Storage Area Network

Of all the organisations which require robust IT systems for their survival, few are more dependent on technology than modern local authorities.  Virtually every area of a council's activity, from collecting local taxes through to housing benefit, social services and payroll, requires mission critical applications running on highly resilient hardware.

Scottish Borders Council, the unitary authority serving much of the south of Scotland, is currently replacing its legacy UNIX infrastructure with a brand new, leading edge solution involving the use of Sun Microsystems' revolutionary Storage Area Network (SAN). 

The deployment of the SAN technology - which brings real intelligence to the UNIX infrastructure and allows plug-and-play addition of storage devices as and when needed – was undertaken in partnership with IT services and systems integration company Sopra Group.

The groundbreaking new network, based on Sun's acclaimed Enterprise range of hardware products and its Solaris operating environment, was installed without problems, within timescales and within budget.  It now has the distinction of being one of the first fully Sun-supported SAN implementations in the UK.

Like all other Scottish local authorities, Scottish Borders Council covers the full range of local authority functions, from road maintenance and library services through to housing and social work provision.  Until recently, the authority ran all of its crucial IT services, such as housing, social services, accounts administration, council tax payments and benefits and payroll, on a variety of separate UNIX server environments.

Gill Hanham, Head of IT at Scottish Borders Council explained "We decided for a number of reasons that we needed to change our systems infrastructure.  Some of our hardware needed to be replaced and a number of leases were close to expiry.  We also wanted to reduce our running costs, increase our disk and processor capacity and to move our applications to newer versions.  In addition, we wanted to improve resilience, minimise downtime, boost flexibility and processor performance and increase the potential number of users.  We also wanted to move to browser-based technology and to provide the correct infrastructure for E-Government developments."

The obvious solution – and the route taken by the council – was to consolidate all the UNIX systems onto a single version of UNIX.  Working closely with Sopra Group, with whom the council has enjoyed a close working relationship for several years, Hanham and her team opted for a solution based on the Sun/Solaris/Oracle environment.

Gill Hanham went on to say "Our social work, library and payroll systems already ran on Sun Solaris and we were very pleased with the way it performed.  I felt the solution Sun was offering was deliverable and would bring real benefit to the council."

The authority involved Sopra Group from the very start.  Les Taylor, the business manager of Sopra Group's Technical Services Group, says the idea of using SAN technology gradually evolved as discussions went on.

"As a Sun reseller, we really do strongly believe in the product, and we have considerable experience in Sun Enterprise technology.  Sun offered everything the council needed – increased processor speed, reliability, scalability – and, of course, high availability.

The idea of deploying a SAN solution emerged, because the authority was frustrated by the operational overhead resulting from having a variety of different Unix platforms.  By doing it this way, there is simply one big datastore.  Everything is mirrored through fibre channel architecture and there are dual redundant power supplies.  The whole configuration is geared towards uptime and if you need to add storage, you don't even need to power the system down."

Gill Hanham is equally enthusiastic.

"Having a SAN gives us huge benefits in terms of responsiveness and flexibility.  It means we are leading the field and it puts us at the forefront of technology.  It's very exciting for our staff and I'm delighted that we have taken this route."

The system consists of four Sun E3500 servers plus two Sun E250 servers linked via fibre switched hubs to the SAN.  The SAN consists of 64 disks with a total of 576 GB of mirrored storage, with 12 spare disks (108GB) of storage.

In addition, there is a Sun E250 server and an L1000 tape drive configured to provide an integrated backup solution for the SAN.  Another E3500 server acts as a disaster recovery box.  The system is based at a central location in the council's HQ in the town of Newtown St Boswells.

Les Taylor said "We also undertook all the project management for the SAN build.  The council came to us because we have strong skills in this area and in implementation as well as with Sun and Oracle technologies."

The installation and implementation of the hardware went flawlessly, and Sopra Group is now helping with the process of data migration from the legacy systems – an area where its specialist skills in Oracle are proving to be particularly helpful.

"The whole thing has been a fabulous team effort.  We all had a very good working relationship and everyone trusted everyone else.  We have gained extra knowledge of implementing effective SAN technology solutions as a result of this and we have the benefit of now really being able to explain its benefits in detail as a result of our own experiences.  This is a critically important project in which quality really matters and to which the Sun platform and SAN environment is strongly suited.  We're very happy with the relationship and the way everything has gone."

Gill Hanham, too, is pleased with the way in which everyone worked together to deliver a powerful and future-proofed IT solution which gives the authority one of the most up-to-date, exciting and effective computer networks in the UK.

"It was a good, strong partnership between the council's own IT staff, led by Stewart Meldrum, our Systems Support Manager, Sopra Group and SUN.  As usual, we found Sopra Group to be extremely professional.  The building of the SAN went very well – although it was new technology, the implementation turned out to be very straightforward.  I'm confident we made the right decision."