Severstal upgrades DWH

On September 18, 2014 it became known of the project of upgrade of a complex of the storage systems (SS) of Severstal in three data processing centers in the city of Cherepovets.

Project Tasks

Since 2012 in Severstal the complex of applications on the SAP HANA platform is implemented.

In process of growth of scale of the project, volumes of the stored and processed data, number of at the same time working users of business systems increased and it was found out that former disk arrays ceased to answer the performance level required for the most important to the enterprise of applications, including the systems of SAP. Their upgrade became one of the main components of IT strategy of Severstal which includes development plans for IT until 2017.

Project Progress

In September, 2014 the first project stage of optimization of work of corporate systems of management is complete. In the beginning it was supposed to transfer them to an expensive computer hardware. In particular, products and technologies of EMC companies, HP, IBM and NetApp were considered. All listed vendors, except IBM, suggested to replace completely all systems with newer and modern that required big costs. IBM offered the plan of effective upgrade substantially saving former investments into the equipment by means of elimination of bottlenecks in operation of computer systems and optimization of operation of servers, storage systems, network equipment and applications. For Severstal this option was preferable as global market of metallurgy in a recession status.

"Heads of the metallurgical companies should implement development projects, including the innovation, in the conditions of limited budgets. IT support of business did not become an exception", – Yury Shekhovtsov, the CIO of Severstal company noted.

The proposed IBM solution is based on use of advanced methods of management of IT infrastructure and use of modern technologies of data storage. In particular, the architecture includes superfast data warehouses of IBM FlashSystem on the basis of technologies a flash memory, the systems of virtualization of IBM SAN Volume Controller disk arrays. The pilot project showed high cost efficiency as allowed to reduce volumes of capital investments significantly.

During further implementing solution Severstal will provide high, with a considerable stock, performance of storage systems, but also, having improved monitoring systems, management and the analysis of infrastructure, to achieve highly effective work of all complex of business applications and to create a basis for selection of the resources of storage necessary for implementation of new projects. Will be possible to transfer storage systems to qualitatively new environment of software-defined data storage (Software Defined Storage, SDS) which is inherent to the systems of private clouds with the high level of a technology maturity.

Andrey Solukovtsev, the head of department of corporate DWH of IBM in Russia and the CIS, noted: "In such environment system management of data storage is made not at the interoperability layer with the diverse and different-sized equipment, and at higher level of abstraction – the expanded virtualized infrastructure of storage saving in terms of business systems, all opportunities of traditional arrays of storage".

Process management of storage, backup and data recovery will be made by means of the program IBM Tivoli Storage Manager tools. It has high scalability and allows to manage with ease in large volumes of data that promotes risk reduction, connected with loss of information.

To reduce initial expenses by acquisition of program licenses and to calculate precisely how many means should be spent for support of the solution in a long-term outlook, IBM corporation suggested Severstal to use the unlimited license agreement (IBM Unlimited License Agreement) within which the software of IBM can be used in an unlimited number.