DataCore, SHE IT Partner

MUNICH -- DataCore Software, a leading provider of storage virtualization, and its German partner, SHE IT, have implemented a failsafe SAN solution based on its SANmelody software at Bjrn Steiger Foundation. The foundation’s “LifeService” enables the emergency services to quickly identify and locate mobile phone signal locations in an emergency. Behind the scenes, keeping the system up and guaranteeing the highest availability of lifesaving data, the Foundation relies on DataCore’s suite of automated technologies for data mirroring, thin provisioning and failover protection.

“For this project we were looking for a fault tolerant storage solution that we could totally rely on,” said Andreas Fendl, IT consultant at Björn Steiger Foundation. “We needed high availability throughout our design and it starts with Internet access and ends with the backend; therefore a reliable and failsafe SAN solution was critical as the backbone of our system. We operate in cases of emergency – so uptime for us is a matter of life and death.”

Due to the lack of IT personnel on the ground combined with the need to adhere to pre-set Service Level Agreements, Björn Steiger Foundation decided to outsource its entire storage environment. Within three weeks, the “LifeService“ call system service infrastructure, including the SANmelody powered virtual SAN, was up and running with the system installed at a separate remote data center for disaster recovery (DR) purposes.

The SANmelody servers are providing highly available storage capacity to Windows and Red Hat Linux enterprise clusters, to SQL databases, and to many specialized applications like an online registration program. DataCore’s technology, which includes automated thin provisioning, disk-to-disk snapshots for fast backups, and automated failover and recovery, assures reliability and maximizes uptime with a minimum of management. In addition, in order to ensure data protection, all data is automatically mirrored. Since the start of the service, LifeService remains 100% online without any failures.

“We planned out the complete project in minute detail and checked out many other virtualization solutions in the marketplace,” said Manolito Leyeza, technical project leader of the “LifeService” project at SHE IT. “SANmelody won the project because it’s a well-engineered and established product, it is easy to administer and ultimately the solution delivered the best price-performance.”

DataCore Software Corp.