The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) has awarded a contract budgeted at R4 million for what is believed to be South Africa`s first turnkey centralised storage and back-up system, to Computer Configurations (CC), part of JSE-listed Computer Configurations Holdings (CCH). CC`s solution will provide DWAF with a total of six Orca high-capacity data storage systems.
Two of the Orcas will be connected to an Auspex NS 2000 and be implemented as the network attach storage unit. The other four Orcas will be directly connected to existing application servers. The back-up system consist of an ATL P1000 DLT automated tape library, with a dedicated Sun Ultra Host Management System and Legato backup software to cater for the total client-server environment. CC will also undertake all the systems integration to link the solution to DWAF`s existing systems. The project is part of a large departmental drive for the delivery of digital data, information systems and services focused on internal users as the first phase. The department is one of the largest users of geographical (GIS) and spatial data in South Africa and therefore requires storage for very large volumes of data for both UNIX and Microsoft NT users. Apart from the standard georeference, hydrology and geohydrology digital data, aerial survey images of the entire country will be stored on the network connected to the Auspex. The new storage solution will enhance the delivery of data storage capacities to the users, under one central control mechanism, and will alleviate the constant pressure on internal server centric data storage capacities. The data farm will serve various applications already implemented in the department. The GIS systems, running on a Sun Enterprise server, will use the Orcas connected to the network-attached Auspex to provide improved access and ease of data management for both Unix and NT users.
The other Orcas in the data farm will serve the 1 200 head office users with diverse data storage requirements via a number of servers and applications, such as e-mail (Microsoft Exchange), Internet/intranet information digital images and spatial data and NetWare file and print services. The CC solution provides a potential storage capacity of 2,5 Terabytes, when the Orcas are fully populated with disk drives. This foundation will enable DWAF to implement future applications much faster such as electronic data management, web enabled applications, data warehousing to further "information enable" the organisation as the storage infrastructure will be in place and stable.
"DWAF put much effort into the planning for this project," says Adriaan Genis, DWAF facilities project manager. "This was initiated in June 1998 with a Request for Information issued in September 1998. Based on the knowledge and insight gained from this initiative, a specification was drawn up and a tender issued in January 1999. All the major storage solution vendors submitted a tender response and DWAF chose Computer Configurations as they demonstrated in all aspects that they could offer the best solution in terms of performance and flexibility, with the best value. Their apparent dedication to support and the local content of the Orca were further factors counted in their favour".
"DWAF can be regarded as a pioneer in data farms, and has taken a bold step in establishing a centralised data storage solution," says CC sales director Jim Jeffrey. "However, the market will see more organisations committing to this model, as it is an efficient way to manage the ever-increasing volumes of information being made available. We believe that DWAF is setting a trend which will soon be followed by other government departments wishing to deliver a complete service to its citizens." Amadeus Geldenhuys, facilities manager for DWAF, commented: "Computer Configurations came on board for the implementation phase of the project and what impressed me most about the individual team members were their professionalism and total dedication to the project."
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