Grameenphone is Bangladesh's leading GSM operator with over 10 mn subscribers. Nearly four years ago, Grameenphone replaced the storage environment supporting its business-critical billing systems with two EMC Symmetrix DMX 1000 and 2000 model storage systems to accommodate rising performance demands and non-stop growth. Today, the company is one of EMC's largest customers in Bangladesh.

“At Grameenphone, we look at technology as a strategic tool to ensure cost-effective business opera­tions and provide better value to subscribers,” says Frode Stoldal, CIO, Grameenphone. “EMC provided a scalable storage solution that gives us the assurance that our information is protected and available at all times.”

In 2007, Grameenphone opted to take advantage of EMC OpenScale purchasing options through EMC Global Financial Services to cost-efficiently accommodate rising storage demands. Based on the “pay as you use” principle, OpenScale eliminates the traditional pitfalls associated with purchasing and allocating storage by providing the company with a pre-determined price per gigabyte that is fully transparent throughout the term of the contract. This program has enabled Grameenphone to quickly meet storage needs for faster rollout of new products, applications, and services.

A recent technology refresh of the company's EMC Symmetrix DMX 1000 storage system was also made possible through EMC Global Financing Services' OpenScale options. As a result, the company's billing environment now leverages a new EMC Symmetrix DMX-3 platform, which supports significantly greater levels of performance, availability, and scalability. The existing EMC Symmetrix DMX 2000 system has been redeployed to support the company's data warehousing requirements.

A Wider Adoption
Based on the success of its initial EMC deployments, Grameenphone has expanded its centralized storage infrastructure over the last four years, acquiring new tier-1 and tier-2 EMC storage systems; powerful, highly reliable EMC Connectrix directors and switches; and a host of advanced EMC software solutions to facilitate improved applications support, automated backup and archive processes, and rock-solid disaster recovery capabilities.

An EMC Symmetrix DMX-3 storage system, now deployed at the company's disaster recovery site, is connected to EMC Symmetrix DMX-3 and DMX-2000 systems at the production site via dedicated dark fiber links. EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility/Synchronous (SRDF/S) software is used to facilitate synchronous replication between these two sites for zero-data-loss capabilities.

Consistent and streamlined backup is supported by EMC TimeFinder/Clone software, which creates pointer-based snaps of the company's Symmetrix DMX volumes, and EMC NetWorker software, which centralizes and automates backup to a tape library. Coordinating and automating the entire replication process is EMC Replication Manager.

A mid-range EMC CLARiiON CX3-80 storage system is currently in place to support both a 5,000-seat Microsoft Exchange environment and file server data. EMC EmailXtender is used within the exchange environment to facilitate streamlined email archiving capabilities. Archives are stored on economical SATA drives within the EMC CLARiiON CX3-80 system.

Recently, another EMC CLARiiON CX3-80 system was purchased so that the company could segregate file server data from exchange data in the first array.

Two additional EMC CLARiiON CX3-20 systems, each located at the main data center and in Bharti, provide mid-tier support for applications used by Grameenphone's technical department. EMC SnapView software, which produces snaps for backup and recovery purposes, EMC Mirror View, which facilitates synchronous mirroring between the two sites, and EMC SAN Copy software, which supports high-speed data mobility between EMC CLARiiON and the company's non-EMC storage sys­tems, provide a comprehensive multi-faceted data protection solution for this environment.

Jatinder Singh
jatinders@cybermedia.co.in