Digital Content Management and SAN File System Project 

TeraMach performed an assessment for this Federal Government department and its approximately 1,000 employees. TeraMach designed and architected the client’s Digital Content Management (DCM) core infrastructure.  This architecture minimized complexity and ongoing costs, while providing the required infrastructure stability, scalability and resilience to allow the client to rapidly bring new projects online.  Some of the key benefits of this design included the ability to add and change both storage performance and capacity on the fly, flexibility in adding and removing projects which have drastically different storage requirements from a performance and capacity standpoint, integration with core IT services, and the minimization of core services within the client’s infrastructure.  The project also developed a business case and recommended a technical architecture to support digital ingestion and management of variety of digital assets.

TeraMach then implemented the DCM core infrastructure which included the creation of a new network segment, an Active Directory implementation, storage build-out and SAN implementation.  This was followed by the migration of all core services onto the new infrastructure.  TeraMach built-out the storage environment through the implementation of a dual fabric Brocade switch architecture and redeployment of the client’s existing HDS 9570 storage array into the SAN.

TeraMach completed the implementation of the infrastructure through the recommendation and implementation of IBM’s TotalStorage SAN File System (SFS), the storage virtualization layer and a key component of the proposed architecture.  IBM’s storage virtualization solution was implemented by TeraMach through a joint venture pilot project between the client, TeraMach and IBM, through which IBM evaluated and qualified TeraMach’s skills and ability to deploy and support the DPMT SFS environment on an ongoing basis. 

The client’s infrastructure is undergoing an additional major upgrade on backup architecture and the Microsoft network to meet its long term scalability and performance requirements. This has significant impact on current IBM SFS management and the way the archived data are being backed up. TeraMach is currently re-designing the IBM SFS architecture and will  implement additional storage nodes for better performance on scanning and backup processes.  Once the storage nodes are completed, TeraMach will implement the master IBM SFS console to provide central management and alerts using SNMP. 

The Result:

The customer implemented a storage infrastructure that minimized complexity and on-going costs while allowing new projects to be deployed more rapidly.