Data-Shield Ltd, the legacy networking equipment company, has completed a SAN Audit and Test project for British Airways.
The aim: helping the airline to certify its business continuity position and improve operational processes across its critical storage infrastructure. Steve Harding, IT Service Delivery Manager for British Airways says: โLike many organisations, our primary and secondary SANs have grown organically over many years and now consist of elements from multiple vendors. It is a critical infrastructure and we felt that an independent assessment was essential to ensure that it continues to meet our operational needs. However, the diversity of the network made finding a properly certified test and audit specialist rather difficult. Data-Shield fit the bill and we are pleased with the scope and level of detail provided in their final report.โ
The Data-Shield SAN Assessment Team spent a week at the BA facility near Heathrow to run a spectrum of tests across SAN equipment from McData, IBM, HP, EMC and Brocade. The team also interviewed key administrators and examined configurations, deployment schemas, environmental readings and change control procedures to provide a report covering every aspect of the SAN infrastructure. โWe already have direct agreements with several SAN manufacturers and an IT maintenance provider, but it was felt that a truly independent external expert assessment would provide us with an unbiased report,โ explains Harding, โThe result has helped us to validate our business continuity position, refine several of our processes and make a number of key configuration changes which will improve the resilience of our SAN infrastructure.โ
Like many large organisations, British Airways has invested in SAN technology as Cliff Hutchings, Technical Director for Data-Shield says: โThe reality is that most large SAN implementations will have products from multiple vendors and often the suppliers will only have a technical understanding of the primary manufacturer and current generation of technology. Data-Shield has a team with technical certifications covering all major SAN vendors from first generation products through to current models; we pride ourselves on having the most technically competent team of any SAN specialist in the UK.โ
Over the last few years, Hutchings notes an increase in demand for SAN testing and auditing which he feels is driven by the desire to retain the investment in high value equipment that may well be out of manufacturer support but is still more than adequate for operational purposes. โSAN switches are built to data centre levels of reliability and performance that is often vastly over specified. For many organisations, there is simply no need to perform a costly upgrade but best practice would suggest that firms, at least annually, take stock of the SAN and have an independent assessment to make sure that everything is performing as it should.โ
Hutchings highlights that the cost of a comprehensive SAN test and audit is a tiny fraction of the potential damage inflicted by unplanned downtime. โThe other issue is that IT maintenance companies are under pressure to simply โrubber stampโ audits as they are in many cases inspecting their own work. Having an independent second opinion is the only way to be sure that the implementation, configuration and operational processes are up to the standard that is expected from a mission critical IT environment.โ
