BT Retail Supports a New Generation of Internet Services with Hitachi Storage
As it evolved from the world’s oldest communications company to one of the leading providers of communications solutions across the globe, BT Group plc (formerly British Telecommunications
plc) has always been at the forefront of innovative communication services. When BT Retail, one of its group businesses, introduced a new portfolio of consumer Internet products and services, it selected Hitachi Data Systems to help manage its storage demands.
In preparation for the launch of a new range of Internet services and products, including Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), to two million customers across the UK, the BT Retail Internet services division undertook an ambitious project to redesign their backend IT infrastructure and enhance its data storage capabilities.
BT Retail needed an infrastructure that would allow them to roll out new product offerings while safe in the knowledge that they would be supported by a scalable, robust storage architecture with both high levels of redundancy and the flexibility to scale up and down. To address the vast quantities of customer and systems data created by a whole new portfolio of services, BT Retail also needed a means by which they could manage all data centrally and ensure that they could prioritise their most important data with confidence that it would always be secure and accessible. Accomplishing these feats would allow BT Retail to meet customer demands without any impact on quality of service (QoS).
In summary, the overall project goals were to: develop a platform that is scalable and flexible, ensure that no project is deployed in a “stove pipe” configuration, and construct a tiered platform that allows projects to be securely segregated within the platform. Data transfer rate performance and value for money were also key drivers.
Working in Partnership
BT Retail selected Hitachi Data Systems as it offered the best price performance available. What’s more, the service level agreements (SLAs) offered by Hitachi Data Systems meant that existing services would run without fault when the new applications were launched.
Hitachi Data Systems was also prepared to incorporate “best practice” procedures into three key technology areas of the project— storage area networks (SANs), storage, and virtual partitioning. These capabilities were key differentiators from what the other possible vendors offered and made Hitachi Data Systems the best choice for the project.
BT Retail—IT Objective
Having identified BT Retail’s requirements, the project team focused on designing a highly flexible and scalable infrastructure that would not only allow current services and applications to be seamlessly brought online, but also facilitate the addition of future projects and applications without adversely affecting the performance and service levels of existing projects.
Hitachi Data Systems worked closely with BT Retail for 12 months building a future-proof storage solution that ensured current and future performance through rigorous SLAs.
Hitachi Data Systems implemented a four-tier storage architecture with a Hitachi TagmaStore® Network Storage Controller model NSC55 providing tier 1 storage, a Hitachi Thunder 9585VTM modular storage system providing tier 2 and tier 3 storage, and a TagmaStore Adaptable Modular Storage model AMS200 providing tier 4 storage using SATA drives.
Hitachi software components were also critical to the overall control and management of the NSC55-based framework. Hitachi HiCommand® Device Manager software enabled centralized management of the environment from a remote or local location while Hitachi Virtual Partition Manager software provided both transparent and interactive migration of data between the various storage tiers and logical partitioning of ports, cache, and disk into Private Virtual
Storage Machines. Hitachi Universal Volume Manager software managed and controlled all storage “virtualised” behind the NSC55, and HiCommand Tuning Manager software delivered proactive monitoring, reporting, and forecasting capabilities of all storage resources within the Network Storage Controller framework.
This solution gave BT Retail a highly scalable, flexible architecture that is quite distinct from the traditional “stove-piped” approach to projects. QoS can be monitored and tuned within a single platform, and each new project that comes on stream is given an individual secure partition within the infrastructure.
This new architecture solution provides:
• A consolidated approach to project deployment based on allocated building blocks
• Flexible scaling of project components to provide dynamic QoS management
• Large scalability by introducing external storage virtualisation
• Elimination of “stove-piped” project constraints
• Standards for future project deployments, set by establishing fixed best practices for the data centre infrastructure
• Standardisation on industry-leading technology with strong futures around the deployed technology
Setting the Standard— a Future-proof Solution
In the future, the SAN provided by Hitachi Data Systems will also be used by the BT Retail Internet services team to virtualise their storage infrastructure, to save space, and to control hardware costs, while making it easy to securely segregate projects and store data on the optimum storage resource.
This scalable data management infrastructure not only supports the launch of new Internet services like IPTV, but it also incorporates future business and technological demands such as disaster recovery, setting the standard for additional project deployments by establishing best practices for the data centre’s infrastructure.
“The introduction of new services always creates exacting demands on the data storage systems, and this is particularly the case with new Internet-based services such as IPTV. We have worked closely with Hitachi Data Systems and have been very impressed by their dedication to the project, understanding of our business, and ability to deliver on rigorous SLAs.”
Dave Ealham, Infrastructure Programme, BT Retail
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