Absa relies on EMC for mission-critical storage

Absa has recently made several further investments in EMC storage subsystems, concluding three deals in eight months to boost storage capacity for its transactional mainframe and distributed systems environments.

While two of the purchases were upgrades, the third is an implementation of EMC technology for improved business continuity in its open systems environment.

Absa Group Limited is one of South Africa`s largest financial services organisations, serving personal, commercial and corporate customers in South Africa. The organisation was recently voted the top banking brand in the country in the 2006 Sunday Times/Markinor Top Brands Survey.

According to Jan van Loggerenberg, Storage Architect at Absa, the bank is a long-term user of EMC storage for its mainframe environment. "We have successfully used EMC technologies for years now, with a very successful implementation of the EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility [SRDF]," he says.

SRDF technology protects information and provides business continuity in the face of both planned and unplanned outages. An online, host-independent, mirrored data solution duplicates production site data on one or more physically separate Symmetrix systems.

Based on the success of this configuration in the bank`s mainframe environment, Van Loggerenberg says the organisation opted to implement a similar solution to deliver the same reliability to for its open systems which include its SAP ERP solution, banking applications and Internet banking middleware.

Servaas Venter, Account Manager at EMC South Africa, says the selected hardware comprised two Symmetrix DMX3 arrays, each configured with over 1 000 hard drives, including buffer storage. "These were implemented in a three-month project and they are physically located sufficiently apart for resilience and disaster situations," he says.

Achieving the reliability and availability which is necessary for around the clock systems - like Internet banking and ERP - Venter says the solution included onsite EMC technical services. "Absa is an `online, forever` environment, so the highest reliability and availability is mandatory," says Venter. "For this reason, planning and design as well as support, are as critical to the success of an enterprise storage project as is the hardware and software."

Given Absa`s extensive operations nationwide, the technology environment is enormous. Venter notes: "A snapshot of the environment `as is` was necessary to facilitate a smooth migration of the data on to the new systems." Venter adds that the project included new functionality such as cloning of data at the production and disaster recovery sites with EMC`s Replication Manager. "This provides the ability to rapidly restore data if there is any corruption of data."

Absa is also using EMC`s VisualSRM solution, which allows file level, host level and storage array level reporting on storage metrics such as performance and capacity, and providing a dashboard facility to track trends in storage usage. This enables better management of the storage.

Van Loggerenberg says EMC is a valued supplier of technology which enables the bank to meet its obligations to customers for an always-on environment. "Storage requirements in the banking environment are substantial, particularly with the regulations with which financial services organisations must comply and the fact that Absa has millions of customers. With a supplier like EMC, Absa can be confident of getting the most advanced technology available. This ensures that our systems are always on, and our customer`s data is always protected."