13 March 2003 -- Cisco Systems announced this week at CeBIT, that utility company Mainova, Frankfurt, is extending its data recovery and business strategy with Cisco technology.
It will employ Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet over a Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical network, based on Cisco's ONS 15540 Extended Services Platform.
Mainova, which supplies energy to customers in the Rhein-Main region, is extending its storage area network by taking advantage of its own utility network and fibre infrastructure to build a DWDM backbone interconnecting each of its sites.
By deploying the redundant ONS 15540 DWDM platforms at each site, Mainova believes it can multiplex several fibre-channel storage connections, together with LAN traffic, over a single fibre, without needing to light individual fibres for each new data connection.
"The ONS 15540 helps enable us to maximize the use of our fibre infrastructure in linking the different campus sites, and has improved the capacity, performance and reliability of our network, said Hollstein, Head of Network Infrastructure at Mainova.
The DWDM network means that Mainova's data can be backed up using Fibre Channel-over-DWDM connections to the remote data centers. Because Mainova's business operates 24 hours per day, the company needs a reliable data recovery strategy, which has been supported by constructing an additional, redundant data center as part of this project.
In addition to facilitating a resilient storage infrastructure, the Cisco ONS 15540 technology has helped enable Mainova to improve LAN connectivity between these disparate sites without incurring additional costs.
Mainova worked closely with Cisco partner, CC Compunet AG in providing and integrating Cisco equipment. Mainova selected the Cisco ONS 15540 Extended Services Platform (ESP) for this project, and is already using a range of Cisco routing technology from the 800 Series up to the 7200 Series router, together with the Catalyst 6500, Catalyst 4500, Catalyst 3550 and Catalyst 2950 series switches, and Cisco PIX Firewalls. The overall network environment is managed using CiscoWorks.
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