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Storage Environment
The evolution of storage networking deployments at this firm followed a familiar trajectory (from direct-attached storage [DAS] to small SAN islands, and finally, to consolidated SANs) in the support of implementing storage as a networked, utility-like service. To understand the components of this company's storage vision, it is beneficial to take a closer look at the firm's IT infrastructure and how IT plays a critical role in the overall business strategy.With 60 TB of usable storage spread across three datacenters (one production site, one disaster recovery site, and one development site), the IT leadership at this firm has spent considerable time and energy analyzing methods for increasing storage management efficiencies while simultaneously supporting a varying array of highly advanced application technologies. The company currently supports a two-tiered, client-server architecture comprised of a number of home-grown and off-the-shelf applications that reside on approximately 160 Windows servers, and a number of corporate back-office applications distributed across approximately 20 enterprise class UNIX and Linux servers.Each of the company's more than 200 stores sends business-critical pricing and payroll data back to corporate headquarters over a frame-relay/Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) connection. An in-house CAO application designed to streamline inventory operations for perishables and groceries resides at each location and sends daily updates back to headquarters. The data is then analyzed at headquarters and the orders are passed on to vendors and distributors for fulfillment.By design, the CAO application is capable of forecasting up to three days' worth of orders, with the caveat that the accuracy of the projection decreases as the length of the forecast increases. The capacity to project up to three days of orders in advance allows inventory to be shipped, even in the event of a catastrophic loss of service at either of the main sites. This is one of the most advanced CAO implementations in the industry; many grocers still rely on manual intervention for determining when inventory levels are low and for reordering products.Just as CAO data is pushed from each store to headquarters, updated pricing information is distributed from corporate headquarters to each store over the same frame-relay/ATM network. Where applicable, any changes in prices are sent in real-time to the ESLs, where liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors under each item display the most current prices for that item.To support these advanced technologies, a similarly advanced hardware infrastructure (technology enabler) was required. Based on initial analyses showing the potential for increased economies of scale, increased operational efficiency, and reductions in hardware maintenance stemming from consolidating storage platforms, the management team determined that deploying storage networks was the appropriate solution.Today the ratio of DAS-to-SAN storage stands at approximately 70 percent SAN (42 TB usable) with a high visibility project slated to migrate the remaining UNIX DAS to networked storage as soon as possible.
