EMC helps optimise the guest experience at MGM MIRAGE properties

EMC Corporation, the world leader in information storage and management, today announced MGM MIRAGE, one of the world`s premier hotel and gaming companies, upgraded its EMC information infrastructure to better monitor and manage customer activity to offer real-time appreciation services.

Thomas Peck, Senior Vice-President and Chief Information Officer for MGM MIRAGE, said: "The massive volume of customer data we generate across our hotels and casinos is critical to ensuring our guests have the best experience possible. Members of our Players Club, for example, accrue points for playing slots and gaming tables at MGM MIRAGE`s properties and can redeem those points for cash and complimentary services across our venues. This is state-of-the-art technology that supports our efforts to provide our guests with the optimal entertainment experience. As we have continued to expand our network of properties and attract new guests, our information repositories have grown dramatically."

To support its information lifecycle management strategy and manage its information explosion, MGM MIRAGE moved to a more robust, centralised EMC storage infrastructure to make its data rapidly and reliably available. In addition, the EMC storage network provides advanced fibre connectivity to ensure access and replicate large volumes of data across multiple data centres.

As the first step in this upgrade, MGM MIRAGE hired EMC Global Services to migrate 100 terabytes of data from its older EMC systems to the high-capacity, high-performance EMC Symmetrix DMX3000 storage area networks (SANs). In order to minimise any impact to the 150 servers and more than 14 000 users in the enterprise, EMC Global Services used EMC SRDF business continuance software to migrate this data. Today, MGM MIRAGE stores its most critical customer-facing applications - including its Players Club databases, hotel systems and point-of-sale databases and its enterprise SQL system, which consists of more than 120 individual databases - on the Symmetrix DMX3000 SANs housed in its three main data centres.

Laura Fucci, MGM MIRAGE`s Chief Technology Officer, said: "EMC Symmetrix technology gives us the flexibility and scalability we need to manage the rapidly growing stores of real-time customer information we are accumulating. EMC ControlCenter storage management software has also helped ensure smooth and non-disruptive growth by allowing us to manage our dispersed storage environment centrally and cost-efficiently. In only two years, we`ve been able to expand our infrastructure from 70 to over 300 terabytes without adding staff to manage the allocation of those resources."

MGM MIRAGE also upgraded its fibre network with additional WDM (wave division multiplexing) platforms from Ciena Corporation. These platforms expand the capacity of MGM MIRAGE`s network to provide additional bandwidth in support of the growth in network services, and in particular to provide resilient connectivity between its multiple data centres and key properties. MGM MIRAGE uses EMC SRDF software along with the Ciena solution to continuously replicate stored information from one data centre to another as a safeguard in the event that operations at one of the sites or a portion of the network are disrupted.

Fucci said: "The front doors to our properties are always open to our guests, so there is very little tolerance for downtime. We found EMC to be a good partner because they understood the 24/7 requirements of our industry. With our high availability architecture and EMC`s technology, we`ve improved our ability to recover from a major data centre failure from days to two hours. We now have a resilient data centre ring so that even if we did have a fibre cut along the network, we would still maintain a very rapid recovery with no data loss."

MGM MIRAGE has added a fourth data centre housing a Symmetrix DMX3 SAN to consolidate the IT infrastructure of the former Mandalay Resort Group, which was acquired by MGM MIRAGE in 2005. The new SAN functions as another node on the SRDF/Ciena data centre ring.

"EMC scaleable storage and software solutions are enabling a smooth transition as we consolidate Mandalay`s disk-on-server IT infrastructure into our enterprise SANs," said Fucci.

MGM MIRAGE has adopted information lifecycle management by using a multi-tiered 300-terabyte EMC storage infrastructure to address the diverse performance and availability needs of its various customer-facing and back office applications. The company deploys EMC CLARiiON CX fibre channel and ATA disk, as well as EMC Centera content-addressed storage and EMC Celerra network-attached storage (NAS) systems. MGM MIRAGE also utilises EMC SRDF, EMC TimeFinder, EMC PowerPath, ControlCenter and EMC Navisphere software solutions to protect and manage its information storage.