A Proven Partnership

COMPAREX Informationssysteme GmbH and the Hannover Utility Co. can look back on a long history of cooperation. Since the early 1980s both companies have worked together closely in the mainframe area. It was, therefore, only natural that COMPAREX should also be consulted in the selection process for a suitable backup solution for Open Systems. Amongst the equipment provided by COMPAREX in the data centre today there is a CMOS Mainframe, a large RAID storage subsystem and automated tape libraries as well as state-of-the-art Enterprise High-End NT Servers for SAP R/3, external disk storage systems and DLT Libraries: Open Systems on the increase at enercity! As the utility is in the process of migrating from SAP R/2 to R/3, the world of OS/390 will soon be a thing of the past.

The Search for a Suitable Backup Tool

The applications running on Open Systems comprise not only the R/3 ERP business solution but also a number of more specialised programs for energy providers such as brokerage dealing on the new electricity exchange or systems designed to optimise the running of electricity plants or graphics packages for planning gas and drinking water networks. However, the overriding concern is that Open Systems data must be given the same protection as data on the mainframe. Mainframe data is backed up not only on a local ATL system but also on a second ATL located at a distance of some 3.5km from the data centre and which mirrors the primary system.

After 1996 Open Systems Data were backed up with a host-based solution. However, the company`s Service Level Agreements stipulate that system outages must be remedied within the times defined. Thomas Reiche, responsible for the implementation of the new backup system: "In the event of a total failure of all our systems this would have meant that users of applications running on Open Systems would have had to wait for the mainframe system to be recovered before we could even start to recover their applications! We cooperate very closely with our 1800 users and share their opinion that a delay of this magnitude just could not be tolerated. Independence from the mainframe host was, therefore, a pre-requisite when designing the new backup system."

The Decision in Favour of Legato`s NetWorker

"In the Open Systems arena we have about 1.2 TB of data and estimate that by the end of 2000 this will have grown to 2 TB!. That´s why we need a high performance, flexible and easy to use backup tool", says Michael Schulze-Gensch, Head of System Services. Legato's NetWorker provided all of this required functionality. The ability to clone backed up to a second tape library was just what the utility had been looking for. This feature enabled the company to introduce standards of data protection for Open Systems data comparable to those existing for their mainframe data. In addition, NetWorker fulfils a number of other criteria important for enercity: high throughput, certification for SAP R/3 and support for a wide range of operating systems.

Mission Accomplished with COMPAREX

Although this was the first occasion the two companies had worked together in the area of Open Systems, everything went according to plan. An intensive two month phase of analysis and design was followed in April 1999 by the implementation itself. In addition to the COMPAREX consultants there were three members of the utility´s Systems Services on the team. Herr Reiche summarizes the cooperation as follows: "The value of careful preparation and close partnership cannot be overestimated for the overall success of any implementation. We adhered to the window we had defined together. In this sort of work problems always occur. However, these were all solved in a timely fashion. All in all, everything ran incredibly smoothly."

The Future

In the meantime all of the recovery procedures have been tested and documented: individual files, servers, Oracle databases, Microsoft Clusters as well as SAP R/3 running on Oracle. The next task could well be the creation of a Storage Area Network (SAN). Not only will storage consolidation be a major goal but Legato´s solution for LANfree and Serverless Backup in a SAN equally be a major factor.

Backup at enercity: an Overview (2000)

• 1800 Users (in the near future approx. 45% SAP R/3)
• 82 Servers, 2 Libraries, in total 8 DLT drives
• 1.2 TB (End 2000 approx. 2 TB)
• 30% Data growth p.a.
• 3 x NT-Cluster (for SAP R/3)
• 25 Applications based on Oracle, MS Exchange, Lotus Notes
• Full Backup at weekends
• Incremental Backup (normally online) daily

Enercity in Figures (1999)

Ownership: 75% Subsidiary of the
Hannover Utility and Public Transport Company (VVG)
Services: Provider of Electricity, Gas, Water and Heating to private and industrial
customers in both the area of Hannover and throughout the Federal Republic of which some 350.000 are households
Revenues: 1,166 Mio. DM
Employees: 3,026