IT Department Spun off

Howaldtswerke - Deutsche Werft AG (HDW) in Kiel has been in the business of building ships for 160 years. Today, it is the largest shipyard in Germany - an enterprise which constructs both merchant navy vessels such as cruise ships, ferries and container ships, and naval vessels such as submarines, frigates and corvettes. HDW is one of Europe's most modern shipyards and employs around 3,200 staff in Kiel.

Managing System Diversity

HDW took the decision as early as the 1970s to spin off its IT department into a separate company, NIS - Norddeutsche Informations-Systeme GmbH. In HDW's data centre today client/server applications are run on a variety of hardware and operating system platforms. More specifically, these include VMS systems for CAD-based ship planning and development, SUN systems for inventory management, SAP R/3 for business processes, PC systems for file and print services and a number of other applications. "This variety of different hardware platforms", recalls Malte Griem, "gave us quite a few headaches in the past, particularly the necessity to continually provide sufficient disk storage capacity."

System heterogeneity was one of the main reasons why HDW adopted a Storage Area Network plan. A further reason was the problem of backup. Malte Griem: "We have around 40 NT servers, 15 Novell and 20 UNIX servers to back up, all more or less local. Because of the large data volumes involved, backups across the network are only possible to a limited extent." The staff in charge were looking to simplify the process with a SAN, "to implement centralised storage and backup solutions that can be used by all systems and which function more or less automatically."

Around 350 GB of the centralised disk capacity is available for the UNIX servers, and around 400 GB is dedicated to the PC server environment. The VMS systems in the computer centre are not included in the SAN solution because, as Malte Griem explains, "the VMS applications will soon be replaced by other platforms".

Selecting the Right Partner

Just one point of contact
What was needed was a solution with initially 200 GB of hard disk storage each for NT and UNIX, connected to four UNIX and to four NT systems and a backup system configured to meet these storage requirements and able to carry out a full backup within eight hours.

A number of vendors were given these specifications to tender - with the proviso that all equipment was to be provided by a single supplier. "The primary reason for this was the issue of Fibre Channel technology standardisation which has still not been resolved within the fibre channel community." A further key criterion in the decision-making process was that the disk subsystem had to support capacity upgrades up to a massive 6 TB.

In addition, HDW/NIS placed particular emphasis on a Fibre Channel switched fabric solution. Says Malte Griem: "We needed full FC bandwidth across all connections in our data centre. We did not want the hub solutions suggested by a number of suppliers. COMPAREX was the only systems integrator able to provide a complete switched fabric solution for the required configuration from a single source. That's why we chose COMPAREX."

Vast Volumes of Data

The SAN was first implemented with two test systems. "We are now in the process of migrating all of our servers. The problem with a system like this is the large volume of data involved. We needed a little more time than was originally anticipated to solve this particular problem." comments the project leader. After the system has gone live, backups will be performed centrally.

Virtually Automated Operations

"At the moment," reports Malte Griem proudly, "we are in a situation where we can connect the attached servers to a single centralised storage pool that can also be flexibly managed. The storage capacities needed are on a single system exploiting state-of-the-art technology to guarantee the highest availability." As a further step towards centralised backup, Malte Griem anticipates that "we will implement a central automated tape library allowing all the servers in the switched fabric to be backed up practically operator-free."

Long-Term Partnership

Malte Griem has this to say about the partnership with COMPAREX: "The link with COMPAREX was forged in the days of mainframes, and this link has now been revitalised. Of course, the SAN technology used today makes different demands on the sales and service staff. But we value the support provided by COMPAREX. The reaction times are fast, the distances short and the solutions they provide are highly satisfactory."

Howaldtswerke - Deutsche Werft AG
(Financial year 1998/99)
Turnover: DM 1.236 billion
Merchant shipbuilding: DM 406 million
(Naval shipbuilding: DM 790 million
Ship repairs: DM 19 million
Other production: DM 21 million)
Order books: DM 6.327 billion
No.of Employees: 3,192