DFW International Airport Embraces DataCore Virtual SAN For Business Continuity Over Clusters And Multiple Data Centers
DataCore Software today announced that Dallas/Fort-Worth International Airport has selected and installed DataCore's SANsymphony software to deliver business continuity, while eliminating the notion of failover. Because supporting airlines and by extension their customers is so mission critical, downtime is not an option at DFW. "We needed to have a method for building business continuity that eliminated the notion of failover," said John Parrish, associate vice president in charge of terminal technology, Dallas/Fort-Worth International Airport. "This requirement was key because in the time it takes to failover from an ‘active' to a ‘passive' that is all the time that is needed for an air traveler to get annoyed with an agent and potentially go to a different airline."
The issue of business continuity weighs importantly both in DFW International Airport's operational landscape but also in its strategic landscape. The notion that the airport could not have "active"/"passive" but had to have an "active/"active" solution led DFW to DataCore's SANsymphony. The airport has both a north and a south data center. Each of them is active/active, meaning that these are load balanced and that each are busy processing a portion of the load at all times. The difficulty with this is that if transactions are separated through the distance between the North and South centers, how can the data stay in sync and presented to applications with a single view?
"The challenge is that when a transaction happens in the northern data center and a transaction occurs at the southern data center, both need to see the same data at the same time," explained Parrish. To accomplish this, DFW International Airport uses at the application level IBM eSeries blades, which are either a Windows Server version with some Windows clustering, a Linux version with Linux clustering or AIX with AIX clustering. The combination of blades and clusters provide a virtual set of servers to handle the transactions required by their end user community. Behind the eSeries blades, both at the north site and the south site, are IBM P650's, which are also clustered together using HACMP. On the 650's are Oracle databases using Real Application Cluster (RAC), which like an operating system cluster allows two instances (one on the north and one on the south) to appear as a virtual instance. Below these databases, blades and clusters lies DataCore's SANsymphony.
"The clusters want to write to one and only one target, meaning one and only one SAN," explained Parrish. "Obviously that was not an option because having only one SAN would force me to have it at the North or the South data center and therefore I would lose my business continuity at that level."
Only after searching for almost two years did Parrish and his team at DFW International Airport find a product in SANsymphony that enabled him to do with SAN storage what the RAC and HACMP allowed him to do with the database and operating system, which was to take two disparately located SANs, cluster them and make them appear as one virtual SAN. "It is this virtual SAN that completes the business continuity picture," said George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore Software. "The databases and clusters essentially write to SANsymphony storage and SANsymphony guarantees the appropriate distribution to the disparately located SANs." This system also gives DFW International Airport greater read performance in as much as "reads" will come from the least busy SAN, all managed by SANsymphony.
The bottom-line in terms of meeting business objectives at DFW International Airport is that DataCore has provided this major metropolitan airport with a single, virtual SAN, which is working behind the scenes to protect data within two physically separate SANs. "The SANsymphony solution has enabled us to have a business continuity plan, which contains a North and a South data center that are disparately located and whereby either one is capable of handling 100% of the load at peak times," concluded Parrish. "I cannot measure the costs in terms of political capital or customer goodwill of downtime at the critical moment. The whole reward for DFW International Airport is business continuity."
About Dallas/Fort-Worth International Airport
Located halfway between the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, DFW International Airport is the world's third busiest, offering nearly 2,000 flights per day and serving 59 million passengers a year. DFW International Airport provides non-stop service to 135 domestic and 39 international destinations worldwide. For the latest news, real-time flight information, parking availability or further details regarding the many services provided at DFW International Airport, log on to www.dfwairport.com.
About DataCore Software
DataCore Software fundamentally changes the economics of managing storage. DataCore's disk server software easily adds capacity expansion and centralized storage management for Windows, UNIX, Linux, VMware, MacOS, and NetWare systems. DataCore is privately held with corporate headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. For more information, visit www.datacore.com.