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Business Solutions Powered by DataCore™  Pioneer Investment Management Limited is the Dublin, Ireland based subsidiary of the Pioneer Global Asset Management group of companies. Pioneer's flagship fund, Pioneer Fund is the fourth oldest mutual fund in the United States and was founded in 1928. With worldwide presence, Pioneer Investments now offer an increasingly diversified family of investment products and have held true to an original mission to provide shareowners with solid returns by capitalizing on investment opportunities worldwide.
The Challenge Over a period of two years, Pioneer Investments experienced increased complexity in the data storage environment, rapid expansion of their server requirements and the merger of two organisations. The storage requirements of the applications increased dramatically and these requirements were typically satisfied by the addition of new storage devices on NT servers, and the expansion of the older storage infrastructure. The number and variety of storage devices deployed was rapidly becoming unmanageable. "Unmanageable data storage provides the most significant single IT related risk to the business," says Rupert Fuller, Senior Project Manager at Pioneer. Backup windows were also becoming unmanageable and a need to improve backup quantity and duration was apparent. It was concluded that business risks could not be managed adequately in the medium term unless a significant consolidation of storage was undertaken. The Solution During a trade show organised by Xnet, DataCore's partner in the Republic of Ireland, Pioneer Investments was introduced to SANsymphony's open storage networking platform. After considering various alternative options it was decided to proceed with Xnet's DataCore proposal as, in addition to providing a technical solution, it also offered more long term cost effectiveness than alternatives. The validity of the proposed solution was verified through research on market positioning, reviewing independent research on the company and the product as well as validation from consultation with a Gartner analyst and appropriate reference sites. Rupert Fuller continues "SANsymphony provides an open design, which allows us the flexibility to add future storage requirements from the most appropriate and cost effective supplier. It provides all the consolidation and management functionality required by the business." An Interview with Pioneer Investment Management Limited: How did you learn about DataCore? At an XNET Data Storage Conference in Dublin, in November 2001. How many other solutions were considered? How long was the selection process? Four other solutions were considered over a period of a year. We had discussions with key suppliers and identified the major options available, which we believed could satisfy the business requirements. The general research provided us with a short list of suppliers providing good solutions at a reasonable cost. The Evaluation process took three months. Why did you choose a DataCore solution? Several factors were influential including the ability to re-use some storage already deployed in Pioneer Investments. In addition, specific functions such the Asynchronous IP Mirroring (AIM) feature for our Business Recovery plan and the fact that SANsymphony provides all the consolidation and management functionality required by the business helped us make our choice. What is your hardware environment? We are using three SANsymphony SDS nodes, and we plan for approximately 14 application servers in the primary site with a small number in our business recovery site. Our Storage consists of 1TB Hitachi and 6TB Eurologic. SAN components are 3 x 32port McData ED-5000 Switches, 2 in the primary site and 1 in the business recovery site. All servers use QLogic 2300 2GB fibre channel HBAs. What are you doing with your SANsymphony installation? What are you managing? Key application servers are running on the SAN, clustered Microsoft Exchange with an automated Business Recovery capability, clustered File Serving and multiple front and back-office SQL Database applications. We have also installed an enterprise backup solution. How much storage are you planning to manage with SANsymphony? Initially 7TB and this is expected to grow as we add more legacy storage. What do you think are the advantages of SANsymphony? What do you like best about it? It delivers the following key business benefits:
© 2002 DataCore Software Corporation. All rights reserved. DataCore, SANsymphony and Powered by DataCore are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Pioneer Investments is a trading name of The Pioneer Global Asset Management S.p.A. group of companies. Windows and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. PINE1 Click here to download a pdf of this article. |
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