Swisscom
“Fantastic support.”
Swisscom IT Services
Download the Swisscom presentation “Protecting a SAP Cloud with Bacula at Swisscom IT Services” by Stefan Dunsch
About Swisscom IT Services
Swisscom IT Services is one of Switzerland’s leading IT service providers. Its core business encompasses the realisation of large IT projects (including consultancy and the implementation of new systems), the management of complex IT infrastructures, end-user services and service desk services. Together with its subsidiaries Comit and Sourcag, Swisscom IT Services is the leading provider of consultancy services, implementation and operation of total banking solutions, including peripheral systems, and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for the Swiss financial sector. Thanks to its takeover of the SAP specialist firm Resource, Swisscom IT Services can offer its clients the full range of services from SAP consultancy and SAP industry solutions through to SAP operation.
The Group employs around 3,000 staff at 14 locations across Switzerland.
The Challenge
Swisscom IT Services’ Core businesses are:
• Large-scale IT projects
• IT infrastructure management
• SAP consulting, solutions and operation
• Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
Swisscom IT Services Group – Facts & Figures:
• Headquartered in Bern, Switzerland
Revenues:
– 2009: CHF 841 million/ CHF 435 million*
– Q2/2010: CHF 240 million* (+30.4% compared with previous year)
• 300 customers
• 16 additional Swiss locations
• 3,300 employees
Swisscom IT Services’ core competencies revolve around management of complex IT infrastructure, SAP, BPO for the financial sector, end user services.
Data Centres:
• 2 locations
• 8 petabytes of storage capacity
• 10,000 servers
• 2 main frames with about 5,000 MIPS
Platform Overview:
Swisscom IT Services built a “Private Cloud“ based on a HP Blade Matrix infrastructure. This Private Cloud:
• Provides template-based services to several customers
• Has a focus solely on SAP Services
• Has only standardized offers
• Has a Pay-per-use model (based on performance and storage)
HP Blade Matrix is only the base for deployments; Swisscom IT Services Group further added:
1. A Hypervisor,
2. Backup software,
3. A monitoring and reporting tool,
4. A Change Management tool.
Swisscom’s requirements for the backup software were:
– Windows and Linux client support
– Virtual and physical servers
– Highly Scalable
– Integration with Nagios available
– Easily adaptible
– Simple licensemodel
– Disaster recovery
– Database-Integration possible (pre-and post-tasks)
The advantages to Swisscom IT Services Group as a result of using Bacula:
– No license costs involved
– No vendor lock-in
– Easily adaptable
– Well documented
– Business-class support
– Knowledge available
- also offers backup-to-disk
- Provides for Disaster Recovery by replication to another location
Today Swisscom IT Services Group save more or less daily:
– Linux and Windows File systems
– Database Logfiles
– Databases 100 to 400 GB each
• 3 OS x 4 Databases(MySQL*, DB2, MaxDB, Oracle, MS SQL*) need supporting
• 2 major SAP installation types (ABAP and JAVA), and many other different SAP products
Database backups performed:
–The easy one: Dump and backup(e.g. MySQL)
–The basic one: Shut down and backup
–The normal one: Tell the database its backed up and backup(copy it) online (e.g. Oracle)
–The preferred one: Backup the database with the database utility to a pipe and get it from there (e.g. MaxDB, DB2)
–The ultimate one: Tell the database its backed up, snapshot it, release the database lock, mount the snapshot somewhere and backup without involving the db server(called split-mirror backup, easily combined with so-called system copies)
