HP helps Alfa-Bank transfer storage network to 16-gigabit Fiber Channel
Recently, HP, together with its OEM partner, the largest manufacturer of Fiber Channel network equipment, Brocade Communications, presented in Moscow a joint project to modernize the IT infrastructure of one of the largest Russian banks.
Alfa-Bank has been a customer of HP since the 1990s and its Moscow data centers have been operating various models of servers and storage systems of the company for more than a decade, and they use HP-branded “B-Series” directors supplied by HP under the brand name »And Brocade Fiber Channel switches. In total, several thousand Fiber Channel ports were installed in Alfa-Bank's storage network.
In connection with the growth of business, Alfa-Bank is now building a new data center, which will be located outside of Central Russia. The territorial distribution of the data center infrastructure will allow for the continuous operation of critical bank applications even in the event of a major disaster that could disrupt the operation of its Moscow data centers.
The new data center will install the sixteen-gigabit directors of the HP B-Series. Each switch supports up to 512 16 Gb / s FC ports and provides 8.2 Tb / s throughput. The “directors” of the HP B-Series already installed in the existing data centers, which form the core of the bank's storage network, will be transparently transferred to mission-critical banking applications using the 16 Gb / s interface from an eight-gigabyte one. The new data center will be integrated into the bank's SAN using FC-FC routing.
The use of a 16-gigabit Fiber Channel in the SAN will allow the bank to double the storage network bandwidth without increasing the number of ports and cables, which is necessary to introduce new business applications, expand the infrastructure of virtual servers and deploy more powerful new generation HP servers that create additional traffic between servers and storage systems.
At the next stage of this project, Alfa-Bank plans with the help of HP to implement WDM traffic compression technology in separate segments of its storage network and organize a dedicated Fiber Channel factory for backup and data recovery between data centers.
Alfa-Bank has been a customer of HP since the 1990s and its Moscow data centers have been operating various models of servers and storage systems of the company for more than a decade, and they use HP-branded “B-Series” directors supplied by HP under the brand name »And Brocade Fiber Channel switches. In total, several thousand Fiber Channel ports were installed in Alfa-Bank's storage network.
In connection with the growth of business, Alfa-Bank is now building a new data center, which will be located outside of Central Russia. The territorial distribution of the data center infrastructure will allow for the continuous operation of critical bank applications even in the event of a major disaster that could disrupt the operation of its Moscow data centers.
The new data center will install the sixteen-gigabit directors of the HP B-Series. Each switch supports up to 512 16 Gb / s FC ports and provides 8.2 Tb / s throughput. The “directors” of the HP B-Series already installed in the existing data centers, which form the core of the bank's storage network, will be transparently transferred to mission-critical banking applications using the 16 Gb / s interface from an eight-gigabyte one. The new data center will be integrated into the bank's SAN using FC-FC routing.
The use of a 16-gigabit Fiber Channel in the SAN will allow the bank to double the storage network bandwidth without increasing the number of ports and cables, which is necessary to introduce new business applications, expand the infrastructure of virtual servers and deploy more powerful new generation HP servers that create additional traffic between servers and storage systems.
At the next stage of this project, Alfa-Bank plans with the help of HP to implement WDM traffic compression technology in separate segments of its storage network and organize a dedicated Fiber Channel factory for backup and data recovery between data centers.