UK bank consolidates data replication on network

30.11.2005
During the past two years, Joe Wright did everything he could to consolidate Nationwide Building Society's 300TB storage infrastructure: He chose one storage vendor, backed up to one data center, replicated to one disaster recovery site and created a single storage-area network.

But Wright, a senior technology consultant at Swindon, England-based Nationwide, said as many as four full-time employees were still needed to manage data replication for disaster recovery at the US$10.4 billion bank.

To fix that problem, over the past six months Nationwide has been rolling out a network-based replication system that will eventually provide continuous data protection.

The latest system uses Cisco Systems Inc. switches and a replication appliance from Kashya Inc. that cost Nationwide more than $1 million, but "not millions" of dollars, Wright said. The replication capabilities have been implemented and have already cut Nationwide's administrative overhead to one full-time worker, Wright said.

"The network can see everything. You can use a single replication solution. It's been very simple to manage," he said.

The problem wasn't obvious two years ago when Nationwide installed an infrastructure based on Symmetrix arrays from EMC Corp.