenues, the company provides the complete portfolio of IT and telecommunication services needed by a multinational company like BASF. Although BASF IT Services plans to generate 20 percent of their revenues within the next two years through external customers, it presently operates mainly as internal service provider for the companies of the BASF Group in Europe. The headquarters of BASF AG in Ludwigshafen is the most important location of BASF IT Services. 1,400 of the 2,000 employees work there.

About McDATA

McDATA is one of the world's leaders in open storage networking solutions and provides highly available, scalable and centrally managed storage area networks (SANs) that address enterprise-wide storage problems. McDATA's coreto -edge enterprise SAN solutions improve the reliability and availability of data to simplify SAN management and reduce the total cost of ownership. McDATA extensively pre-tests its solutions to provide IT organizations with the comprehensive tools, methodologies and support essential to robust SAN implementation. McDATA distributes its products through its OEMs, network of resellers and Elite Solution Partners.