The UK's Nationwide Building Society has implemented technology from Cisco Systems to deliver its storage area networking (SAN) infrastructure, initially consisting of over 2000 ports across two data centres.
The SAN system utilises the Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director for SAN switching and will serve business-line applications supporting 13000 employees across nearly 700 branch offices and six administration centres.
The Cisco ONS 15540 extended services platform will be used to interconnect two data centres, using dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), between Wiltshire and Northamptonshire for business continuity purposes. In all, Nationwide's SAN will manage some 800 servers and a total storage capacity of 40 terabytes.
Nationwide says it decided to implement the SAN to increase operational efficiency in managing its storage capacity, which was doubling year-on-year through business growth. The system will also help the firm comply with the Basel II regulations.
Arthur Amos, head of technology support, Nationwide Building Society, says: "We required the intelligent network services that are provided by the Cisco MDS 9000 SAN switch family in order to build a consolidated, highly available SAN infrastructure that our business can rely upon with confidence."
Cisco partner HP managed both the SAN and DWDM network deployment and will continue to provide support services to the UK building society.